Success Stories
Anonymous Carwash
Full-service carwash
Using DRB Systems Products To Control Transactions Saves $1,068 Per Week In Lost Extra Service Revenues
Challenge: To control extra service sales at a busy carwash chain.
Solution: Enter all transactions into the cash register system at the point of sale.
How much money did you lose to employee theft last week? Before answering this question, consider the experience of one of our customers who owns a 4-location chain of full-service carwashes. An innovative operator, our customer has built one of the most successful chains in his market. Like many operators, he assumed that his losses from internal theft were low. But in reality, employee theft at one of his locations was costing him $1,113 in lost extra service revenues.
Fortunately, our customer’s computer system not only alerted him to this problem, it also provided him with an effective means of controlling employee theft. “An interesting thing happened after we installed our DRB Systems computer -- Our extra service revenue jumped by 89 cents per vehicle,” he told us.
Prior to installing his computer, our customer had sales employees write transactions by hand. The sales employee would write sales data on a ticket for the customer to take to the cashier and on the windshield of the vehicle itself. When the vehicle was driven up to the tunnel, the entrance employee was supposed to read the windshield, and enter this information into the button box to call up the wash and extra services the customer ordered. Meanwhile, the car’s owner would present the hand-written ticket at the sales counter, and the cashier would enter the sale into the cash register.
Unfortunately, this system did not provide a sufficient level of control over sales, because it depended on having employees enter critical information at every step of the transaction process. DRB Systems removed these opportunities for internal theft by entering sales data into the system automatically, rather than relying on the discretion of employees.
With DRB Systems, sales employees enter purchases into a pre-sell keypad. The computer then assigns a specific transaction code number to each purchase. (All of the critical information relating to a sales transaction, including any extra services purchased, is attached to this code number.) The computer produces two tickets with the transaction number at the pre-sell area.
One of these tickets is given to the car owner to take to the cashier; the other is placed on the vehicle windshield. Now, instead of entering specific information about a transaction, cashiers and tunnel entrance employees just enter transaction numbers into the cash register and button box.
Before his computer was installed, some of our customer’s service writers “sold” extra services on their own, or gave them away to friends. They did this by marking a regular wash on the vehicle ticket (the one presented to the cashier), but writing a more expensive deluxe wash on the windshield (which was programmed into the button box). This is no longer possible, since our computer will only program extra service functions that have been entered into the pre-sell keypad.
Under our customer’s old system, some tunnel entrance employees cheated the carwash out of extra service revenues by giving away polish wax and other extra services to car owners in exchange for “tips.” Tunnel entrance employees were able to do this simply by entering the extra service functions directly in the button box. Our computer has eliminated this problem, because it will only call up extra services that are attached to the transaction code number for a vehicle, leaving nothing to the discretion of entrance employees.
Our customer’s cashiers used to ring up some sales as a regular wash, even though they collected money for a deluxe wash. Cashiers were also able to enter a paid wash as a rewash, and pocket the money paid by the car owner. Now that’s no longer possible, because a cashier only enters the transaction number into the cash register, and the computer automatically rings up the sale. Incidentally, the number of “re-washes” at our customer’s chain has dropped from 95 to 6 per month, since our computer was installed.
