The price ending is the whole story
On the default list every price is over a dollar, so switch the acceptor to ones and the machine hands back nothing at all: a one does not buy any of it, the quarter tube never moves, and the page says so. Put a five in instead and every line takes it. A $1.25 candy bar returns $3.75, which is fifteen quarters; a $1.50 water returns fourteen; a $3.00 energy drink returns eight. Across a week that is 263.5 quarters out against 135.6 back in from coin-paying customers, a net drain of 128 a week.
A tube loaded to 112 quarters survives that for 6.1 days. The route is on fourteen. The changer is empty for more than half of every cycle, and it has been for as long as the prices have been where they are.
Which note goes in is the single largest input on the form and it is not one you control. It shifts when a location changes its shift pattern, and it shifts when the nearest cash machine starts dispensing fives.
A tube is capital in a box in a building
A hundred and twelve quarters, seventy-two dimes and seventy-two nickels is $38.80 sitting in one machine. Across eighteen machines that is $698.40 that you own, cannot spend, and count every fortnight. Nobody puts it on a spreadsheet because it never appears as a cost — it was bought once, years ago, in ones and fives, and it has been sitting in the field ever since.
The price-ending table is worth reading next to that. On this list with a five in the acceptor, moving every price to a round dollar takes the quarter draw up by 20.7 a week; moving every one to end in three quarters takes it down by 43.8, from 263.5 to 219.7. The direction is the opposite of the intuition people carry over from dollar acceptors, where a round-dollar price gives no change at all. Which way it runs depends entirely on the note going in, which is why the table is computed rather than stated.
Two things follow. Growing a route means buying float as well as machines, and it is a real if small line in what a placement costs. And running the tubes leaner is a genuine trade with a visible price: less capital in the field, more exact-change lights, and a machine showing an exact-change light is refusing the note customers who would have refilled it.
Counting is the cost nobody prices
Nine minutes a machine across eighteen machines is 2.7 hours a collection, $70.20 at $26 an hour, and twenty-six collections a year makes $1,830. Against the cash the route handles that is 2.58 percent. That is handling only — not the drive, not the bank run, not the time spent chasing a $4 discrepancy because a count has to reconcile whether or not the amount matters. A small percentage is the usual reason it survives unexamined, and it is also entirely proportional to the number of collections rather than to the money in them.
Cash is one of two collection constraints and usually not the tighter one. What the stock does between visits — which column empties first and how much capacity sits idle meanwhile — is in the par level and restock interval calculator. The cost of the payments that do not touch the tubes is in the cashless fee per vend calculator.
What the model gets wrong, and in which direction
Coins out is exact: change from a note has one smallest-coin decomposition and the machine gives it every time. Coins in is a guess — it assumes a coin-paying customer produces the price in the fewest coins, which flatters the tubes, because in practice people pay with what they have rather than with what is optimal.
The bigger gap is smoothness. The page drains a tube at an even weekly rate and real tubes do not drain evenly. A busy Monday of note-payers can take a tube below the point where it can make change, and from that moment the machine stops accepting the notes that would have refilled it. So the interval this page prints is a ceiling and not a target, and the sensible operating interval sits some way under it.
Questions people ask
Why does my vending changer keep running out of quarters?
Because the prices are asking for them and the customers are not putting them back. A note fed against any price whose cents do not land on a dollar produces change, and change comes out of the tube in the largest coins that fit. Only coin-paying customers refill it. On the default list, two selections account for more than half the draw. Work the two flows out from your own price list and weekly units and the answer is usually one or two lines doing most of the damage.
How much money is tied up in vending coin floats?
More than most operators have counted. A float of 112 quarters, 72 dimes and 72 nickels is $38.80 in one machine, so eighteen machines hold $698.40. It is capital rather than expense, it never appears on a profit and loss, and it grows with every placement. The only ways it shrinks are pulling machines or loading the tubes thinner and living with more exact-change lights.
Do round-dollar vend prices reduce coin handling?
On a one, they eliminate change entirely for that selection, so the tube gets nothing but deposits. On a five, a round-dollar price is the worst ending for the quarter tube rather than the best, because four whole dollars of change comes back in quarters. The page runs your own list under six different cent endings at your own note denomination so you can see which way it actually runs. It is a real effect and it is nowhere near the most important thing about a price, which is what the location will bear.
How often does a machine need collecting for the change to hold?
Divide what you load into the tube by the net daily drain and you get a ceiling, and then run well under it. The reason to leave margin is that the drain is lumpy: a run of note-paying customers takes a tube down fast, and once the changer cannot make change it refuses the note sales that would have brought coins back, so the situation does not self-correct while you wait.