Scale House Rock

A growing number of recyclers are being required by state and local laws to collect a variety of information—including fingerprints, photographs and driver’s licenses or other state-issued IDs—from the peddlers who visit their yards to sell material. Gathering the necessary information can increase transactions and result in additional data entry that needs to be performed at the end of the business day and uploaded to LeadsOnline or to a similar law enforcement database.

Recyclers are sometimes turning to software to help them meet these regulatory requirements. According to software providers to the industry, recyclers can yield additional benefits by automating buying at the scale house, such as faster transactions and more accurate data entry, while also eliminating the need for duplicate data entry.

"The key to keeping transaction times fast is to have as much information defaulted as possible," says Jackie Barlow, vice president of Paradigm Software, Hunt Valley, Md. "Fewer keystrokes result in fewer transaction errors."

With the aid of software, recyclers can keep scale house transactions from becoming drawn out as they gather all the information they need to comply with the regulations that pertain to their operations. George Kane of 21st Century Programming, Long Beach, Calif., says a typical transaction can be completed in less than two minutes with the aid of software and its related hardware. "The longest part is waiting for the guy to pull his ID out of his pocket," Kane says.

According to Everett L. Duty Sr., CEO of BuyBackPro, a Woodland, Calif.-based provider of software to the recycling industry, speed is his company’s goal. "Here at BuyBackPro we have a rule that forces us to make sure any transaction can be started and finished in under one minute," he says. "As laws have demanded drivers’ license images, fingerprints, electronic signatures and images of materials, this has been a real challenge. Program design is key in keeping transaction times low." Duty claims that even with the need to collect this additional information, a typical transaction can be completed in less than one minute.

Scott Brenner of Recy Systems, Scottsdale, Ariz., says his company understands that getting the customer on and off the scale as quickly as possible is the goal at most scrap yards. "The workflow is set up so there are not additional steps for the scrap recycler or customer," he says of Recy Systems software.

With this goal in mind, systems often are set up to take a photo of the material using a stationary IP (Internet protocol) camera while the scrap metal is on the scale. The scale attendant then scans the customer’s ID, and optical character recognition is used to connect that image with the corresponding scale ticket. All of the data that correspond to a transaction is linked using a unique scale ticket number.

"If the peddler is happy, the yard is happy," says Ken Gruber, founder and president of Transact Payment Systems Inc., St. Petersburg, Fla. "We are trying to make it streamlined for the peddler," he says of the company’s point-of-service image capture application, JPEGger, which can be paired with Scrap Dragon, its touch-screen yard management system, or other software applications.

In the case of an inquiry by law enforcement, JPEGger can interface with a scrap yard’s video surveillance system to pull the footage that corresponds to the time stamp on the scale ticket in question, automatically editing the footage and saving it to a new location for review, Gruber says.

With the proliferation of regulatory requirements at the state and local level, software providers often work with recyclers to ensure the software they select can meet their regulatory requirements.

The first step to ensuring a software system can deliver in the area of regulatory compliance is talking with the supplier about the regulations affecting an operation. "It is important that a company recognize that the software provider doesn’t always know about the laws in their area," Kane says.

Generally, software designed for the scrap recycling industry and its related hardware are capable of tracking all of the necessary information the various regulations require. However, some tweaks may need to be made to screen interfaces and reporting capabilities, software suppliers to the industry say.

Kane says some states require scrap yards to capture the ID information of all the people in the peddler’s vehicle if the transaction is above a certain dollar amount, while other regulations stipulate that scrap yards can only accept air conditioner coils from licensed air conditioner installers. In such cases, the software provider may have to build additional screens to accommodate this information, he says. "Lots of rules have to be built in to make the new parameters for the screens."

Brenner says in many cases it is less a question of customizing the software to meet the varied regulations, but rather one of customizing the system’s reporting capabilities. "All of the data needed to comply with these laws we are already capturing," he says.

Perry Jacobs, executive vice president of Shared Logic, Holland, Ohio, says it is common for software providers to have to customize the export of data from a scrap yard to a specified database, such as LeadsOnline, based on regulatory requirements. "We’re having to change this constantly," he says. "It is not that difficult to do."

Duty says users of BuyBackPro’s software can modify or create new reports, enabling them to adapt to new reporting requirements within 24 to 48 hours.

BuyBackPro also enables live updates for BuyBackProSQL, "so if the law changes on Monday, they can live update the latest release on Tuesday as long as they are under contract with us for updates and support," Duty says.

"A customer can download and install our latest version any time," Paradigm’s Barlow says. "Our staff can also log into sites and perform this update for the customer. Most new features are included at the current cost to the customer as long as they have an active annual maintenance agreement."

Not only can software be tailored to the regulatory needs of a specific yard, it also is designed to meet the needs of operations of varying sizes, from small, single-location firms to large operations with multiple locations.

"The cost associated with the implementation of the software greatly varies by the size of the operation, the requirements necessary to meet certain regulations and the number of individuals they are looking to have trained to have access to the data," Barlow says.

Kane says scrap yards can pay from $10,000 to $65,000 for software and hardware that aids in regulatory compliance, depending on the operation and their needs.

21st Century Programming offers a range of products for yards of all sizes: ROM (Recycling Operations Manager) Express for the smallest yards that deal primarily with peddler traffic, ROM Recycler for mid-size yards and ROM Manger for large yards with industrial accounts, which also offers advanced inventory functionality and a bar code feature. "All are able to do electronic reporting no matter what state the yard is in," he says. All of these versions also produces a Public Purchase Profile report, which can be given to law enforcement in the case of an inquiry.

Duty says a compliance package with BuyBackPro would range from $10,000 to $35,000, excluding hardware.

Compliance packages with Shared Logic also start at $10,000, Jacobs says. "Our base package is $20,000 for a three-user system that includes accounting and inventory functions."

Gruber says scrap yards that are already using software at the scale house can spend from $8,000 to $20,000 to add additional functionality and hardware, including computers and IP cameras, that assist in regulatory compliance.

"Automating the whole yard is typically a 30-day process," Gruber says.

Installation times vary depending on the degree of networking involved and the number of cameras to be installed at the facility. Kane says installations at larger companies can take up to three months to allow for the necessary networking and the setup of industrial accounts within the system.

Among the benefits recyclers can realize from automating regulatory compliance is the ability to respond quickly to law enforcement requests.

Easy retrieval of data is a key benefit that software can provide recyclers.

"Not only do we store the data," Brenner says of Recy Systems, "we have the ability to gather that data in the case that law enforcement does request it." He adds that being able to access and report the necessary data is a critical aspect of regulatory compliance.

If recyclers fail to report their transaction information electronically, it could lead to fines. Jacobs of Shared Logic says, "In some cases if you don’t submit the information electronically, they can charge you up to $5,000."

Gruber adds that software aids in streamlining the scale transaction as well as the delivery of information to law enforcement. "The biggest surprise is that at the end of the day, they can go home. Everything is done at the scale. Everything balances at the end of the day," he says.

In addition to facilitating transaction retrieval and reporting, software can reduce data entry tasks.

Barlow says CompuWeigh from Paradigm Software can interface with numerous accounting packages, eliminating the need for duplicate data entry.

Recyclers may also be able to save on payroll by automating the data entry process, Kane says. One of 21st Century Programming’s clients was spending one to two hours per evening entering data for transmission to LeadsOnline. Using the company’s ROM software, this process takes 15 to 20 seconds.

According to suppliers, many scrap yards are looking at software to ease their regulatory burdens. "Legislation is driving the software market right now," Gruber says. "Most people don’t move to technology when times are slow. But when they implement software solutions based on compliance, they wonder why they didn’t do it years ago."