How to Manage 19 Litre Bottle Deposits and Empty Bottles (Without Losing Money)

Why bottles go missing

Bottles rarely disappear in one big loss. They leak away one at a time: a rider delivers two bottles and collects one empty, a customer moves house, a shop keeps a spare for "emergencies", or a competitor's empty comes back instead of yours.

Over a few months, a business with a few hundred customers can easily have dozens of bottles that nobody can account for — and each one has to be replaced at full cost.

The one number to track: bottles held by each customer

The simplest rule is to keep one running number per customer: bottles delivered minus empties returned. If you delivered 2 and collected 1, that customer now holds one more of your bottles.

• Record empties returned on every single delivery, not just "most of the time".
• Start each customer with an opening figure — the bottles they already had before you started counting.
• When a customer stops service, the bottles they hold must come back, or be charged.

In AquaRun the rider taps the number of empties returned on each delivery, and the customer's "bottles held" updates automatically. You can see it on the customer page, the rider app and the bottle tracking report.

Taking bottle security the right way

Bottle security (deposit) protects you when a customer keeps your bottles. Many businesses take it in cash and simply put it in the drawer — which means it gets spent, and when the customer leaves there is nothing to refund from.

Security is not income. In your books it is money you owe back to the customer when they return the bottles. Keep it in a separate "customer deposits" account so you always know how much you are holding.

• Decide one standard security amount per bottle, and write it on the receipt.
• Allow "pay later" only for trusted customers, and track the amount still due.
• If a customer gives you another company's empty bottles instead of security, record their value too.
• On final settlement: refund the security for bottles returned, and deduct for bottles missing.

Other-brand empties: count them separately

Customers often hand back an empty from another brand. If you count it as "your" bottle, your records look fine but your actual stock of your own bottles is shrinking.

Keep a separate count of other-brand empties. Some businesses refill and resell them; others sell them on. Either way they have a value and should be in your stock.

A monthly bottle check that takes 15 minutes

• Count your bottles at the plant (empty and filled).
• Add the total bottles held by all customers from your records.
• Compare with the bottles you have bought in total.
• If there is a gap, look at the customers with the largest "held" figures and the riders with the most mismatches.

Doing this every month turns bottle loss from a surprise into a number you can manage.