Activities or Cost Centers for Septic Pumping

The septic pumping business is only partly septic pumping. The majority of the time is spent doing all the other business activities that need to be done before and after that actual pumping. Again, let’s look at some of the major cost/activity centers for the septic pumping business.

Pumping of Septic Tanks. The pumping of septic tanks is a part of the septic business. A more important part is understanding how long it takes to service customers. Once you can determine a pattern based upon time, it is possible to set rates so that you can eliminate the loss leaders for customers who are in areas that require significantly more time. In addition, a comparison of productivity of a driver and/or type of truck, i.e., size of tank, can guide you in scheduling your truck(s). An accounting system would not give you the geography, equipment or driver activity that an operations management system would supply.

Truck Maintenance and Repair: The work associated with keeping your vehicles in working order.

Septage : The driving to and from dump site and planning time to maximize loads and minimize driving time.

Office Operations: This includes generating invoices, statements, posting receivables, maintaining service and utility routes and tracking unit inventory.

Marketing and Sales: This area includes the sending of reminders, form letters and follow up of bids and proposals.

An operations management system for the septic pumping business needs to allow you to monitor each of the activity areas in terms of units that were previously mentioned. Just knowing how much money was spent pumping tanks is nice to know, but it is more informative that John Brown typically charges lower rates then Harry Jones even though they both service the same number customers in the same geographic area. The prior is an accounting view of an activity or cost center, that later is an operations management view.

You can see that, for many businesses, the operations management system is maintained in the memory of the owner. This works well for owner/operator businesses. Once a business expands to employees and multiple trucks, an operations management system would be an excellent addition to the tool set you can use to help run your business. Operations management systems are industry specific. Your best way of finding one is in one of three locations.

1. Industry trade press

2. Industry societies

3. Industry trade shows