Septage Records Management

The type of septage records management your company uses depends upon your customers. Here are some alternatives.

Residential Septic: Since you only pump one type of waste, you can report on gallons pumped by county based upon invoice codes. If you want to track dump utilization, then entry of dump tickets would be required, but with only residential waste, simply keeping the dump tickets in a folder may be a better use of your company resources. When and if you are required to report, just pull out the folder and count tickets for the reporting period and you’re done.

Residential Using Multiple Dump Sites: This is usually a medium-to-large, residential-only septic pumping operation. Work is done over several counties, using multiple dump sites. One option is to extend the folder from one to several, though folders with dump tickets can be clerically challenging when reporting for an extended period. An alternative is to use a computer to enter the dump tickets as they are obtained. This minimizes the clerical effort in reporting on dump utilization and aids in tracking septage expenses .

Residential and Commercial: This type of company is handling multiple types of waste, i.e., grease, residential sewage, condensate, etc. Each truck load has one type of waste, but trucks will dump into the nearest dump site with waste from multiple locations. If your company has to report dump usage by source, then you must tag each dump load with the type of waste and the source address that makes up the load. If you do not have this reporting requirement, then tracking the dump tickets is sufficient. Where loads are made up from multiple sources, you can identify the sources for the load on the ticket. You can see that for operations dealing with multiple types for multiple counties the paper folder method can become a nightmare.

One last point is that tracking waste disposal takes time, expense and equipment. These costs need to be identified and included in determining your septage expenses. One other point is that whichever method you select, folders or computers, any work without a clear business benefit is a waste of money. You need to understand:

• The time required to enter the dump tickets into a computer system daily compared to the effort required to pull manual records and tally up results.

• Who does the work and if they have spare time. A clerk can enter a ticket in less than a minute daily and generate the report in a few minutes, while pulling manual files and adding up individual sheets when reports are required may require someone with more training.

• The details of the reporting requirements for your state/county/municipality.

Whichever method takes less time and costs less money is the better solution.

You can see that septage management can be more then just dollars per gallon