This machine type is usually used for (hot vending) coffee machines, but it can also fit all machines that you fill with ingredients; the machine mixes them and vends to customers the composite finished product (drink).
In VendSoft, this applies to Coffee and Snack/Coffee machines.
For the Coffee machine type, you have to specify the ingredients that you provide, as well as the finished products that are actually offered to the customers.
The system tracks separately:
The inventory for the Ingredients (like Powder Chocolate).
The sales for Hot Drinks (like Cappuccino).
Ingredients
As they are not countable products, and in most cases, you buy them in bulk, it is up to you to select the Unit of measure you want to use to track quantities: in full bags, kg, pounds, ounces, etc.
You will use this Unit of measure on every step of tracking quantity: when creating the product in Inventory and setting up Units per Case and the initial inventory, when defining machine configuration and Max Capacity, and so on. See the recommendations for managing bulk inventory.
The same rules for Bulk products also apply to Ingredients: The filled quantity is assumed to be sold immediately and will be shown as sold in the reports.
The system tracks Filled Quantity data (entered in Trips > Enter Trip Results screen). The system does not track the inventory of Ingredient products inside the machines, only in the warehouse.
Product (Required): select an ingredient product from the dropdown. The field is searchable, and you can search product by typing its code or name.
Canister (Required): enter the canister code to differentiate canisters. By default, the system will generate sequential numbering for you.
Max Capacity (Required): what quantity can the canister maximum be filled with. For example, if you buy sugar in packs of 1 kg, you can specify that the canister will be filled with a maximum of three items, i.e., 3 kg. Leave it 0 if you don’t want to set a limit.
You notice that the system does not offer you to enter Vend Price. This is because the ingredient itself will not be sold to the customer.
Hot Drinks
Finished products in Coffee machines are defined in the section Hot Drinks of the Planogram.
To set up Finished products in machine configuration, first, you must create a record for each of them on the Inventory screen.
The system will track warehouse inventory only for Ingredients, while for Finished products, you can track the sales/income.
The column Last Meter in the Hot Drinks table shows the value of the Last Meter Reading of the last posted Trip for this machine.
On the Enter Trip Results screen, data for drinks is entered again on a separate tab, Hot Drinks. Here you can enter the value of the New Meter Reading for each Hot Drink product, and the system calculates the value for the Sold field as the difference between New Meter Reading and Old Meter Reading.
The value of the Old Meter Reading field is the value of the New Meter Reading of the previous posted Trip for this machine.
If this is the first trip for the machine, the field Old Meter Reading will be empty, so the value for the field Sold will not be calculated automatically. You can enter it manually if you have this information. Also, you can always modify Sold field and enter a value different from the calculated.
Field Amount Expected is calculated based on the value in the field Sold, as a sum of Sold * Vend Price for all selections.
Product (Required): select a product from the dropdown. The field is searchable, and you can search product by typing its code or name.
Selection (Required): enter the selection code. Usually alphanumeric, for example, [A1, A2], [10, 12, 14]. By default, the system will generate sequential numbering for you (1, 2, 3).
Vend Price (Optional): the selling price of the product. You can define different prices for the same product in different machines.