Running a laundry or tailoring shop with job tickets and deposits

A grocery sells and forgets. A laundry, a tailor or a repair counter takes something in, keeps it for days, and hands it back. That middle part, the days in between, is where money and goodwill are lost: a missing shirt, a deposit nobody can find, a customer who calls four times to ask if the abaya is ready.

Number every job, tag every piece

A job needs one number the customer and the shop both use, printed on the customer's ticket and on the shop copy. In a laundry, every piece also needs a tag with that number: J0042/1, J0042/2 … A scannable tag means the person at the counter finds the job in a second, even when the customer has lost the ticket.

The ticket should say what you received (pieces, notes such as "coffee stain on the sleeve"), when it is due, what was paid and what is left, and your terms.

Take deposits, and keep them apart

A deposit is not a sale yet. If it is counted as one, your daily sales look better than they are, and the VAT is in the wrong month. Keep deposits as money held for the customer: shown on the shift report on their own line, used first when the customer collects, refundable by a manager if the order is cancelled. Ask your accountant how your deposits should be treated for VAT.

A board, not a notebook

Every job moves through a few steps: Received → In progress → Ready → Collected. Tailoring adds a Fitting; repairs add Waiting for approval and Waiting for parts. A board with these columns, filtered by "due today" and "overdue", replaces the notebook and the shouting across the shop.

When a job is ready, put it on a shelf (B4) and tell the customer: an e-mail, or a WhatsApp message the cashier sends from the shop's phone in one tap. A tracking page behind the QR code on the ticket answers "is it ready?" before the customer calls.

Collecting is a sale

When the customer comes back, collecting is an ordinary sale at the till: the deposit pays first, the rest is paid in cash or by card, and the normal tax invoice prints. Pieces can be collected a few at a time.

Measurements and repairs

For a tailor, the most valuable thing you hold is the customer's measurement set. Keep it on the customer ("Kandura 2026"), in cm or inches, and the next order starts from it. For repairs, record the device, the serial or IMEI, the fault and what was left with it, and never write down the passcode. An estimate waits for the customer's yes, and the answer is recorded.

Stop the pile-up of uncollected items

Every laundry has a rail of things nobody collected. Once a month, list the jobs ready but not collected for 30, 60 and 90 days, call those customers, and apply the terms printed on your ticket.

In CreekPOS

Job orders are in CreekPOS Online from the Retail plan: Settings → Job orders, with templates for laundry, tailoring, repairs and general jobs. Taking a job and printing its ticket and tags works offline on the till app. See the laundry, tailoring and repair shop pages, and the manual chapter.