How to track returnable crates and empty bottles

If you distribute soft drinks, milk, curd, water or beer, you move two things every day: the product, and the crates or bottles it comes in. The product is on every bill. The crates usually live in the salesman’s head, until the company counts what you owe them.

Shops treat a crate as packaging. You can’t afford to. If the company charges you for crates you don’t return, or holds a deposit against them, every crate sitting in a shop’s storeroom is your money. Here is how to keep track of it.

1. Treat crates like money: a balance per shop

Every shop should have a crate balance, the same way it has a money balance: crates it has received full, minus empties it has given back. If you use more than one kind (a 24-bottle crate and a 12-bottle crate, or milk trays and soft drink crates), keep a separate balance for each kind. They are not interchangeable, and the company won’t treat them as if they were.

2. Five movements, and only five

• Delivered: full crates go to a shop. The shop’s balance goes up.
• Collected: empties come back from a shop. Its balance goes down.
• Received: crates come in from the company or supplier. What you owe them goes up.
• Returned: empties go back to the company. What you owe them goes down.
• Damaged or lost: written off, against the shop if it happened there, or against you if it happened on your van or in your godown.

Anything else is a correction, such as a physical count that does not match the book. Record a correction as a correction, with a reason, not as a fake delivery or collection.

3. Count crates on the visit, not at month end

The moment to record crates is the moment they move: full crates on the bill, empties collected on the same visit. At month end nobody remembers which shop gave back six and which gave back four, and the shop will always remember the higher number.

It also changes behaviour. A shop that sees its crate count on every visit starts putting the empties out before the van arrives. When nobody mentions crates, a shop assumes nobody is counting them.

4. Check the van every evening

Crates fit into the same evening count as stock and cash: full crates loaded in the morning should equal full crates delivered, plus full crates unsold, plus any broken on the way. Empties on the van should equal the empties recorded as collected. Do it together with the stock count in how to close a van’s day, not as a separate job.

5. Keep the company’s side too

Your balance with the company is crates received minus crates returned. Compare it with their statement every month, not once a year. A difference found in the first month is a conversation; a difference found in March is a deduction from your claims.

6. Deposits: decide the rule, then ask your accountant

Some distributors take a deposit per crate from shops that hold a lot of them, and refund it when the crates come back. It works. But a deposit collected and refunded has its own accounting and GST treatment, so agree the rule with your accountant before you print it on anything.

7. Watch the top ten

Once a month, sort shops by crate balance. A handful of shops usually hold most of the missing crates. A friendly visit (“you have 40 of ours, can we pick up 20 today?”) recovers more than any new rule. Collecting crates is like collecting money: be specific about the number, and come on a regular day. The same approach is in how to collect payments from shops.

How Mulberry Sales does it

You set up your crate types and link each product to its crate. When a salesman bills whole crates, they count as delivered to that shop automatically, and he enters the empties he collects on the same bill. The printed bill and the WhatsApp bill both list the crates given, the empties taken back and the shop’s crate count after that bill, so the shop sees its number on every visit, as in step 3. Crates received from and returned to your supplier, and crates damaged or lost, are recorded from the office, and each shop’s and supplier’s balance is worked out from those movements. If a bill is reversed, its crates stop counting. One thing it does not do yet is charge a crate deposit on the bill. Returnable crates are on the Growth plan and up. See van sales software.