Dealing with theft and under-reporting at a car wash

The owner of a wash on the Kasoa road noticed that shampoo was running out every nine days instead of every fourteen. The car count had not changed. The MoMo total had not changed. Only the shampoo had changed, and the shampoo was telling the truth.

Car wash theft rarely looks like a cash box being emptied. It looks like a car washed at six in the evening after the cashier has gone, paid in cash to the washer, and never written down. It looks like a five-litre jerrycan of degreaser going home in a backpack. It looks like a GH₵50 full wash recorded as a GH₵30 body wash, with the difference split between a washer and a cashier who are cousins.

Most of it is small, most of it is steady, and most of it is preventable with controls that cost almost nothing. This post is about those controls, and about confronting people fairly when the numbers point at them.

The four ways money leaves a wash quietly

Side washes are the most common. A customer arrives when the manager is away, a washer quotes a price, washes the car, takes the cash, and the wash has no record of the car ever existing. The washer sees it as a tip for his effort; the owner has paid for the water, the chemicals and the pressure washer fuel and received nothing.

Under-recording is the second. The car is recorded, but as a cheaper service, or at a discounted price that the customer did not actually receive.

Chemicals and towels are the third. Shampoo, degreaser and tyre shine are easy to decant and sell, and a microfibre towel is a useful thing to own. A wash that does not know its consumption per car cannot tell theft from heavy use.

The fourth is the customer's property, which costs you customers rather than cedis.

Record the plate at the gate, not at the bay

The single most useful control is to record every vehicle as it enters, before anyone decides whether it is a wash, a quick rinse, or "just a friend". A gateman with a notebook, a cashier at the entrance, or the manager with a phone, it does not matter who, as long as the plate, the time and the vehicle type go down before the car reaches a washer.

With the gate record, side washes become visible. At closing, the gate list and the sales record are compared. A plate that entered and left without a sale is a question, and a washer who has three such questions a week has a problem. Without the gate record you are relying on memory, and memory is on the washer's side.

Why this record matters beyond theft is covered in why you should record every car you wash. For theft, the point is simpler: the car exists on paper before anyone can decide it does not.

Make MoMo the default and the cash box boring

Cash is where under-reporting lives. A wash where most customers pay by MoMo to a merchant number has a statement that nobody at the bay can edit. Put the merchant number on a board at the entrance, ask every customer to pay by MoMo before the car is released, and let the cashier confirm the payment on the merchant phone rather than taking a customer's word for it.

Cash still comes. Keep it in one box with one person responsible, count it against the record at midday and at close, and bank it or move it to the owner's MoMo daily so there is never a large sum at the wash overnight. The routine in cash handling at a car wash sets this out. The aim is a cash box that is too small and too often counted to be worth touching.

Separate the person who records from the person who handles money where you can; two people have to agree to steal, and two people rarely do.

Know your chemical use per car

Work out, once, roughly how much shampoo, degreaser and tyre shine a car uses at your dilution. Then track drums against car counts. If a 20-litre drum of shampoo lasted 280 cars in June and 180 cars in July, something changed, and it is either the dilution, a leak, or a jerrycan going home.

Keep chemicals in a locked store and decant into the day's bottles each morning. The counting itself is most of the deterrent: people steal from washes that do not look.

Protect the customer's valuables before anyone is accused

Set a rule that washers never open a glove box, console or bag, and that anything found loose in a car goes on the dashboard in sight. Ask customers at check-in whether there is anything they want to take with them.

Confronting fairly when the numbers point at someone

Do not accuse on a hunch. Collect the record: the gate list against the sales book, the drum against the car count, the dates. Then speak to the person privately, show the numbers, and ask for an explanation. Sometimes there is one.

Where there is no explanation, decide the consequence in advance and apply it the same way for everyone. Be careful here: how deductions, warnings and dismissal work depends on the terms you have with the person and on the Labour Act, so confirm with the Labour Department or a professional before docking pay or ending employment, and keep a written note of what was said and when.

Avoid public humiliation. Most people stop stealing when they know the wash is counting; the ones who do not are the ones you let go.

Your next step is to start the gate record tomorrow morning and to weigh or mark the level on each chemical drum tonight.