The monthly check that ATM operators get are great, aren’t they? But while we’re sure nobody forgets to cash their check, a lot of ATM owners throw out the check stub without a second thought.

Don’t! Those stubs tell you how much you’ve earned from your ATM, and at the end of the year you’ll need them to calculate your yearly income.

They also contain valuable activity information for your ATM machine. Each stub tells you several useful things:

• How many transactions your ATM processed that month;
• How much money was withdrawn in those transactions;
• Which card networks your customers used.

The stub also breaks down transaction activity by day. So you can see, for example, that on May 5th your ATM handled 9 transactions that withdrew a total of $480, while on May 7 there were just 4 transactions for $120.

How is this information valuable? Lots of ways. By tracking customer activity, you can make sure to have enough cash in the ATM on your busiest days. You can gauge how your advertising and marketing affect ATM usage and how ATM usage affects sales. You can see which network is most popular with your customers, which might guide marketing decisions.

So cash the check. But keep the stub.