Vending How Chris Posted October 13, 2013 Share Posted October 13, 2013 Hey all, In your business, what parts of your day do you find the most difficult? What would be of great help? I'm part of a team that is currently creating tools to help the independent vendor. We are working closely with a few vending companies but I wanted to expand the scope of our feedback and connect with fellow vendors in this community. If you want to see what we're working on, check out the link on my profile or signature. Currently what we see is that people want to know most about is how to raise prices, increase their volume of sales, and get new accounts. Do you find that to be true, or are there other areas we haven't considered? Thank you, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golfdogs Posted October 14, 2013 Share Posted October 14, 2013 Hey all, In your business, what parts of your day do you find the most difficult? What would be of great help? Chris I absolutely hate entering all my receipts into Peachtree accounting software each month. It is a necessary evil, but those three hours each month are absolutely dreaded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted October 14, 2013 Share Posted October 14, 2013 I absolutely hate entering all my receipts into Peachtree accounting software each month. It is a necessary evil, but those three hours each month are absolutely dreaded. I do this after each delivery day as it saves me the dread of doing it all at once (and possibly losing a receipt!!!) The part of the day that I hate the most is the day when the whether is PERFECT outside and no one wants to linger around my vending machines!!!! Jokes aside, I love almost everything about vending. I just don't like surprises, like when a customer calls to tell me that a machine has frozen up, or that they put an out-of-order sign on my machine because it rejected one guy's dollar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snack dude Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 My Biggest challenge every single day is:( Insert Johnny Carson Drum roll please) Not smacking the crap out of the person who wants come up to me and start asking me: How much do you make? Whats the typical mark up? Can you make a living doing that? If you do not sell the product you can turn it back end? you dont have to pay for it until you sell it, right? To resist the urge to not ask: where do you live? nice neighborhood how much did you pay for that house? how much did you borrow? How much of your monthly income does the monthly payments account for? and so on.......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CajunCandy Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 My Biggest challenge every single day is:( Insert Johnny Carson Drum roll please) Not smacking the crap out of the person who wants come up to me and start asking me: How much do you make? Whats the typical mark up? Can you make a living doing that? If you do not sell the product you can turn it back end? you dont have to pay for it until you sell it, right? To resist the urge to not ask: where do you live? nice neighborhood how much did you pay for that house? how much did you borrow? How much of your monthly income does the monthly payments account for? and so on.......... All the money you making off us, you can give us free stuff! This is what I just hate to hear! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
executivevending Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 Not having enough money to expand when I want to! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vending How Chris Posted October 16, 2013 Author Share Posted October 16, 2013 My Biggest challenge every single day is:( Insert Johnny Carson Drum roll please) Not smacking the crap out of the person who wants come up to me and start asking me: How much do you make? Whats the typical mark up? Can you make a living doing that? If you do not sell the product you can turn it back end? you dont have to pay for it until you sell it, right? To resist the urge to not ask: where do you live? nice neighborhood how much did you pay for that house? how much did you borrow? How much of your monthly income does the monthly payments account for? and so on.......... You took the words right out of my mouth. I often feel like I'm a bartender, therapist, and career coach all in one when I'm servicing a machine. I have a high school account where I get asked at least three times a day by "super creative" teenagers if they can have a free bottle of Powerade. I usually then ask if I can have a free iphone. :-) Not having enough money to expand when I want to! That's the catch 22 of this business isn't it? You have to have money in order to secure the best accounts that want machines yesterday! I absolutely hate entering all my receipts into Peachtree accounting software each month. It is a necessary evil, but those three hours each month are absolutely dreaded. Have you tried vending management software? I'm curious to know the difference between that and accounting software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golfdogs Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 You took the words right out of my mouth. I often feel like I'm a bartender, therapist, and career coach all in one when I'm servicing a machine. I have a high school account where I get asked at least three times a day by "super creative" teenagers if they can have a free bottle of Powerade. I usually then ask if I can have a free iphone. :-) That's the catch 22 of this business isn't it? You have to have money in order to secure the best accounts that want machines yesterday! Have you tried vending management software? I'm curious to know the difference between that and accounting software. I have not...any suggestions?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vending How Chris Posted October 16, 2013 Author Share Posted October 16, 2013 I have not...any suggestions?!? I do. I used Vend-Trak for a trial 60 days and it made data management a lot easier. Granted, I am only a route driver so I didn't use the full capability of the software. If you are interested to learn more I wrote a review on our website. Here is the link: http://vendinghow.com/article/review-of-vend-trak-vending-management-software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 I have not...any suggestions?!? I use quickbooks. It has a learning curve as you need to have some accounting knowledge to figure everything out. The other downside to quickbooks is that it gets difficult if you have a LOT of accounts (over 50 accounts or over 100 machines). Again, it has a learning curve but it makes it a LOT easier to track things than NOT using any software. Overall, other than a vending-oriented program, the most versatile program is probably excel (or any similar spreadsheet program). It also has a learning curve to it but it can be expanded to do virtually anything. Quickbooks is easier and cleaner when you start out but excel is capable of virtually anything that any other accounting software can do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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