Overview
With the Free Dry Promotion, you're enabling a secondary balance on all Laundry Cards/LaundryCat App accounts, called the Free Dry Balance.
When a customer starts a particular Washer in the store, that Washer's Card reader adds a pre-determined amount of value to that card's/account's Free Dry Balance.
Funds added to a customer's Free Dry Balance are only accepted by Card Readers installed on Dryers (with 1 exception).
You can configure different machines to add different amounts of Free Dry Balance during Washer starts.
For example, you can specify that the 60lb Washers in your store will adds $1.00 worth of Free Dry Balance, whereas the 30lb Washer may only adds $0.50 to this balance.
When a customer starts a Dryer in your store, the Dryer Card Reader will always attempt to deduct the vend price from the customer's Free Dry Balance first.
When the Free Dry balance is depleted, the Dryer Card Reader will automatically switch to then deduct any outstanding balance needed to satisfy the full vend price, from the customer's primary balance (i.e. the paid balance of their Laundry Card/LaundryCat App account).
Clarification notes about the Free Dry Promotion:
This promotion does NOT use the concept of points (like other card systems might); it uses actual dollar values that can ONLY be used towards Dryer starts in the store (with 1 exception).
The Dryer is NOT free in a general sense, it is still charging it's displayed vend price, so someone cannot simply walk off the street and start using your Dryers for free.
Example of the Free Dry Promotion in action:
The table below runs through an example of what happens to the 2 discrete balances of a customer's Laundry Card (the Paid/Primary Balance, and their Free Dry Balance), when the customer using their card in a store running a Free Dry Promotion:
Operation | Primary Balance | Free Dry Balance |
In this example, we'll start with a customer who has a Laundry Card with a $0 Paid balance and a $0 Free Dry Balance. | $0.00 | $0.00 |
The customer adds $10 to this Laundry Card, using a VAC kiosk, which goes to the customers Paid balance only | ($0 + $10)
$10.00 | $0.00 |
The customer then pays to start a Washer, which charges $4, and is programmed to give out $0.80 in Free Dry value. | ($10 - $4)
$6.00 | ($0 + $0.80)
$0.80 |
The customer then pays for a Dryer start that cost $0.30. The card has enough Free Dry Balance to pay for the Dryer start, so the Paid card balance is NOT used at all. |
$6.00 |
($0.80 - $0.30)
$0.50 |
The customer pays another $0.30 to add additional time to this Dryer. Again, only the Free Dry Balance is used. | $6.00 | ($0.50 - $0.30)
$0.20 |
The customer pays another $0.30 to add more time to this Dryer. In this case, there is not enough Free Dry Balance to satisfy the full vend price, so BOTH balances are used for this payment (starting with the Free Dry Balance) |
($6 - $0.10)
$5.90 |
($0.20 - $0.20)
$0.00 |
The customer pays another $0.30 to add more time to this Dryer. Since the Free Dry Balance is completely depleted, the entire vend is deducted from the customer's Paid balance. | ($5.90 - $0.30)
$5.60 | $0.00 |
Configuring the Free Dry Promotion
To enable the Free Dry Promotion in your store, you will be:
Configuring the amount of value each Washer Reader will be giving out during machine starts.
Configuring the VAC kiosk(s) to enable all Laundry Cards/LaundryCat App accounts to display their 2 discrete card/account balances.
Confirm that all Washers/Dryers are participating in the Free Dry Promotion
Step 1: Configuring the Free Dry Amount Washers award
You'll need to specify how much money a particular Washer reader will add to a Laundry Card/LaundryCat App account's Free Dry Balance whenever the Washer is started.
This is done by changing the value of a setting called Free Dry Bonus Amount on every Washer reader:
The steps for adjusting a Card Reader's Free Dry Bonus Amount setting is exactly the same as Configuring Vend Prices:
you can use the Bulk Pricing Menu to update this setting on an entire group of machines:
you can use the individual Card Reader settings menu to update this setting on a particular reader individually:
Note: It is strongly recommend that you put machines into custom groups, unless you plan on giving out the same amount of Free Dry value, regardless of the size of Washer that's started by the customer.
Step 2: Enabling the Free Dry Promotion
The promotion can be enabled/disabled store-wide, using the "Free Balance Display" setting inside VAC01 (the primary Value Add Center kiosk).
Click on the wrench icon to access the VAC01's configuration page.
Then click the Edit VAC Settings button and scroll down to the Free Balance Configuration setting.
Change it to the "Free Dry" option, and submit the request by clicking the Update Settings button:
The system will automatically update this same setting on all the online Card Readers, and all other online VACs, to ensure all equipment have their individual Free Dry Configuration settings set to the same value so that all equipment is participating in this Free Dry promotion.
This may take a few minutes for the system to update this setting on all the other online equipment in the store.
A small Fire icon will start to appear next to all Washer and Dryer Card Readers, indicating that the particular Card Reader has it's Free Balance Configuration setting enabled correctly:
You'll want to ensure that all Dryer and all Washer Card Readers have their Fire symbol displayed, since both Washers and Dryers need to be participating in the Free Dry Promotion for it to work correctly.
Step 3: Confirm All Card Readers are participating in the Free Dry Promotion
After updating VAC01's Free Balance Display setting, and after waiting a few minutes, you should notice that all Card Readers are now displaying their Fire symbol in the Machines list, which indicates that all readers are participating in the Free Dry Promotion.
You'll want to confirm 2 things to ensure the Free Dry Promotion is configured correctly:
1. Confirming all Card Readers Free Dry Configuration Setting is enabled
1. Confirming all Card Readers Free Dry Configuration Setting is enabled
If you refresh the main LaundroPortal page, scroll through your Machines list to ensure that all Washer and Dryer Card Readers are displaying their Fire symbol.
If they are, this is confirmation that all readers have their Free Dry Configuration Setting enabled.
If you see any Card Readers that are NOT showing their fire symbol, it means that the specific Card Reader is NOT currently participating in the Free Dry promotion.
You're able to click into that individual reader's settings page to enable the Free Dry Configuration setting manually if that reader was skipped by the systems automatic process initially:
You are only able to update reader settings for Card Readers that are reporting online on the LaundroPortal:
If any Card Readers(s) are showing a "Timeout" error, it is expected that you will NOT be able to adjust that reader's settings.
Card Reader settings cannot be adjusted unless the reader is reporting online on the LaundroPortal.
Review our Portal says "Timeout - check reader/machine" - Card Reader is Reporting it's offline article to troubleshooting help for offline Card Readers.
2. Confirming all Washer readers are giving the correct Free Dry value
2. Confirming all Washer readers are giving the correct Free Dry value
To confirm all Washer readers are programmed correctly, navigate to the Bulk Pricing Menu and check each of your custom groups to see if any have a yellow triangle warning symbol indicating a Washer group is NOT using the same Free Dry Bonus Amount value for all Washers in that particular group:
If there is no yellow triangle, it means all Washers in that group are using the same value for their Free Dry Bonus Amount setting. If the value shown in the grey box is the correct amount you want that group of machines to be giving out; then the Washers are correctly configured to give out the right amount of Free Dry value.
If there is a yellow triangle showing, then it means at least 1 reader in that group is using a different value for it's Free Dry Bonus Amount setting.
Simply hover your mouse over the yellow triangle, and you'll see a pop up window showing you what each reader in that group is currently using for it's Free Dry Bonus Amount setting:
Once you know the affected reader, first ensure that this reader is reporting online on the LaundroPortal. If this reader is online, simply update it's Free Dry Bonus Amount setting, either by pushing a price update to the entire group (via the Bulk Pricing menu), or by navigating to that reader's individual reader settings page to update it.
Disabling the Free Dry Promotion
To disable the Free Dry Promotion, on VAC01 simply change it's Free Balance Display setting to Disabled.
Changing this setting will trigger the system to automatically send the same settings change to all online Card Readers and VAC kiosks in the location.
After waiting a few minutes, check all Card Readers to make sure they are no longer displaying the Free Dry Fire symbol:
Note: you do NOT need to edit the Free Dry Bonus Amount setting, on the Card Readers, when disabling the free dry promotion.
As long as the reader's Free Dry Configuration setting is set to Disabled (and therefore is NOT displaying the fire icon), that reader will NOT be participating in the Free Dry Promotion and therefore will NOT give out any Free Dry value.
It's normally recommend to leave the Free Dry Bonus Amount settings in place, that way should you decide to re-enable the Free Dry Promotion in the future, all Card Readers will already be programmed to give out the correct Free Dry amounts.
Configuring Free Dry Value to Expire
By default, Free Dry Balances are set to never expire, but you can configure an expiry time for any unused Free Dry Balances that are accumulated.
For example, you may wish to have all Free Dry balances on cards/accounts expire 24 hours after being obtained, if they are not used in the store within that time.
To set Free Dry Balances to expire, you need to configure Free Dry Balance Expiry for Laundry Cards and LaundryCat App accounts in separate sections of the LaundroPortal:
For Laundry Card Free Dry Balance Expiry
For Laundry Card Free Dry Balance Expiry
You configure this from the Bonus section of the Value Add Center kiosk settings page.
By setting the Free Balance Expiry Hours setting to something other than "0" (a setting of "0" means credits will never expire) this determines the amount of hours unused credits will be considered valid and usable:
For LaundryCat App Free Dry Balance Expiry
For LaundryCat App Free Dry Balance Expiry
You configure this from the Account Restriction section of the Mobile App Configuration settings page.
By setting the Free Balance Expiry Hours setting to something other than "0" (a setting of "0" means credits will never expire) this determines the amount of hours unused credits will be considered valid and usable:
Free Dry Balance Expiry Transaction Records
When Free Dry Credits are set to expiry after a certain amount of hours, you will start to notice "Free Balance Reset" transaction records showing up in your Reader and VAC Logs:
For Laundry Cards specifically, because the card's balance is stored directly on the memory chip embedded in the card itself, when unused Free Dry balance is set to expire, the system will mark those credits as being expired credits; however those credits are technically still programmed in the Laundry Cards memory chip.
So when this card is brought back to the location, and interacts with either a VAC kiosk or a Card Reader, it's at that point the system checks if there is any Free Dry Balance that's been marked as expired, and if present, the system preforms a Free Balance Reset operation to remove the expired Free Dry Balance before the customer starts to collect Free Dry value during their current store visit.
"Free Dry" vs the "Wash and Dry" setting
When enabling the Free Dry configuration setting, you'll notice that there are 2 available configuration options:
When enabling the Free Dry Promotion, you will ALWAYS select the Free Dry option.
The Wash and Dry setting is a special configuration setting that is normally only used if you are phasing out the Free Dry promotion, but would like to allow your customer to be able to use up all the Free Dry Balances they've obtain so far.
When setting this setting to Wash and Dry, this makes it so that no machines give out any free dry balances, but both Washers and Dryers will accept Free Dry balances for machine starts.
So for customers that still have Free Dry Balances on their card/account, this configuration allows them to start both Washers and Dryers, using the Free Dry Balances remaining on their cards/accounts.