How to keep track of the water jugs you lend to customers without losing a single one

To keep track of the water jugs you lend, you need three things: a container balance for each customer, every jug that goes out or comes back recorded on the spot as a loan, a return or a lost-jug charge, and a driver who sees that balance at every stop before delivering. With that in place you know at any moment how many jugs each customer holds and how many are out on the street. The rest is a daily routine and a clear rule about what happens when a jug does not come back.

In Mexico this jug is called a garrafón: a 20-liter returnable water jug that the customer swaps, empty for full, at each delivery. We will keep the word garrafón throughout this article.

Why garrafones go missing

They almost never disappear all at once. They leave one by one, in situations that repeat on every delivery route:

• The customer was not home, a neighbor took the full jug and the empty one stayed in another house.
• The corner store orders three full jugs and hands back two empties because "the other one will be ready next time".
• The driver writes it in a notebook, but the page gets wet, gets lost or nobody copies it into the books.
• A customer stops buying and nobody remembers they had four of your garrafones.
• A jug comes back cracked or scratched and the driver swaps it without recording anything.
• A customer refills your garrafón at another water plant and never gives it back.

The root problem is neither the driver nor the customer. It is that there is no single number per customer that everyone sees the same way. If the office says "we left you five" and the customer says "I only have three", without a record whoever sounds more confident wins.

What not keeping track costs you

Run the numbers with your own figures. Suppose, as an example, that a 20-liter garrafón costs you between $70 and $120 Mexican pesos depending on the supplier and the material. If you lose 40 a month and each one costs you $90, that is $3,600 a month and more than $43,000 a year just to replace containers.

And that does not count the sales you miss because on Monday morning you do not have enough clean jugs to fill, or the time you spend arguing with customers who do not remember how many they have.

Deposit or loan: pick a model and say it out loud

There are two common ways to handle returnable containers. Neither one is best in every case, but mixing them without a rule is a recipe for an argument at every stop.

The deposit model

The customer pays an amount for the garrafón the first time, the deposit, and from then on only pays for the water when they swap an empty jug for a full one. If they stop buying one day, they can return the jug and get the deposit back.

• Upside: if the garrafón never comes back, a good part of its cost is already covered.
• Downside: many households dislike paying a deposit, and corner stores dislike it even more.

The loan model

You lend the garrafón at no extra charge and keep count of how many each customer has. This is the most common setup with corner stores, small restaurants and long-time customers.

• Upside: selling is easier and the customer does not feel an extra charge.
• Downside: without a record, all of the risk is yours.

In practice, many businesses lend to regular customers and charge a deposit to new or occasional ones. What matters is that the customer knows from day one what happens if a garrafón does not come back: how much they will be charged and when. Set that amount per container type, because a 20-liter jug is not the same as a 10-liter one.

The jug balance per customer

The heart of the system is one number per customer: how many of your containers they hold today. That balance calculates itself from three movements:

1. Loan: a full garrafón goes out and no empty comes back in exchange. The customer's balance goes up.
2. Return: the customer hands back an empty garrafón. The balance goes down.
3. Lost-jug charge: the customer reports that a jug broke or got lost and you charge the agreed amount. The balance goes down and the charge is added to what they owe you, or they pay it right there.

When a customer swaps an empty for a full jug, two movements actually happen and cancel each other out: a return and a loan. That is why their balance does not change. What you need to record carefully are the differences: "I delivered three full and got two empties back" is a net loan of one.

The sum of all your customers' balances is your total of garrafones on the street. If that number grows month after month while your sales do not, you have a leak.

One more rule: never fix a balance by deleting the earlier movement. If there was a mistake, record an opposite movement with a note. That way the history explains every change when the customer asks for clarification, and nobody can claim the number "appeared out of nowhere".

What the driver should check at every stop

The moment to control the garrafón is at the customer's door, not at the office the next day. A routine of a few seconds per stop is enough:

1. Before getting out of the truck, check the customer's container balance.
2. Deliver the full jugs and count the empties you receive, out loud and in front of the customer.
3. Check the condition of the empties: if one is broken, from another brand or badly damaged, say so right there and do not count it as a return.
4. Record the difference on the spot, not at the end of the route.
5. If the customer's balance is already high, ask for the pending empties or let the office know.
6. Leave a ticket with the updated garrafón balance so the customer can see it.

The ticket is more useful than it looks. When customers see how many garrafones they hold on every delivery, the argument goes away because they have already seen that number many times.

In Repartamos the garrafón balance shows on the customer's record and in the driver's app, and every loan or return is recorded along with the sale even without signal. If you want to know how that works out on the street, we explain it in a delivery app that works without signal.

How to recover the garrafones already out there

If you were not keeping track until today, you will not know exactly how many garrafones each customer has. That is fine. Start with an initial count:

1. For one or two weeks, ask each driver to count at every stop how many of your garrafones the customer has and to confirm it with them.
2. Record that number as the opening balance and tell the customer: "starting today you have three garrafones on your account".
3. For customers who no longer buy, run a recovery round: a call or message with the exact number and a scheduled visit to pick them up.
4. With customers who do not return containers, decide case by case: charge for the jug, move them to the deposit model or, if it is a single jug, write it off and leave a record.
5. Every month, review the list of customers with a high balance and no recent purchases. Those are your jugs at risk.

Do not try to recover everything in one week. What you do need from day one is that not a single new garrafón leaves without a record.

Mark your garrafones

A garrafón with your brand, label or seal is easier to claim and harder to refill somewhere else. It does not solve tracking by itself, but it helps customers tell yours apart from another water plant's when the driver asks how many they have.

How it fits with the daily settlement

Jug tracking does not end at the stop. When the truck comes back, the empties the driver brings must match the returns recorded on the route. If 30 returns were recorded and the driver brings 27 empties, there is a difference to clear up that same day, while everyone still remembers what happened at each house.

That is why it pays to review cash, product and garrafones in the same settlement. We go through it step by step in the driver's daily settlement. And if the customers who pile up jugs also pile up store credit, read how to give credit to corner stores without losing money: they are often the same people.

Quick checklist

• Decide whether you lend, charge a deposit or combine both, and tell the customer.
• Set the value of each container type so you can charge for lost ones.
• Keep a garrafón balance per customer with three movements: loan, return and lost-jug charge.
• Record differences at the stop, not at the end of the day.
• Show the garrafón balance on the ticket.
• Count the empties when the truck returns and compare them with what was recorded.
• Correct with opposite movements, never by deleting.
• Review customers with a high balance and no recent purchases every month.