Car wash software for bays, washers and daily takings

Cash comes in all day, from several hands

Cars arrive one at a time and pay one at a time, often in cash, often to whichever washer is free. By evening the only record of the day is a number in someone's head and whatever is in the drawer.

That makes two questions impossible to answer honestly: how many cars actually came through, and did the takings match them. A shortfall looks the same as a slow day.

Recording each wash as it's paid for closes that gap. It takes seconds, it happens at the bay, and it means the day's count and the day's cash can be compared instead of assumed.

How a bay runs it

1. Record the wash when the car paysPick the service, tag the washer, take cash or Mobile Money. No stock to draw down — this is work, not goods.
2. Price by vehicle, not by jobA saloon car and a pickup take different time and different water. Priced as one service, the bigger vehicles quietly subsidise nothing and cost you more.
3. Let one car carry several linesBody wash, engine wash and a vacuum on the same vehicle are three lines on one visit, each tagged to whoever did it.
4. Record water, power and suppliesThese are the real cost of a wash. Left out, every day looks profitable; recorded, you find out what a car actually costs you.

Your price list, ready to set

Pick "Car wash & bays" at sign-up and your service list is loaded, grouped into Wash, Detailing and Extras. Put your own prices on it and add what's missing.

Shampoo and polish come in as products because you buy and consume them — they're a cost to track, not a shelf to sell from.

A week at a four-bay wash

Twenty-two valets earned nearly as much as sixty-three engine washes. That's the kind of thing you only see once the work is recorded by type.

Washers, shifts and who brought in what

Most bays pay a share of the takings, which only works if you can say what each person actually brought in. Every wash is tagged to the washer who did it, so that figure comes out of the records rather than out of an argument.

It also answers the quieter question: whether the bay is busy because of the site or because of a particular person. Those are different businesses to run.

Staff can record washes without seeing your profit figures — the reports stay with the owner.

The two things that leak money

1. Fleet and company cars on accountA taxi company or an office bringing in ten cars a month is real revenue, but it isn't cash until they settle. Record it as credit and the balance sits under their name with a date until it clears.
2. Free and discounted washesThe manager's car, a friend, a regular who gets a fifth wash free. Each one is fine; unrecorded, they're indistinguishable from cars that paid and money that went missing.

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Questions wash bays ask