Troubleshooting / FAQs

Overview #

Below are frequently asked questions when troubleshooting and their corresponding answers.

Vending machines #

I have sold a vending machine and want to delete it from Sentry, what should I do? #

Please refer to the guide on removing vending machines from Sentry: https://sentryvend.com/docs/removing-a-vending-machine-from-sentry/

My vending machine has dex sales that are increasing, but Sentry is not recording sales, what might be wrong? #

The most common issue that may occur when dex sales are showing (either in a machine’s communication tab, or in an external dex provider that sends dex to Sentry) is that the machine’s modem has sales source not set as dex.

The following screenshot shows when a communication device’s sales source is ‘Live transactions’ rather than dex:

To rectify this, the sales data source should be changed to ‘Dex’.

Why don’t our cashless sales in Sentry match the amounts that we receive in our bank account? #

Generally it is normal for there to be some discrepancy between the reported cashless sales in Sentry and the amounts that are received for the same query period in a bank account.

There are five main reasons why this occurs:

1. Vending machines that operate the dex protocol generates sales when dex calls come in, which generally are infrequent – up to 5 or more hours apart. Generally this means that some sales at the start and end of each day will be included in the previous or next reporting period.
2. Vending machines that operate the dex protocol do not report credit card surcharges to Sentry. In general, a vending machine doesn’t know whether or not a credit card surcharge has been applied, and so does not record this in dex counters. Credit card surcharges are therefore excluded from Sentry cashless sales.
3. Some discrepancies may generally occur where, for example, network connectivity is lost between a vending machine and a gateway/acquirer during a transaction. For example, if a vending machine successfully vends a product, but communication is lost post-vend where a gateway/acquirer is confirming that a transaction should not be voided, the the machine’s dex counter will record the sale, but the gateway/acquirer may void the transaction such that the machine thinks the sale was made on the one hand, but the funds will never be deposited to your bank account.
4. Some machines do not conform with the official dex specification, resulting in potential issues calculating cashless components of transactions.
5. Lastly, because acquirers may have a different cut-off time for clearing transactions to a bank account than the 24-hour windows (start of day to end of day) that Sentry uses, further differences may arise.

Service runs #

Question: We received a restock/fill dex, but a service was not marked as complete. #

Most commonly the reason why the restock/fill dex did not work is because the service run is planned for another day.

Question: My service run is still ‘in progress’ – is this a problem? #

Service run statuses (Planned, In Progress, Complete), are intended to provide information about the service run state, but don’t affect or change anything in the Sentry system. There are no issues with leaving service runs in an ‘In progress’ state.

Service runs will remain ‘In Progress’ when any item on the service run remains incomplete, including:

• A ticket has not been resolved or marked as unable to be resolved; and
• A photo is required to be taken of a machine/market but no photo was taken.

Warehousing #

Question: when forecasting stock levels, will the forecast include sales from all of our warehouses? #

No – stock forecasts are based only on sales from machines/markets on routes that have the warehouse set as the route’s pick warehouse.

For warehousing to work properly, make sure all routes have a pick warehouse set by going to the route’s detailed view and setting a pick warehouse:

Question: on the stock monitoring page, how is daily vends calculated? #

We aggregate vends in the last 28 days (4 weeks) and then divide the number by 28 to calculate current average daily vends.

Micro markets #

Question: How do I do a restock at a micro market? #

Unlike dex-enabled vending machines, to do micro market restock, you should use the manual restock function in the SentryMobile mobile app.

Pick lists #

Question: Sorting by pick order isn’t working for me! #

To sort by pick order, the following must be set up in your system:

• You have a warehouse setup;
• You have pick orders inserted for stock at the warehouse; and
• The service run is created from the warehouse with the pick orders.

One of the more common reasons why it may not work is when the service run is accidentally created with warehouse assigned to it. In that case, there is nowhere for the system to retrieve pick orders.