Hometown Vending decided to upgrade operations by implementing a VMS vending route software system in early 2014. Using a vending management software system helps vending companies run day-to-day operations both in the office and at customer locations. Hometown Vending decided to take the leap and invest in a system that helps with scheduling, customer commissions, cash management, schedules and more. In our opinion, it would be really difficult to compete in 2017 without such a system to help keep things organized and running efficiently. We invested in Stream VMS and feel that the system is both easy and robust.
In the past, all customer commissions were dependent on drivers pulling the internal cash meters from each machine during service and then bringing back to the office so that we could manually enter into an Excel spreadsheet. This was incredibly tedious and time consuming… not to mention difficult to insure accuracy. Balancing the books and customer commissions took hours and hours each month. With Stream VMS software, all cash meters are automatically entered into the cloud during each service. Furthermore, all commissions are automatically calculated and our customers have their own login credentials so that they can view sales, current and past commission reports, etc. We feel that this creates a valuable level of trust with our customers.
Scheduling was another challenge for vending operators in the old days. Managers would have to layout schedules on paper and make sure drivers had a copy. Stops and machines would often get skipped due to communication errors, etc. Our vending management software automatically schedules and organizes routes. Our customers all seem really happy with the fact that we never overlook restocking their machines. Stream vending route software makes it really easy to schedule the really slow accounts that may require service once every two or three weeks. The system remembers the date of the last service and makes sure to show up in the drivers Stream iPhone app every two or three weeks, etc. No more overlooked slow stops!!
Stream vending route software also keeps track of all our cash management and tells us exactly how much we should expect back from the drivers each day by machine, location, etc. I am almost certain that most vending operators have experienced a driver stealing some cash at some point and this is precisely why we are really happy to have implemented a software system to run our business.
In conclusion, we couldn’t imagine running our business the old fashion way… spreadsheets, driver theft, inconsistent commission reports, etc. We made the jump in early 2014 and have been really satisfied with the results of using vending machine route software. We are the leading vending machine company in Montgomery County Texas and feel that having Stream VMS run our backend management has been crucial to our success.