When you place a stack of banknotes into the banknote counter's feeder, the bottom banknote activates a feed roller. As the roller rotates, it passes the bottom banknote to a second roller, which rotates at a higher speed. Low-friction devices on either side of the second roller ensure that only one banknote is picked up at a time. The notes are then separated by fan rollers before being passed past an optical sensor and counted (both the number and value, depending on the machine). The counted notes then land neatly in the output chute at the front of the machine.

The simplest counting machines can only tell you how many banknotes or vouchers you have inserted - but much faster than counting by hand (and without counting errors). More powerful banknote counters, on the other hand, automate more than just counting money for you. For example, all value counters in the BEITZ product range have an addition function as standard, which you can use to add up the number of notes in several stacks of money. The bundle function allows you to speed up the preparation of cash drawers and bank deposits by stopping the device after a certain number of banknotes have been counted. The top class consists of highly developed money counting machines, such as the BS-950, which, in addition to advanced counterfeit detection, can even count the value of mixed stacks of money.

As the banknote passes through the machine, a series of integrated sensors checks one or more of the security features of modern currencies. Simpler machines only check for the presence of UV markings; more sophisticated machines also check for magnetic properties and sizes. Top-of-the-range banknote counters, such as those in the BEITZ 900 range, are specifically programmed to detect the UV, infrared, magnetic, hologram and unique size features of every denomination of every supported currency. (You can read more about how counterfeit detection works in detail on our counterfeit detection page.)

This depends on your counting machine and the features you have turned on. Any money counting machine can count bills of one denomination as they pass through its optical sensor. But to count mixed bills — for example, a stack of fives, tens and twenties — the machine must also be able to recognize the different denominations during the counting process. (Within one currency.) Advanced counting machines (BS-950 BS-920 BS-5300) can count every denomination in a stack in just one counting pass, saving a huge amount of time compared to previous manual sorting.