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How do you track your vending business


sbishop

What system do you use to track your vending business  

115 members have voted

  1. 1. What system do you use to track your vending business

    • Vend-Track.com
      23
    • Vending Essentials
      1
    • Other Commercial Product
      8
    • I made my own system
      72
    • What is Tracking?
      12


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I have been researching various vending tracking programs and I would like to know what everyone is using.

If you answer Other please give us the name of the product you use.

Please feel free to give a short review of the product that you are using.

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I tried Vend Trak but felt I needed a PC based program instead of a web based system and I wanted more/different information input /output. My accounting program is Microsoft Accounting Express. My tracking program is an Excel Spreadsheet that I made up myself. It was quite the chore as I am not well versed in Excel. It is configured to give me all the information I need for location tracking and performance. I may send a copy to the list owner and see if he feels it is worthy of publication. From there, maybe there are some Excel gurus who could improve on it and pass it back to the members.

Does anyone have a snowmobile for sale? :-*

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I tried Vend Trak but felt I needed a PC based program instead of a web based system and I wanted more/different information input /output. My accounting program is Microsoft Accounting Express. My tracking program is an Excel Spreadsheet that I made up myself. It was quite the chore as I am not well versed in Excel. It is configured to give me all the information I need for location tracking and performance. I may send a copy to the list owner and see if he feels it is worthy of publication. From there, maybe there are some Excel gurus who could improve on it and pass it back to the members.

Does anyone have a snowmobile for sale? :-*

James we do have a couple of donated tracking spreadsheets available in the tools section of member PLUS. I am always looking for others as well. Anything you are willing to share would be appreciated!  ;)

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I keep track on a homemade spreadsheet but don't put anything on the computer. I realize that as I grow my system won't work too well. Hoping someone here has a system that works.

Thanks

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  • 4 months later...

We currently use an Excel Workbook, that we downloaded off the Tools section of Vendiscuss, but we are in the process of moving our data over to Vend-Trak.  A cumbersome process to say the least.  I was planning on moving all of the sales data as well, but it would take until next year to do it.  We are just going to start from scratch with sales data.  If anyone has a better way to transfer data, I would love to hear it.

The best thing I can suggest is to decide what program you really want to use before you have more than a few locations.  If you don't, the double work will kill you.

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I created my own web-based system using PhP and MySQL to access via my phone. I can do counts to update how much is in the machine, do transfers from my inventory to a store to update that way. Track how much I spend on everything and how much I earn. It's still in an early stage, and not well for more than one location. Before I expand since I only currently have one location, I will update my system further to provide better support.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm starting with QuickBooks Pro. Got a free copy from a friend. It seems to do everything I will need it for. Don't think I will even try to track inventory, though. I can't think of a reasonable way of tracking inventory for a bulk candy business as product will be commingled on location.

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  • 1 month later...

I use different Excel worksheets which are connected to each other. All details are processed statistically.

So I get all locations on the tour, sales to be expected, and the amount of candies need to be loaded for that day.

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  • 3 months later...

I too use a homemade excel sheet that I made. I like vendtrak but I'm scared to dump everything online. Yes, I know you have to trust someone but all of my secure information isn't on a computer that allows internet access. Just my .02

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

I am trying this out:

http://www.nexphaze.com/routemanager.html

Route Manager is a complete vending route management system that will save time, money and orgainze all of your vending information. The application provides prospect source tracking, account management, product management and more. Tracking your products and equipment is simple and will allow route optimization for product and equipment location.

Route Manager will aid in tracking new location prospects and turning them into accounts. These accounts will contain equipment, product and other information in a easy form for viewing and editing. The prospects and accounts list present location information and status at a glance. Each prospect and account may contain documents such as contracts and proposals as well as images of the location and equipment.

Route Manager allows a business to easily track vital information to execute and maintain a profitable sale cycle and stream line production efforts. The product will track an account from the initial prospect entry while collecting vital data for filling, product and equipment control, and reporting.

Route Manager not only handles the prospect, accounts and equipment interaction in a well structured and consistent model but also manages the inventory aspects of the qequipment and locations. Route Manager can also handle all of your scheduling needs for route management with appointment and repeating events for collection schedules in a central managed calendar without the need of any external software.

Route Manager has been custom designed by people working in the vending industry to cover all the specific needs of a venders top business.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey everyone,

Here's another alternative that smaller operators are beginning to use across the country.

My company, Distributed Trading Group, has just released a mobile software program, called Vagabond, that is specifically designed to enable small vending businesses to manage their operations more efficiently. We have operated machines ourselves for the past 18 months in order to determine exactly what is important to your day to day operations and design it into the software.

Our website (http://www.dtgvending.com) will fill you in on how the software works and the benefits for your operation. We have a video on the website that demos the software so you know what you would be implementing into your operations. For your reference, the account used in the video is the Vagabond account we use for our own vending operations every day. If the video doesn't stream for you automatically, you can download it directly from our servers at http://intro.dtgvend...om/vagabond.mp4

Basically though, implementing Vagabond into our own operation reduced our total labor requirement by 40%, reduced the amount of inventory we carry by 20%, and increased the time between machine visits in some cases by more than 50%. In addition, we provide monthly service that does not require any contracts and operates on your mobile device, such as your phone.

If you'd like to discuss how it works in more detail, please feel free to call me at 917-359-6859 or e-mail me at juan@dtgvending.com

I Hope this helps!

Hey Juan at DTGvending why don't you send Steve around $500.00 for advertising for you

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  • 1 year later...

I use an Excel spreadsheet with months across the top and location name/product type along the left. Yearly totals are at the far right, and monthly totals are at the far bottom.

I also use a small binder with column paper to write down collection amounts when checking my machines. I wrte down the amounts as I'm getting the coins counted at the bank. Then I transfer those figures to the spreadsheet I mentioned above. I like having a copy of everything in case one set gets destroyed or lost. I'm old fashioned that way. :-)

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