Product catalog
Product name, SKU or UPC, supplier, units per case, unit cost, vend price, and shelf life.
Operations guide · 8 minute read
Track vending inventory and profit without counting the same money twice.
Good records connect a supplier case to individual units, each unit to a machine, and each sale to the costs required to make it. That is how an operator learns which locations and products are actually profitable.
The five records to maintain
Purchases
Receipt, supplier, cases purchased, individual units, taxes, discounts, total paid, and receiving date.
Inventory locations
Warehouse or vehicle stock, machine stock, slot, par level, and every transfer between them.
Sales
Machine, location, date, product when available, quantity, cash, coin, card gross sales, fees, and refunds.
Operating costs
Host commission, mileage, labor, repairs, card fees, insurance, spoilage, theft, licenses, and supplies.
Cases and individual units
Receive purchases in the package you buy, then convert them to the unit you sell. If a case costs $18 and contains 24 drinks, the starting unit cost is $0.75 before allocated tax, shipping, or discount adjustments. Keep both the case quantity and unit conversion so purchasing remains simple while machine counts stay accurate.
Revenue is not the cash bag
Record sales when they occur or when your processor reports them. When cash is removed from a machine, move it from cash-in-machine to cash-on-hand; do not record the same sale again. Reconcile card gross sales, fees, and net deposits separately so processor fees do not disappear.
A useful machine profit view
Gross sales
− refunds and discounts
− product cost (COGS)
− card processing fees
− host commission or rent
− route labor and mileage
− repairs, waste, and other allocated costs
= estimated machine operating profit
When a spreadsheet stops being enough
A spreadsheet can serve a careful one-machine operator. Consider a connected system when purchases are entered more than once, stock transfers are unclear, multiple people service machines, customer issues get lost, cash custody is hard to trace, or you cannot answer which machine made money last month.