Who We Help · Laundromats and Dry Cleaners · Bookkeeping
Laundromat bookkeeping: proving revenue nobody watched being earned
A laundromat earns most of its money while no one is standing at a register, so the books have to prove revenue instead of just recording it. That means coin collections reconciled to deposits, machine cycle counters and the water bill used as independent checks, and card or app money booked net of fees with stored value carried as a liability. We build laundromat and dry cleaner books around those controls, then keep wash-dry-fold and dry cleaning on their own margins.
By the AnalytIQ Accounting team · Last reviewed: August 12, 2026
Unattended revenue needs built-in honesty checks
Cash businesses get CRA attention, and an unattended cash business gets more — the defence is a set of independent numbers that should all agree. Machine cycle counters say how many washes ran; the water and gas bills imply how many cycles the building could have run; the coin counts and card settlements say what was collected. When collections, counters, and utilities move together, your revenue number is defensible; when they diverge, you have found theft, a broken machine, or a leak before it eats a quarter.
| Revenue stream | Control that proves it | Books treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Coin machines | Two-person collection counts vs cycle counters | Revenue by collection date, HST backed out of gross |
| Card and app payments | Platform reports vs bank settlements | Gross revenue, processor fees on their own line |
| Stored-value laundry cards | Loads vs cycle redemptions | Liability when loaded, revenue when cycles run |
| Wash-dry-fold | POS tickets by weight vs staffed-hours schedule | Service revenue with its own labour cost |
| Dry cleaning | Piece counts through the tagging system | Revenue per order; unclaimed garments logged |
Coin: from hopper to deposit without a gap
Coin discipline is procedural, not clever: collections on a fixed schedule, counted the same day, deposited intact, and logged per collection so revenue lands in the right week. The changer float is the piece owners get wrong — money in the change machine is not revenue, it is your own float circulating, and refilling it from the till without a log is how counts stop reconciling. We keep the float as its own balance-sheet item, counted at every collection, so the coin that hits the bank is genuinely earned coin.
Card money arrives net — and stored value is not yours yet
Card readers and app platforms deposit settlements net of processing fees, so booking bank deposits as revenue understates both sales and expenses at once — gross revenue and fees have to be split back out from platform reports. Stored-value cards and app wallets add a second layer: a customer loading fifty dollars has lent you fifty dollars, and it becomes revenue only as cycles run. The unredeemed balance is a real liability, and tracking it also tells you your float income — loads that will never be fully spent.
Wash-dry-fold and dry cleaning are staffed businesses
The moment you add wash-dry-fold, you are running a service business inside a machine business, and blending them hides both margins. Wash-dry-fold revenue is priced per pound and carries labour, supplies, and machine time — we track labour cost against WDF revenue so the convenience line does not quietly earn less than the machines it uses. Dry cleaning runs on piece counts through the tagging system, with solvent and pressing costs against it, plus a routine for unclaimed garments so old orders do not sit as phantom receivables. Pickup-and-delivery apps bring the same net-deposit issue as card platforms, and their fees belong on their own line.
Tax-included pricing and the monthly close
Machine prices are tax-included — nobody drops an extra 52 cents of HST into a slot — so in Ontario the HST comes out of gross collections at 13/113 before revenue posts, and the same back-out applies to vending income. The monthly close ties collections, platform settlements, and POS totals to the bank, books utilities and equipment leases, and tracks cost per cycle — the number that tells you when aging dryers should be replaced. Equipment-heavy purchases and CCA planning flow into the monthly bookkeeping routine, and if you are financing US-built machines, the border cost thread is in our laundromat cross-border tax guide.
Common questions.
How do I prove revenue from unattended machines?
With independent checks that should agree: coin counts per collection, machine cycle counters, card platform reports, and the water bill as an implied cycle count. When those move together, your revenue number holds up under review.
Is money loaded on laundry cards revenue?
Not yet — a load is a liability until cycles are actually run against it. The unredeemed balance stays on the balance sheet, and it is also a useful measure of float the business is holding.
Do machine prices include HST?
Yes, vended prices are treated as tax-included, so in Ontario the HST is backed out of gross collections at 13/113 before revenue is recorded. Forgetting the back-out overstates revenue and shorts the GST34 return.
Related reading
Revenue you can prove, margins you can read.
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