Bill acceptance control method

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It is an object of the invention to eliminate the above described disadvantage of the prior art device by providing a bill acceptance control method and a bill accepting system according to which a deposited bill is finally stored in the bill accepting device only after the true bill signal has been properly used in the machine utilizing the bill accepting device (e.
g.
the counting operation).
According to the bill acceptance control method of the invention, when a predetermined counting operation has been performed in response to a true bill signal (i.
e.
, a signal representing that the deposited bill is a true bill) provided by a bill accepting device, a signal representing the performance of the counting operation is fed back to the bill accepting device as a true bill confirmation signal and, if this bill confirmation signal has not been supplied to the bill accepting device within a predetermined period of time, the deposited bill is returned by the bill accepting device despite that this bill is a true bill.
This method enables the bill accepting device to store a true bill only after confirming that the counting of the bill has been properly made while automatically returning a deposited bill if such counting has not been confirmed.
An accurate bill acceptance control without errors thereby can be realized and the trouble of storing a bill without rendering any service can be effectively prevented.
The bill accepting system according to the invention comprises a bill accepting device and a utilizing device.
The bill accepting device comprises discrimination means for judging whether a deposited bill is a true bill or not to deliver out a true bill signal when the deposited bill has been judged to be true, checking means receiving a true bill utilization confirmation signal supplied from outside for checking whether the true bill confirmation signal has been supplied within a predetermined period of time from the time when the true bill signal has been delivered out by the discrimination means, bill storing means for taking in and storing the deposited bill if the checking means has confirmed that the true bill confirmation signal has been supplied within the predetermined period of time, and returning means for returning the deposited bill if the checking means has not confirmed that the true bill confirmation signal has been supplied within the predetermined period of time