Couple Questions for vendors that have drivers

[spdydre]

How do you keep track of the amount of money that is being brought in?  I know that there is wireless technology that you can add to a machine to see the amount in and out but what if you do not have this technology on your machines?  Is theft from employees a big problem and what is the best way to go about this?  Last question is do you guys put your company name/logo on the trucks to get company exposure or is it better to leave it off due to theft? 

[Poplady1]

Theft is a big problem which you will need to control by building in your own audit systems.  When we started one of the systems we used was the old dollar bill check.  Each machine had its separate bag (purchased from Arizona Bags) and now Rainbow Vending in San Diego has vending bags that they sell.  It is a double zippered bag.  Top zipper for bills and the larger portion for coin. You visit the machine before your driver services it (within hours if possible or  the evening before).  You count the bills in the validator, put them back in.  When the driver delivers the bag from that machine the next day you should have more bills then you counted.  If you don't you have a problem.  If you have a problem you can contact the police and work with them to gather enough evidence to have the driver arrested or you can just fire the driver letting him/her know you had the evidence to have them arrested.

We always put our company name and contact information on all of our trucks.  It was like a moving billboard.  In 25 years we only had one truck broken into and in that one  we had a built in safe so they only got some product.  We always told our drivers if someone tried to rob them, give them the money no questions asked....give them anything they wanted as quickly as politely as they could so no one got hurt.  All of our employees wore tee shirts and tan pants or shorts with our company logo. 

On the down side our warehouse was broken into 2 to 3 times.  Each time the police felt it was an employee.  We were able to catch one employee breaking in but that one was breaking into our home coming through a bedroom window.  Doesn't that give you chills.

Blue Moose

[mission vending]

The old fashioned way was to service the location yourself for a couple of months and track what you pull and then compare to what the driver turns in once he takes over. Not very accurate, but many locations that I've had for a number of years remain surprisingly consistent unless something changes in the number of people, new restaurant next door or something like that.

All electronic machines made since at least the early 90's have some sort of non resettable meter. Subtract beginning number from ending number and compare to cash pulled. You just have to figure out how to get the meter counts.

Many older drink machines that don't have meters can be retrofitted with at least a counter to tell how many drinks have been vended.

Getting into the wireless systems requires much newer equipment, it must be DEX enabled and you are looking at a pretty substantial investment even if you have the equipment. 200-300 per machine for the hardware plus software, with a large route you get to a big number very quickly.