Method and apparatus for discriminating and counting documents

Abstract

A method and device for counting and discriminating documents including currency documents comprising a discriminating unit wherein the failure of a bill to be identified by the discriminating unit to causing the operation of the device to be suspended after the unidentified bill has been transported to an examining location for convenient examination by an operator. The device is provided with document-type selection elements. When an unidentified bill is found to be acceptable, an appropriate document-type selection element is chosen. The selection of a document-type selection element causes appropriate counters to incremented and the device to resume operation. The device is also provided with a continuation selection element. Alternatively, when an unidentified bill is found not be acceptable, the document is removed from the output receptacle and the continuation selection element is chosen. Selection of the continuation selection element causes the device to resume operation without any counters being adversely affected. In a manner similar to the handling of unidentified bills, the device may flag documents based on their forward /reverse orientation. Alternatively, the device may sort documents based on their forward/reverse orientation.