Employee Theft

[washregal]

I try to be at my wash's as often as I can be, however in my career it is tough and need to rely on others for maintanence and repair when I am out of town.

My question is this, if you suspect employees of knocking down on you, what is the best possible solution to find or catch them. Can the numbers on the change bin be reset, meaning when a customer puts money into validators can these numbers be voided by a mechanic that knows what he or she is doing easily?

Has anyone had these experiences and if so, what can be done to catch the culprits.

 

[UGA]

I have been concerned about employee theft in the past. There are several ways to check on or catch them. First, keep an exact count of your money. My bill validator's main count can only be reset by the factory. I don't know about yours, but if it is relatively new it should not be possible to fake. If you post what type of validator and changer you have we might be able to help. Also, you need to account for all of the coins that are going through your wash. My bays have timers that accumulate a count for every coin deposited. At the end of each day/week I add up the timers, empty all of the vaults and my numbers should be similar. For equipment that does not have digital timers I am the only one with a key to the vault.
The other way you can check on your employees is with a camera. Several camera sites sell pocket sized DVR cams that are the size of a pack of cigarettes and can film and record for a while. You could set one up in the equipment room and when motion is detected it will automatically turn on. At the end of the day/week just go pick it up and plug it into your tv and see what was happening. I think the cameras range from $150-$400 based on the storage space you are looking for. Several Forum sponsors have this product.

My personal opinion is that the best way to prevent employee theft is to let them know you are accounting for all of the money and you will notice anything missing. I started leaving my clipboard that accounted for all of my money on a table in the equipment so that my employee would see that every dollar and every quarter was being noticed. It only takes about 2-3 minutes a visit to write down the information necessary to account for everything.
Good luck

 

[pitzerwm]

I found that if you give them the opportunity then even the pope will steal. Do what UGA says, install counters if they aren't already, install cameras, lock up the DVR, do you own collecting. Nothing stops a dishonest person, but these other measures will "help" a honest person. Also, it doesn't take a heartbeat for an employee to feel that you "owe" them something, and their idea of compensation isn't anywhere near yours.

 

[galen]

If you have cash that the employee has access to then they can and will steal. Cameras will not lie. You can also use the remote viewing for other managing jobs. A small cam pointed at the rear of the changer is worth its cost. A camera pointed at the outside vault, or an inbay camera is pricless in value.

 

[Kevin Reilly]

Galen,
I have dual accountability in the bays. digital resets on the timers and non-resets that only count when a coin is dropped. We have push buttons in the bays so they can be washed without dropping money. When the employee washes a bay it will count on the electronic and not the non-reset counter. If that gets out of whack we have a key switch that will shut the push button down and the area that the timers and counters are in have a padlock on it so they can't get into it.

We inventory our changer(s) every time we empty out Our combo/vacs and vending have counters so when we empty out we have good accountability on everything that we take in.

We leave NOTHING to guess work. We also have mini-cams in all our changers and one vendor next to the changer.

It's probably not perfect but I don't have any trouble sleeping.

 

[Whale of a Wash]

I lost a friend i had for 15 years, he helped at the wash, and helped himself, replacing quarters with tokens, a dollar here and there, about $15 a day.also Making change with customers, in exchange with tokens. Quick story: an owner had someone in town check on his bartenders, The one he thought was stealing was ok, a 15 year employee got caught, Before he called authorities, he gave her a chance for restitution, she immediately gave him her new t-bird conv., and the deed to her lake home. Not what he expected! The world is full of silent partners
john

 

[pitzerwm]

Its almost always the one you trust the most. Even family.

 

[Earl Weiss]

You can also "Salt" the changers. If you suspect missing bills, leave some in there where you make some inconspicuos marks and make sure they are there when you next empty them.

You can also use a permanent marker to mark some quarter for thesame purpose.

If your schedule is predictible and there is access to conections, both electrical and mechanical connections can be disconnected / reconnected.

Does your schedule, budget and facility allow you to have sufficient changer capacity so that you have sole access?

 

[bigleo48]

I make it simple...I do not let employees have access to cash except for their own float. So they have access to the vacs, but not the coin box. Change machine, vac-it-up vaults, etc they do not have access to. They don't have access to tokens except for a set amount of painted ones for testing. They use a certain amount for that and any more needs to be documented. When I count them at the end of the week, they need to add up.

I have video everywhere, including in the equipment room. I keep close count on inventory.

So I beleive this also sends a message that we are keeping tabs on what's going on. To my knowledge we have not been stolen from yet...but I'm sure there will come a day.

Big Leo

 

[Chuck Ivey]

A friend had several c-stores. Every morning he would go in and count the cigarettes. One day his partner asked why do you do that and never write the totals down. He told the partner he had no idea how many cigarettes he had but the employees didn't know that. He was just making the troops think he was on top of things.
Did it work? Who knows?????????

 

[Earl Weiss]

Know a guy who let the employee access the coin acceptors (to fix kams etc.) but not the vaults. One day he changes his routine accesses the vaults and feels what seems like a cows udder hanging into it. Seems the employee put condemsunder the acceptor hanging dwn the tube into the vault. It would catch the quarters and he would remove them. He was careful to milk each bay a little to go undetected.

 

[MEP001]

I've posted this pic before:

The owner's employee was flipping the funnel over in a different coin box every day. He also had a routine, and the employee knew he'd never get caught as long as he didn't leave one flipped over on "pull days." This is another reason not to have a strict routine.

 

[JJJakubowski]

I'd like to crank up this thread again ... even tho' it piggybacks and dovetails on the more recent "Taking Cash" thread.

I had a multi wash absentee operator contact me with a tale of woe. He discovered that the proverbial "trusted family member" he had hired as manager for all his washes had been skimming cash. Actually, it was more like "shoveling" cash ? jaw dropping, mind blowing loads of $$$!!! Right after firing the thief in the family, the owner was determined to find a way to keep his cash secure ... other than by dumping all his vaults and boxes himself all the time.

The question is ? don't cash/service computerized tracking systems allow an owner to very precisely monitor cash flow ... and, thereby, allow for cash collection by a manager? There are "off-the-shelf" systems for carwashes such as AccuTrac and GinSan's DATAMate which was (I think) the first system designed to track every single pulse/coin and service used in a self serve wash ... remotely and pretty much in real time. *

Tom Hoffman Jr., the PLC Master, has (of course) built/programmed his own very slick PLC based system that tracks his SS washes services ? pulse by pulse, coin by coin, dollar by dollar, minute by minute while allowing/tracking bay wash down time and other neat tricks.

So every week, using one system or another, you balance the cash deposits made by your manager against the counts on your computer. And so I ask ?

1) Where is the weak link (if any) in such having such a computerized watch dog on your cash flow?

2) What has been the experience of those with "off the shelf" programs/systems?

3) And, have other operators programmed their own PLCs to do such a task ... and how challenging is that?

JJJ/SSCWN

__________________________
The poster formerly known

 

[pitzerwm]

I made my own and I was the only one collecting. Most owners just trust their people, get sloppy, "making crooks" out of usually honest people. Personally, I handle the cash, but if you put a little time and thought into it, you can build a system that is not perfect, but pretty good.

 

[Sequoia]

Theft

No owner is immune to employee theft, regardless of systems in place. The best you can do is hire good people, take care of them properly and fairly, and put good accounting systems in place. But it will never be foolproof.

If they can access the wiring, employees can disconnect non-resettable counters without disabling the bay functions. They can tell customers that a particular coin acceptor is eating coins, and to pay them directly instead and they will manually turn the bay on just like they do when they are washing it down.

And unless you've got many more and much better cameras than me (I have 11 for a single 3-bay SS), employees could easily pocket a few coins or bills here and there or even substitute one's for five's that come out of a changer and the cameras would never catch it.

The owner with a perfect solution for the money is still vulnerable to the employee who would steal spare parts and sell them on the side. It's one of the ugly sides of life.

My solution? I don't let others handle the money. To allow me more freedom between visits to collect the money, I changed (long ago) to dispense $1 tokens plus added more changers to split the load and bills. And, last summer I added a credit-card-to-token sales machine. Selling on credit is the holy grail to this whole issue, albeit this is a "cash" business.

Nobody touches the money except for me, although that does pin me down to collect somewhat frequently during busy periods. If I had a larger operation I couldn't do that, of course.

 

[washregal]

I have been concerned about employee theft in the past. There are several ways to check on or catch them. First, keep an exact count of your money. My bill validator's main count can only be reset by the factory. I don't know about yours, but if it is relatively new it should not be possible to fake. If you post what type of validator and changer you have we might be able to help. Also, you need to account for all of the coins that are going through your wash. My bays have timers that accumulate a count for every coin deposited. At the end of each day/week I add up the timers, empty all of the vaults and my numbers should be similar. For equipment that does not have digital timers I am the only one with a key to the vault.
The other way you can check on your employees is with a camera. Several camera sites sell pocket sized DVR cams that are the size of a pack of cigarettes and can film and record for a while. You could set one up in the equipment room and when motion is detected it will automatically turn on. At the end of the day/week just go pick it up and plug it into your tv and see what was happening. I think the cameras range from $150-$400 based on the storage space you are looking for. Several Forum sponsors have this product.

My personal opinion is that the best way to prevent employee theft is to let them know you are accounting for all of the money and you will notice anything missing. I started leaving my clipboard that accounted for all of my money on a table in the equipment so that my employee would see that every dollar and every quarter was being noticed. It only takes about 2-3 minutes a visit to write down the information necessary to account for everything.
Good luck

I am using Mars Validators and hamilton changers with an odometer type of counter.

 

[thoffmanjr]

I’m building the owner JJJ mentioned a system that:

• Receives every pulse from every coin acceptor, counts it, and sends it back to the timer.
• Wash down feature that forces the attendant to punch in their code and use a garage door opener to turn on the bay they wish to wash down. Only high pressure rinse, and the PLC limits the time and records who, when, and which bay.
• Monitors the bill changer level.
• Accounting for the bays and vacuums by day and month this year and last year and by batch. The batch resets when the money is collected. Again, you enter the code on the touch screen and collect your money.
• All functions and reports remotely available via the internet without a PC on site.
• PLC hardware available world wide.
• He will know when the last coin was deposited at each device which should prevent wire tampering.

 

[JIMT]

Tom,
That system sounds fantastic, maybe you should build systems and sell them.
JimT

 

[pitzerwm]

He does, when he get's his $h... together and completes him baner on the BillBoard, you could find, him. BTW Tom, I now have an off shore web design company, that can make the banners and your new site.

 

[Bubbles Galore]

This is a very interesting thread. I don't currently have any employees, and the above mentioned reasons is why I am hesitant to get one. I was thinking that a high school kid might be a good employee to have clean up the garbage, sweep the lot, spray down bays etc. I enjoy the maintinance side of things, but it would be nice to have someone pick the place up for you. Just wondering if anyone has a high school kid helping them out or what?