Making Sense of the Numbers

Today’s laundromat owners have the ability to equip their business with intuitive machines that provide an array of useful data that can be leveraged to enhance business operations. Whether they wish to gain a better understanding of how the store is performing, want proactively identify issues with machines, view income statements, or access data regarding customers and their laundry-doing habits, laundromat owners can do so using innovative reports. Let’s dive into a few meaningful data sets that can be used to provide further insight into daily operations of laundromats.  

Data from laundry machines can be used to indicate what’s happening in the store. Continue reading below to learn about a few reports that are helpful to laundromat operators and how they can be used to enhance several facets of the business.  

• The Location and Revenue Report highlights the number of turns per day for each machine and provides a comparison of the revenue from different sizes and types of machines. So, laundromat owners can determine which machines/capacities are most profitable. This information proves useful when setting cost per load and determining which machines to invest in when remodeling or opening another store. Additionally, store operators can create marketing specials to increase the use of machines that are less popular or drive more profit. 
• The Peak Times by Hour Report can prove especially useful while crafting the employee schedule, because it provides an hour-by-hour breakdown of how busy the store is. Perhaps more importantly, it can also be used to help create marketing strategies to support the goal of increasing store traffic during slow hours.  
• The Float Status Report is useful for laundromats that offer an app payment system. When patrons upload money onto their mobile wallet and use a portion of the funds to pay for their machines, the remaining balance on the mobile wallet is referred to as the store’s float. The Float Status Report displays the total amount of float each store has and can be used to craft marketing promotions that incentivize adding money to the app payment system and increasing the store’s float.  

In addition to providing insights into revenue and the performance of the store, data from laundry machines can help identify potential issues with equipment and  help store owners be proactive with maintenance. Let’s run through a few reports that can shed light on health of machines below. 

• Machine Fill and Drain Time Reports look at the last 10 fill and drain times of each washing machine and give the average fill and drain time by machine. These reports provide a quick and easy way to compare the performance of each machine and identify if a machine is lagging because of potential issues with water intake (fill valves), drainage (drain valves)  
• The Machine Standpoint Report is incredibly useful in that it provides a slew of data about error report information, diagnostic information, cycle usage, revenue information and more. With this report, laundromat managers can easily identify issues with machines and determine whether the fix can be made in-house or if experts need to be called in.  
• Error History Report displays the machine, error type, segment, cycle and date the error took place. This report provides in-depth information about errors and helps distinguish between minor errors and widespread issues. Alerts associated with this report include: power failure alert, rotation sensor error, unbalanced error, slow drain error, fill error, heater error, door lock error, door open error, water level sensor error, access panel open error, manual programming error and more.   

There are several reports that show healthy laundromat operations, whether they illustrate how many new customers signed up for the mobile wallet or keep track of the overall performance of the store. Read through two reports that show healthy data points.  

• The New Users Report provides the full name, username, account creation date, the amount of funds added upon creation of account and the date of the first fund deposit of each customer who uses the smartphone application and mobile wallet. This is a great way to gauge the business’s growth and can be used to create marketing promotions to encourage first-time customers to return.  
• The Income Statement Report takes an estimate of the revenue generated each month by taking ongoing monthly expenses like rent, marketing fees, maintenance, parts and other utilities, and subtracting them from the amount of income generated at each location. This report proves especially useful when business owners meet with an accountant, bank or finance agency to get a loan for another store, and it also provides a nice look into business operations.  

Once laundromat operators determine which reports are most useful in their business operations, they can sign up for subscriptions to those reports. When subscribed, the individual receives a daily email that displays the respective reports, so they can start the day with a transparent look into laundromat operations. Additionally, laundromat managers can set notifications so they are alerted when potential problems or errors occur on machines.