Creating a Time of Day/Week Pricing Discount
The Time of Day/Week Pricing menu can be used to setup re-occuring machine vend pricing discounts that will turn ON and OFF automatically, on the same days/times every week.
This menu can also be used to enforce a Last Wash time, which will disable Card Readers from taking any payments after a certain time/day.
You will be able to access this menu, by clicking on the "Time of Day/Week Pricing" button next to the "$ Bulk Pricing" button on the Laundro Portal's main page:
Note: If you do not see the Time of Day/Week Pricing button, get in contact with our technical support team.
Clicking on the Time of Day/Week Pricing button, will bring you to the Time of Day/Week Pricing section where you can setup and manage any pricing rules you'd like to run in this store location:
Adding/Editing a Pricing Rule:
There are 2 basic pricing rules types:
- Discount (sub types include "%" discounts, or "$" amount discounts)
- Payment Disabled (commonly used for enforcing a Last Wash time)
Once a pricing rule has been created, you are always able to edit any of it's settings at any time.
To create a new pricing rule
simply click the "+Add Pricing Rule" button to start creating a new pricing rule:
To Edit an existing Pricing Rule
click on the "pencil" icon to open the settings menu for the existing pricing rule:
Machine Group:
This option is used to select the specific machine group you would like this pricing rule to apply to.
You can select all Card readers of a certain Type (all Washer, all Dryers, all Doors, etc.) but if you've already setup custom machine groups, you're also able to apply a pricing rule to specific machine groups (all 20lb Washers only for example)
You can learn more about how to setup custom machine groups by reading our article about Configuring Card Reader/Machine Vend Prices.
Start Day, Start Time, End Day, End Time:
Theses settings control when this pricing rule will automatically activate, and automatically de-activate. The Start and End time options increase in 15 minute increments, starting from 12:00 AM (midnight) and ending at 11:45 PM.
Below are a couple of examples:
If you'd like a discount to run all day every Monday, you'll want to set the Start Day as Monday with a Start Time of 12:00 AM, and an End Day of Tuesday with an End Time of 12:00 AM:
If you'd like a discount to run every weekend, starting Friday nights at 9pm, and ending Sunday nights, at the end of the night, you'll want to set the Start Day as Friday with a Start Time of 9:00 PM, and an End Day of Monday with an End Time of 12:00 AM:
Note: When the system activates, or de-activates, a pricing rule, the system will begin applying the pricing rule to all affected readers 1 at a time. Depending on how many readers the pricing rule needs to control, it may take a few mins for the price change to reflect the discounted rate on all affected readers. The same applies when the system de-activates a pricing rule.Pricing Mode (Last Wash and Discounts):
Setting up a Last Wash Pricing Rule
The "Payment Disabled" pricing rule needs to be selected in order to create a Last Wash pricing rule.
Payment disabled does NOT mean the machine is free,
it means the Card Reader's payment has been disabled, so the Card Reader will NOT accept any payments from regular user Laundry Cards or payments from a LaundryCat App account.
When this pricing rule is used on Washer or Dryer Card Readers,
the machine these Card Readers are installed on cannot be started by users because the Card Readers will not accept payments from user accounts.
Note that Payment disabled rule does NOT affect Management Cards, only regular user cards.
Management cards will still work to start machine's with Card Readers that have their payment disabled
When this pricing rule is used on Door Access readers,
regular user accounts (Laundry Cards and LaundryCat App accounts) will not be able to trigger the Door Reader to unlock the door while payment is disabled;
Management Cards are unaffected by this pricing rule, and would still be able to trigger Door Readers to unlock doors.
Setting up a Discount Pricing Rule
There are 2 Discout Rule types you can choose from:
- "% Discount" should be selected if you intend on discounting the readers by a specific percentage amount.
- "$ Discount" should be selected if you intend on discounting the readers by a specific dollar amount.
If you plan on setting up a discount pricing rule, that controls machines that have varying base prices, it is recommended to use the "% Discount" type in order to set a uniform discount across all machines.
Alternatively, you could setup individual pricing rules, for the different machine groups that are identically price, and use the "$ Discount" type.
Discount Amount:
If the Pricing Mode has been set to "% Discount", this field corresponds to the % discount of the regular vend price.
So if set to "50", the affected Card Readers will deduct 50% off their displayed vend price.
If you would like to set a Card Reader to be Free,
select the "% Discount" option, and set the discount amount to "100".
If the Pricing Mode has been set to "$ Discount", this field corresponds to the specific dollar amount you want to be subtracted from the regular vend price.
Note: these discounts are applied to whatever the normal vend price(s) the Card Reader is programmed to use.
So if you have a Serial Communication Card Reader, you may have different cycle options priced at different amounts.
These discounts will apply to ALL cycle option prices uniformily.
This is important to keep in mind, especially when using the "$ Discount" type, as any discount you set up will be applied to ALL base cycle prices
Discount Rounding:
If discounting a price results in the price needing to be rounded, you can use this field to decide what the price will be rounded too.
For example: if a Card Reader normally charge $0.99, and you discount it by 50%, the discounted price will technically be $0.495.
By rounding to the nearest Penny, the system will round up to the nearest penny, and set the discounted price to $0.50.
In the Vast majority of cases, you'll typically want to leave this field set at "Penny" rounding;
however, if you have a Hybrid Coin+Card installation, and the Card Reader controls vend prices on both the Card Reader, and the Machine directly, you may want to set the Discount Rounding setting to "Quarter" so that the discouted price makes sense for those paying with Quarters.
Enabled check box:
When setting up a pricing rule, this check box is checked by default.
However, if you would like to setup a pricing rule ahead of time, and therefore do not want it to run during the next Start Day and Start Time, you can un-check the "Enabled" check box.
With this un-checked, the pricing rule will still show up in the Time of Day/Week Pricing menu, but the system will not activate this pricing rule.
Pricing rules can be Enabled, and Disabled, at any time.
If you have already setup a pricing rule, and you would like to disable the pricing rule for any reason, you can click on the pencil icon for that pricing rule, and un-check the "Enabled" check box to disable it.
Enabled/Disabled Pricing Rules:
You can tell if a pricing rule is currently enabled, or disabled, by looking at the Enabled column for a check mark.
In the example below, the pricing rule for the Dryers is currently Disabled, while the pricing rule for the Washers is currently Enabled:
Deleting a Pricing Rule:
Whenever you want to delete a pricing rule, it's very important to make sure that the pricing rule you want to delete is NOT currently active.
Check the Active column for that pricing rule and make sure it does NOT have a check mark in the active column:
Deleting an active pricing rule WILL NOT disable that pricing rule, so if you want to delete a currently active pricing rule, you must first disable the pricing rule.
Once the pricing rule has been disabled, give the system a few minutes to disable that pricing rule setting on all the readers it was active for.
Once all readers are no longer running that specific pricing rule, it is then safe to delete the pricing rule by clicking on the 
icon next to that rule.
Active/Not-Active Pricing Rules:
You can tell if a pricing rule is currently active in 2 different areas of the Laundro Portal.
When looking in the Time of Day/Week Pricing menu, a currently active pricing rule will have a check mark in the Active column:
When looking at the Laundro Portal's main page, if a pricing rule is currently active;
you will see a "universal no" symbol next to any reader that currently has it's Payment Disabled via a time of day/week pricing rule (Last Wash pricing rule):
or you will see a "price tag" symbol next to any reader that currently has a time of day/week pricing discount being applied:
Note: Any readers that are showing a Timeout error, like Washer #59 is in the picture above, are not connected to the VAC's wireless network, and therefore the system will not be able to change the vend pricing for this reader.
Whatever price these readers were displaying, before they disconnected from the VAC's wireless network, will remain stuck at that price.
To correct the pricing of these readers, or to have them work with the time of day/week pricing discount, you need to get them back online first.
See our article for more information on timeout issues: Portal says "Timeout - check reader/machine" - Card Reader is Reporting it's offline
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