psk007 Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Looking towards the new year i'm thinking about setting up tracking on all of my snack and pop machines so I know daily live what the machines are selling and doing. Anybody doing this? If so who do you use and what is the cost. Also any pro's and con's of diffrent tracking setups. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 Well the most basic way of giving a term to this is telemetry... and I do not do it. I don't even track my inventory. I won't even have an interest in tracking inventory until I gross at least $300,000+/year in sales. Tracking sales data is very useful as you can figure out what sells and what doesn't... but you can also do that with careful observation. If you arrive at a machine and more than half of the machine is sold-out of product, and you can't figure out what sold first, you simply aren't servicing the machine fast enough. However, if you stocked everything full.. .and you get back to see the cheez-its have sold out but the cool ranch doritos are at half, then you know that the cheez-its are a hit at that location. If you really want to track sales on a daily basis, you need a telemetry device and telemetry service. This is going to require an MDB machine (as far as I know) and it is similar to a credit card reader in how it tracks sales data and connects to the internet wirelessly. If I recall, you can get telemetry service for $8/month and it I don't think you get charged extra if it is with a credit card reader (the reader should be capable of telemetry if I am not mistaken) but you either have to purchase the telemetry device or a device capable of telemetry. I think DEX works the same way... but I have never used DEX. However, DEX will only give you real-time data if you are at the machine. Telemetry is essentially a service that does what DEX'ing does but transmits the information wirelessly. It may use a different process but I am pretty confident that they give similar information. On another note, vending machines usually have no way of knowing what sold... they can only tell you which selections sold. In other words, you need to either have a plan-o-gram for your machines or keep track of the inventory after every service of your machine. I get daily reports from USA Technology from my credit card reader and I can generally figure out which selections sold just from the sales data alone (ie. 009 is selection A9 on the bevmax and it is 20 oz Coca-Cola). I may have made this far more complicated than it should be, but I am just not a believer in telemetry for various reasons. I only find it useful if you have a very large business with multiple drivers and you want to be able to re-order exactly what you need perfectly every time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jump1979man Posted December 7, 2014 Share Posted December 7, 2014 I use the USA Tech reports and an excel spreadsheet. I am small and whole heartily believe in tracking. I have a vending buddy who doesnt track anything and he seems to do alright. I do it more for my financial auditing along with knowing what sells in the hopes of cutting down my trips to restock and also knowing what to buy when I go to stock up supply goods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainMike Posted December 7, 2014 Share Posted December 7, 2014 USA Tech telemtry/CC readers and a VMS (vending mgmt software)...YOu can PM me for more info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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