Jump to content

Tracking your products


jstolpe

Recommended Posts

Does anyone actually track and caculate every products cost, income, proft etc ? or do you just record how much money you take out of the machine each time you service it? I have a few full line machines and am trying to get a better process for my records keeping. Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I run mostly triples for bulk and no I don't calculate the costs for each head, however I do track the total expense and income for each machine. I use to use an excel spreadsheet but recently moved to vendingtrak and from what I have seen so far it is much better even though it will end up costing me $30 a month. It does a good job for my soda and snack machines as well and I really like the route service sheets it allows me to print when i service my routes. All in all I think it's worth the $30 and it helps me see where my money is going out and where it is coming in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone actually track and caculate every products cost, income, proft etc ? or do you just record how much money you take out of the machine each time you service it? I have a few full line machines and am trying to get a better process for my records keeping. Thanks!

I own and operate a multiple 6 figure route, I only track my total cost of goods for the entire business. Unless you have the machines, software and the capability to retrieve DEX data anything that I have seen is, IMO, too cumbersome and time consuming to deal with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I own and operate a multiple 6 figure route, I only track my total cost of goods for the entire business. Unless you have the machines, software and the capability to retrieve DEX data anything that I have seen is, IMO, too cumbersome and time consuming to deal with.

I agree 100%. Who in the heck has time to record how many bags of doritos a particular machine goes through on a weekly basis? And to what end? Time is money and if I can't see some direct financial benefit to doing something, it is not done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People track sales/trends for a lot of reasons....some are financial, some are just because.

I am one of those that track "just because". I am the type that wants to know how many bags of doritos I sold last month in this machine.....vs how many I sold at a different spot.

With the right spreadsheet, it's not really that much work (however I will tell you I spent alot of time perfecting my spreadsheet).

The spreadsheet calculates unit cost, profit, profit % as well as keeping track on spoilage total sales etc. I further break it down to Sodas, snacks, chips, frozen and fresh foods.

Again, not for everyone....but some find it interesting/useful.

Travis

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People track sales/trends for a lot of reasons....some are financial, some are just because.

I am one of those that track "just because". I am the type that wants to know how many bags of doritos I sold last month in this machine.....vs how many I sold at a different spot.

With the right spreadsheet, it's not really that much work (however I will tell you I spent alot of time perfecting my spreadsheet).

The spreadsheet calculates unit cost, profit, profit % as well as keeping track on spoilage total sales etc. I further break it down to Sodas, snacks, chips, frozen and fresh foods.

Again, not for everyone....but some find it interesting/useful.

Travis

i agree i do the same thing, but i have a small route. i use pre-printed route cards that act as a plan-o-gram

for each machine. it has empty spaces for "# of stales removed" and "# of items added" as well as notes

and the pre-printed par level. when i enter those figures at home it calculates totals for everything and cogs, so i can tell if

a particular product is moving, if its making me money and if the price needs to be adjusted. this allows me to keep down my

spoilage on a small route,which is really important on smaller routes controlling spoilage is very difficult because you dont have those whale accts where u can offload any short dated products

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I too run a 6 figure route. We track everything, don't have dex... wrote our own software. Our margins are over 60% because we can track product sales and see what's trending, when to add additional products. I can tell you what my margin is on a .95 snickers bar in Santa Ana is. More importantly, I can reorganize my route from week to week based on historical margin and sales data to know whether I should service a location on that week or not, allowing my drivers to service more locations per week and for me to make more profit.

We run sales, contents and special pricing functions. Its probably more that most people do or want to do... but we've reduced it to simple program were we can get the analytics of a route, create a key metrics dashboard and make our routes as profitable as possible.

I haven't bought a new piece of equipment in 2 years... because I sell underperforming accounts and move my equipment to better locations. We know exactly what to carry on our trucks, and more importanly when, and I can, with pretty good accuracy forecast the next three months... even the profitabilty.

So yes the data is important... but only if you want to do the work to setup the system to collect the data.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People track sales/trends for a lot of reasons....some are financial, some are just because.

I am one of those that track "just because". I am the type that wants to know how many bags of doritos I sold last month in this machine.....vs how many I sold at a different spot.

With the right spreadsheet, it's not really that much work (however I will tell you I spent alot of time perfecting my spreadsheet).

The spreadsheet calculates unit cost, profit, profit % as well as keeping track on spoilage total sales etc. I further break it down to Sodas, snacks, chips, frozen and fresh foods.

Again, not for everyone....but some find it interesting/useful.

Travis

Fully agree with this. To run biz finance indicator is a very important flag to direct the biz going direction.

Wilson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So do you represent ICT, or are you a distributor?

Hi Alden,

I am from ICT Europe branch office but currently station in the HQ. Do you work with us before?

US is not my responsibility region but I like Vendiscuss and often am here reading some posts so that we know what the customer's need and feedback is.

cheers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 months later...

I own and operate a multiple 6 figure route, I only track my total cost of goods for the entire business. Unless you have the machines, software and the capability to retrieve DEX data anything that I have seen is, IMO, too cumbersome and time consuming to deal with.

So how do you know what a particular location is trending to? I'm still new at this and trying to track everything and already seeing different trends at diff locations. My spreadsheets have changed/morphed/evolved so many times I'm not sure what I really need now. I'd really like to see what everyone else has done to track their sales/purchases.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So how do you know what a particular location is trending to? I'm still new at this and trying to track everything and already seeing different trends at diff locations. My spreadsheets have changed/morphed/evolved so many times I'm not sure what I really need now. I'd really like to see what everyone else has done to track their sales/purchases.

I use vendtrak to keep track of everything. I can also print out a summary to send to my accountant instead of all those receipts.John
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So how do you know what a particular location is trending to? I'm still new at this and trying to track everything and already seeing different trends at diff locations. My spreadsheets have changed/morphed/evolved so many times I'm not sure what I really need now. I'd really like to see what everyone else has done to track their sales/purchases.

I do a planogram for each machines so I know what was in each row if it happens to be empty. I also use placeholder cards in some machines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, I tend to stock each of my machines in the same order....so it's always easy to remember, but because old age is starting to creep in, I also keep a plan-o-gram in the bottom of each machine.

Travis

That's a good idea Travis - I think I'll make copies of mine and put them down there. I've got a binder with all my snack machines in it but don't carry it with me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...