Cash collections, expenses and mileage

Running machines costs money that never shows up in a sales report: the cash someone has to pull and count, fuel and parts, and the miles between stops. These two pages, both under Sales & Inventory → Sales, keep track of it. They come with Inventory, and anyone who uses Inventory can log on them.

Cash

When a driver collects cash from a vending machine, they log it on Visits with the Cash collected (and, if they like, the Bills and coins they counted). Sales → Cash then checks each collection against what the sales feed says should be in the machine, one month at a time (this month to start, with arrows for earlier months). Log a collection takes you to Visits.

What's compared. SandStar's sales data doesn't say whether each sale was paid in cash or by card. So for each collection, Expected is what SandStar reported sold at that machine since its previous collection, minus what was charged to cards (Paid). Over/short is the cash counted minus that: green when there's more cash than expected, red when it's short, and even when it's within a dollar.

• By machine adds up the month's collections for each vending machine: how many, the cash collected, the sales and paid amounts they cover, what was expected and the total over or short. Not yet collected is the cash the feed says has come in since the last collection, so you know what's waiting in the machine.
• Collections lists each one with when it was, the previous collection it's measured from (Since), the cash counted and the bills and coins note, the expected amount and how it was worked out, the over/short and who logged it.

A machine's first collection only starts the clock (it shows Starts the clock), because there's no earlier count to measure from. A machine that isn't in the SandStar sales feed shows Not in the sales feed: you'll see the cash counted, but there's nothing to compare it with. On a card-only machine, Expected is the sales that weren't paid, so a shortfall there points to failed card payments rather than missing cash.

Expenses

Sales → Expenses keeps a month of route costs (this month to start, with arrows for earlier months).

To log a cost, fill in Log an expense: the Date, a Category (Fuel, Parts, Supplies, Repairs, Fees or Other), the Amount, and what it was for. Pick a Route for a cost that belongs to a whole route (like fuel for a run), a Machine for a cost that belongs to one machine (like a part for it; it counts toward that machine's route too), or neither for a cost of the whole business. Add a Note and, if you have one, a photo or PDF of the receipt under Receipt (optional), then click Log expense. Receipts are kept privately; click Receipt on an expense to see it. Remove takes an expense back.

Miles

Fill in Log miles with the Date, the Route you drove and the Miles, or leave the miles empty and enter Odometer start and Odometer end and TicketStacker works out the miles. Click Log miles.

Each mile is worth your company's Rate per mile, like the IRS standard mileage rate. Company Admins set it in the rate box at the top of the page and click Save rate. A trip keeps the rate it was logged at, so last year's trips don't change when the rate does; to reprice trips (say, the new year's rate came out after you'd started logging), tick Revalue trips from, pick the first day to reprice and save.

The tiles at the top show the month's expenses by category, the miles and what they're worth at your rate, and the total. Download CSV exports the month's expenses and trips, one row each, for your books or taxes.

Where costs show up

Expenses and miles come off machine and route profit on Analytics: see Profit after costs in Analytics across shops and machines.