van inventory shrinkage

[PetrosA]

It is called accountability. Charging for the missing part is enforcing that accountability. An employee who feels he has no responsibility for 6 grand in parts in his van is not an employee I would want. an employee who balks at being held accountable for that material is definatly not an employee I would want.
in the words of Ronald Regan trust but verify.

If you can prove that there is $6,000 in parts missing from the service van and you can show that they were not installed, then you need to get a lawyer and find out what your best options are. I would still say the burden of proof is on you to show that those materials should, in fact, still be on the truck. That would mean going back over however many months of invoicing and proving that materials were purchased that should already have been on the truck and both are now gone. It ain't gonna be easy, but $6k is a lot of materials on a service truck.

Edit: I think I may have misread the quoted post. If there aren't actually $6k in materials missing from your truck, ignore my post.

 

[__dan]

It is called accountability. Charging for the missing part is enforcing that accountability. An employee who feels he has no responsibility for 6 grand in parts in his van is not an employee I would want. an employee who balks at being held accountable for that material is definatly not an employee I would want.
in the words of Ronald Regan trust but verify.

Accountability is a buzzword. What you can actually enforce is a contract. If the employee received the item himself, you have a sales contract. If the employee happened to be on the same job when someone else walked off with a case of (your) Lutron dimmers, you have a job site theft which is an insurable loss. To make an enforceable claim for payment, you need to show that you have that insurance coverage and paid the premium.

If you want to bill the employee for theft loss, you would have to be able to prove the employee stole them, probably in small claims court to recover with a judge's order. If you simply want to intimidate the employee with termination threats for theft losses he was nearby, there are probably legal protections for the employee's job in the law, like an EEOC complaint, and recourse or counterclaim like US 18-241.

Essentially, I would view it as creating strife where none existed previously.

Maybe you can clarify, are you losing 59 cent duplex outlets and too many red wirenuts or do you think you are losing service changes billed to you at the supply house, panelboards, meter sockets, and SE cuts? A guy who is stealing or conning you, you already have recourse in the law. An honest employee working in an environment where statistically, theft does occur, is not the person responsible for the environment and conditions of his employment made and established by others. Actually, under the law, it may be the homeowner's or property owner's insurance where you can make an insured claim for theft. Legally maybe, but causing strife with the customers that way would be inadvisable, just as it would with a known honest employee.

Actually I heard of a job I lost the bid on, to change all the ballasts in a big governments building. The other bidder claimed they dropped two pallets of ballasts outside the loading dock on a Friday, where they got stolen. They claimed the theft loss against the property owner, the state agency.

You need a system where you can bill theft to the person who actually took it or to your insurer.

 

[mivey]

Perhaps not - but when you attempt to gig me for a missing part, you are accusing me of stealing it. If assumption was that the part was billed for (but the paperwork missed) then there would be no reason to charge a second time for the missing part. Charging for the missing part is essentially an accusation of theft.

That's about as reasonable a conclusion as you can get. Punishing for bad paperwork does not mean I'm going to charge you for something I've already sold to a customer.

 

[mivey]

It is called accountability. Charging for the missing part is enforcing that accountability. An employee who feels he has no responsibility for 6 grand in parts in his van is not an employee I would want. an employee who balks at being held accountable for that material is definatly not an employee I would want.
in the words of Ronald Regan trust but verify.

Charge them for 6 grand in parts and I think the employment issue will take care of itself.

 

[mivey]

If you can prove that there is $6,000 in parts missing from the service van and you can show that they were not installed

I think that is the key. If $6k in parts are missing that were not installed then it is an ex-employee legal issue, not a employee punishment issue.

 

[cowboyjwc]

I'm kind of having trouble with the $6K part too. I could see if the guy can't remember if he used 4 or 6 wire nuts and he may have dropped 2 that he didn't count. A plate may have snapped or a switch was bad and he forgot to put those on a "lose report". But $6K is a small house.

 

[ceknight]

I'm kind of having trouble with the $6K part too...

He's talking about the entire van inventory being $6K, not the loss.

 

[gadfly56]

He's talking about the entire van inventory being $6K, not the loss.

My take on that too.

 

[cowboyjwc]

He's talking about the entire van inventory being $6K, not the loss.

Aww, well then how much lose are we talking about?

 

[mivey]

Aww, well then how much loss are we talking about?

I hope it is a lot. Otherwise what an ordeal, for lack of a better word.

 

[gadfly56]

Measure It, Fix It

Measure It, Fix It

Well now that we've wandered in and out of accountability land, let's find out what's what. How do you know you are, in fact, loosing truck stock? You hire a new guy, give him a truck, and what? Do you start with a stem to stern inventory? Every wire nut? Every strap and receptacle plate? If you don't, you've already screwed the pooch. In engineering we do mass balances; In-Out=Delta. If you don't track what goes on the truck in pull sheets and off the truck in job tickets there's no way you can even think of shaking down your employees for shortages. Some things you don't want to track. Wire nuts. That's spending dollars to chase pennies. Less than pennies. Every once in a while my techs will charge a box or three of 100 to a job. That's why all my jobs have a material line item call "Stuff". No kidding, that's what is says on the spread sheet. Now a fire alarm panel is another matter. Depending on the make/model, you can drop $1,000 on a Silent Knight panel, just cost. That we pay attention to. There's a pull sheet. And the tech pays attention also. Last thing he needs is to be 2 hours away from the shop and short one duct detector.

What do you do if a tech is used as a materialman? Load a couple skids of whatever on the truck, deliver to job site. Three weeks later the foreman says you're short x units and you know you ordered 10% over. Is that the tech's fault? Maybe. Did anyone do an on/off count? Bottom line, if you can't measure it accurately, it's meaningless. And if it's meaningless, don't threaten people's paychecks over it. So whatever system you put in place better be accurate.

 

[Fulthrotl]

I hope it is a lot. Otherwise what an ordeal, for lack of a better word.

+1 on that.

i've got a job with a bunch of pvc on it.... i took off and ordered from autocad
drawings, so i figure it's pretty close.

5" and 4" were within a stick or two.

3", the size that works for so many things like back yard drains, etc.
was 300' short on 6,000'.

coulda been a mistake, coulda been theft. unless i have a photo of
someone driving off with it sticking out the back of the truck, i'm keeping
my mouth shut, and ordering 300' of pipe, which went in promptly, before
it could shrink.

what's 300' of 3" pvc pipe cost? dunno. don't care.
job needs to get done. life goes on.

and if someone wanted to micromanage me at a locknut level, my
first thought is that either they are pathologically cheap, or they are
dishonest, and figure everyone else is, too.

that means you are either mentally impaired, or dishonest.
i'll let my replacement deal with this.....

mail the check, please.

 

[Rewire]

Well now that we've wandered in and out of accountability land, let's find out what's what. How do you know you are, in fact, loosing truck stock? You hire a new guy, give him a truck, and what? Do you start with a stem to stern inventory? Every wire nut? Every strap and receptacle plate? If you don't, you've already screwed the pooch. In engineering we do mass balances; In-Out=Delta. If you don't track what goes on the truck in pull sheets and off the truck in job tickets there's no way you can even think of shaking down your employees for shortages. Some things you don't want to track. Wire nuts. That's spending dollars to chase pennies. Less than pennies. Every once in a while my techs will charge a box or three of 100 to a job. That's why all my jobs have a material line item call "Stuff". No kidding, that's what is says on the spread sheet. Now a fire alarm panel is another matter. Depending on the make/model, you can drop $1,000 on a Silent Knight panel, just cost. That we pay attention to. There's a pull sheet. And the tech pays attention also. Last thing he needs is to be 2 hours away from the shop and short one duct detector.

What do you do if a tech is used as a materialman? Load a couple skids of whatever on the truck, deliver to job site. Three weeks later the foreman says you're short x units and you know you ordered 10% over. Is that the tech's fault? Maybe. Did anyone do an on/off count? Bottom line, if you can't measure it accurately, it's meaningless. And if it's meaningless, don't threaten people's paychecks over it. So whatever system you put in place better be accurate.

Our software incorporates inventory tracking if I am looking for a blue magic marker the software will tell me which van it is on. Our inventory loss is minimal but it is enough to warrant taking steps to keep it in check. Every dime lost comes right off our bottom line and when we recover that dime it goes straight to our bottom line. A bucket of wirenuts cost about 60 dollars with six vans that is 360.00 replenish four times and you are at 1440.00. So yes we track wirenuts.

 

[fmtjfw]

Van shrinkage

Van shrinkage

We had the ability to request PO numbers and spend $1000's per day. We spend about $100,000 to $150,000 per year between two of us. We usually assigned the purchase to the biggest job we were working on. Jelly beans -- wirenuts, boxes, switches, outlets, just fell into the mix. A fire alarm panel, panelboards, and big items we usually properly assigned, but if we needed 10 alarm pull stations we would often order a carton and drop the whole carton price on the first place used. I never counted wirenuts.

If we were doing a job that was going to be charged to an entity other than "maintenance" like a repair after a coach went berserk and broke things, and his budget was going to get to pay, we'd keep better track, but the labor was always 1-?.

This was for a county school system with 20 campuses.

I remember dropping a 4 bulb fl. fixture from the top of a ladder after I sneezed from the dust on it, maybe on the second week of the job. It made a heck of a mess. I called and my boss laughed, said, clean it up and buy a new one.

Most of the van shrinkage we experienced was when we parked the van at the shop for a few days, or the bloody thing broke down and it was put in the "deadline" waiting for the mechanics to get to it. I lost a pair of step potential booties on the deadline. Never could figure why some one would steal them, pretty clunky for overshoes.

I first computer company I worked for had a financial weanie send out a memo that we were going to be held personally responsible for company issued equipment, terminals, keyboards ... I told him I wanted a signed inventory, a lockable door, and an office rather than a cube, else he could figure out what to do with his memo. That issue went away (and unfortunately, I didn't get an office instead of a cube).

 

[__dan]

You can see how the working mechanics feel about it.

A guy may work for you thinking there's some upside, pay increase in the future for sacrifice made today. But if accidentally walking out with a pocket full of wirenuts and black tape is too much for you, I would guess an extra dollar an hour pay would be a hanging offense.

There are pro con men who will do their service changes with your truck and materials. They may be the easiest to train to repeatedly sell your $2.50 circuit breakers to the customer for $300 each, if they need them or not. Most guys are not that ambitious and just lazy kleptos who will take hand fulls of drill bits, sawzall blades, an occasional TE 72, home that they will never use. Their estate will sell them at a yard sale.

For psycho kleptos and con men you have a legitimate concern about who to fire. For the guys you want to keep, I would think the focus would be on how to keep them selling those $2.50 circuit breakers for $300 even if they consistently lose one out of every box of ten to the river.

 

[gadfly56]

Our software incorporates inventory tracking if I am looking for a blue magic marker the software will tell me which van it is on. Our inventory loss is minimal but it is enough to warrant taking steps to keep it in check. Every dime lost comes right off our bottom line and when we recover that dime it goes straight to our bottom line. A bucket of wirenuts cost about 60 dollars with six vans that is 360.00 replenish four times and you are at 1440.00. So yes we track wirenuts.

So you track how many wire nuts are used on every job ticket? If so, you may have redefined "OCD". I don't know what your bill rate is, but $1,440 is about 10 engineering manhours for us. What do you think your "waste" or "shrinkage" in wire nuts is? 10%? 20%? The value would be $140 - $280 per year. Even an inventory clerk with a bill rate of $40/hour can't spend more than 3-6 hours per year looking for wire nuts without becoming a net loss. My company processed 19,000 work orders last year. If 10% had wire nuts on them and you spent 30 seconds entering the wire nuts used on each one into the system, thats 950 minutes or 15 hours. At a rough sell of $0.24@ I need to find about 2,500 wire nuts or 25 boxes that otherwise wouldn't be accounted for to justify the clerk's time. We order about 50 boxes a year among 4 sizes. I dunno. If it works for you, who am I to complain?

 

[GoldDigger]

There is some potential value above and beyond the direct cost for counting wire nuts. You know when to refill the bucket in each van before going out on a job.

 

[George Stolz]

There is some potential value above and beyond the direct cost for counting wire nuts. You know when to refill the bucket in each van before going out on a job.

It would probably be more fun and productive to install a limit switch and an indicator light on the dash.

 

[gadfly56]

It would probably be more fun and productive to install a limit switch and an indicator light on the dash.

How about this: Each wire nut size/type has its own bin, with a solenoid operated knife valve or a rotary valve attached to a stepper motor. Each button push dispenses one wire nut and is recorded by a digital counter. The digital counter, with an IP address, communicates via BlueTooth to the home office server. Since the server also has the tech's schedule, it automatically deducts the wire nut from the van inventory and charges it to the tech's scheduled job ticket and also updates the master inventory file. That should do it. :roll:

 

[George Stolz]

That makes perfect sense!