Need help with Utility $ Averages and Breakdowns

[Adamski]

Originally Posted by epic02

Sounds like you have a silent partner. I would take measures right away. Do any of your attendants have the keys to your coin boxes? Do you have surveillance system? This what you could do paint a few quarters on one side and put them in a few different coin boxes. And when you do your collections make sure there all accounted for. I would put a few each in each box If it's an attendant opening your coin boxes he's not going to empty it out completely cause it will cause suspicion. If there not opening coin boxes, another thing they can be doing is opening and starting machines for a customer at a discounted price. Signs of this happening could be a customer always asking for a certain attendant. And when there not there, you see them drive off with a car full of laundry. This was happening to one of my competitors, he since went out of business. I found this out because someone I know went to do laundry at his place. The attendant approached him, and said he would start all his washers if he paid him $5.00

Kenny,

I agree with everything above except the marked quarters must be marked in a less noticable way such as placing a scratch under the word "Liberty". A silent partner will be wise enough to put any "1 side painted" quarters back into the coinbox.

[CanCanCase]

I've re-read this thread several times now, and thought about it almost nonstop yesterday while I was on the road.

@ Scott & Virginia- how long has this problem been going on? What was your utility to gross % on the first day/week/month you owned your store? How does that compare to now? Is this possibly a seasonal cycle, or did the problem just begin at the same time as a new employee, promotion of an employee or some other employee-related event? What period of time is your average taken over?

I do agree with all the "silent partner" ideas above. That would be the first thing I would want to check up on and make sure everything related to money is locked down and 100% under your exclusive control. But then what? Assuming humanity is good, and you can account for every single dime/quarter/dollar-coin/bill collected, you need to take a long hard look at your vend pricing. Are you getting higher volumes of business because you're the cheapest in town? Are you SURE all dryers are giving time according to how you THINK they're programmed? (Check them with a stopwatch and IR temperature gauge.)

I know we're all likely to jump to a conclusion that there's a snake in the grass somewhere, as would I because it is the most likely. Just be sure that you're looking at ALL other aspects of your operation too... low vend prices will cause the same symptom you've described.

-Case

[mjwalsh]

Originally Posted by Adamski

Kenny,

I agree with everything above except the marked quarters must be marked in a less noticable way such as placing a scratch under the word "Liberty". A silent partner will be wise enough to put any "1 side painted" quarters back into the coinbox.

Fellow Sleuths,

As part of thinking more long term, I see value in manufacturers including a simple way to verify coin counts as part of their microprocessor capability. It would allow the operator to reset the short term count for the coins but leave the long term counts for coins similar to an odometer on a motor vehicle. The long term count would be unresettable preventing the thief from completely bypassing the system. It could also assist in coin counts for coin hopper fills & the coin portion of bank deposits.

The plan for our Wasco Gen4 upgrade includes that. We are not there yet ... but if humble us are successful with it ... that is another item that the mainstream manufacturers really don't have a valid excuse for ignoring.

mike

[Adamski]

Mike,

The audit features on newer equipment is becoming better all the time. (My newer washers offer audits for each cycle, each cycle upgrade (Additional Wash/Additional Rinse) and total dollars. These are resettable counts as well.

The OP did not indicate the equipment was late-model, however; so the coin-marking trick seemed to be a good option to offer.

[Scott2Virginia]

Thank you to so many for taking the time to respond. We do have a 16 camera surveillance system that can be viewed remotely. Re: the silent partner, our attendants do not have keys to the machines. We changed the locks on half of our equipment about 6 months ago to make sure somehow someone wasn't getting into them, and there has not been a change in our numbers. We did some comparison of the water usage versus the income of thewashers and that appears to be in line. Our prices were increased in January to 2.50, 4.50 and 6.50 for our 18 lb, 40 lb and 55 lb machines with an addition .25 charge for warm/hot water. Our Dryers are still at the same price, .25 for 8 min on our 30 lb dryers, .25 for 6 min on our 45 lb and .75 for 12 min on our 75 lb dryer. With that said, what we are really searching for are the rates that our fellow CLA members pay for their water, electric and propane. Thank you to those that already provided it, we are hoping to get a bit of a larger sample. As far as the electric, we are wondering what people are paying when they take their total bill divided by the kilowatt hours (so the generation part of the bill plus the distribution fees to get the total bill). So in our case, say in January we used 6727 kilowatts Divided by $848.18 we paid .1260 per kilowatt. For our water we are actually averaging about .0168 a gallon. So how about you guys??

[Adamski]

Scott,

I'm paying .146 for single phase power and .186 for my three phase power.