CAR WASH CALCULATOR

The same car, every few weeks, at a different price.

A car wash is the odd one out: a long gap between visits and a ticket that swings from a basic wash to a full valet. The average is the figure that decides everything else.

Use calculator How it works

Calculate free, without an account. With JavaScript, the calculation stays in your browser; without it, we use our server.

THE CALCULATOR

Your wash, in numbers

Enter three estimates. See how many extra visits bring in €49 in sales.

The results appear here

Enter your numbers to see how many extra visits cover the €49 monthly fee in sales.

Based on the numbers you entered

Your estimate

Extra visits to cover €49 a month

at your average spend. This is sales revenue, before your costs and rewards.

See your sales breakdown

Revenue at your numbers, split by the customers who make it
Line	Paid visits per month	Revenue a month

Visits that cover the published fee, per location
Cost	Amount	Visits that cover it

What if some non-repeat visits became return visits?

Modelled estimate: a share of the non-repeat visits coming back, at your average spend
Share of non-repeat visits	Extra visits a month	Revenue a month	Contribution

If repeat customers come in more often

Illustrations: 5%, 10% or 15% relative growth in current repeat-visit volume, not percentage-point changes in repeat share.
More repeat visits	Extra visits a month	Revenue a month	Contribution

What this report assumes

Price: €49 per location a month, €99 one-off assisted setup, so €148 for the first month of one location. As published, including VAT.
Revenue is what the visits you typed spend. It is not profit: the reward, a discount, card printing and every other extra cost of running a programme are not in the model.
Your contribution margin is the only place those costs enter, and only at the percentage you chose. Anything you left out stays out.
The two blocks above are modelled estimates. They show what a change in visits is worth if it happens; they are not a forecast, and nothing on this page promises it will.
One location. A second location means a second fee and its own customers.

Loyalty break-even report

Printed from the Autivia loyalty break-even calculator. Figures are the visitor's own entries; the revenue lines are turnover, not profit.

Opens your browser's print dialogue with the report as printed here.

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Calculate without JavaScript

Submit your numbers with the Calculate button above to get server-rendered results. Your inputs are sent to our server for that calculation. The worked example below uses the same formulas.

The formulas

Revenue for the month	visits × average spend
Revenue from repeat customers	visits × repeat share × average spend
Revenue from everyone else	visits × (1 − repeat share) × average spend
Visits that cover the monthly fee	€49 ÷ average spend, rounded up
Visits that cover the first month	€148 ÷ average spend, rounded up
Visits that cover the fee at a margin	€49 ÷ (average spend × margin), rounded up

A worked example

1,000 visits a month, an average of €20 a visit, 30% of them from repeat customers, and a contribution margin of 60%.

Revenue a month	€20,000
Of that, from repeat customers	€6,000
Of that, from everyone else	€14,000
Visits that cover the €49 monthly fee	3
Visits that cover the €148 first month	8
Visits that cover the €49 fee at a 60% margin	5
Visits that cover the €148 first month at that margin	13

Bringing back 1%, 5% or 10% of those 700 visits from everyone else would be 7, 35, 70 extra visits a month, or €140, €700, €1,400 at €20. Modelled, not promised.

How the programme works

WHY IT IS DIFFERENT HERE

A wide spread makes the average do all the work

If your prices run from one figure to ten times that, the average is what decides how many washes cover the fee.

That is worth checking rather than assuming. A car wash whose takings are mostly basic washes has a low average and needs many of them to cover the fee; one whose takings lean on full valets covers it in a handful. Same bay, same month, very different answer.

It also changes the reward. A free basic wash after a set number of visits is cheap to give away and easy to understand. A free valet is worth more than several months of the fee, which is why most car washes reward the frequent, small purchase rather than the occasional large one.

Where the numbers come from

Three figures from a till or a bay counter, and what each of them changes.

What to count at a car wash, and why it moves the result
What to count	Where it comes from	What it changes
Paid washes in a month	Your till or bay records for one normal month	The month the fee is measured against
Average spend per wash	Takings divided by washes, across every wash type	How many washes cover €49, €99 and €148
Repeat cars	Registration data, season tickets, or your card if you run one	The repeat revenue line, and the base for the uplift scenarios
Costs you count	Water, chemicals, electricity, staff hours, site costs	Only the optional margin, which raises the washes the fee needs

HOW TO USE IT

Three things to do with the answer

Start with the average, then check it
Run the calculator on the average and again on a typical basic wash. If the difference in break-even surprises you, the mix of wash types is the thing to work on, not the fee.
Reward the wash, not the valet
A free basic wash after a set number of visits costs you the water and the minutes. A free valet is a different order of gift, and it is the one that eats the fee.
Give the stamp per wash, not per visit
One paid wash is one stamp. Two cars in one trip are two washes, and a repeated scan in a short window is refused rather than counted twice.

ASSUMPTIONS AND LIMITS

What this page does not claim

The revenue lines are turnover, and at a car wash the water, chemicals and electricity for each wash are real costs that a revenue comparison will not show. Supply a contribution margin if you want them counted.

The recovery and uplift blocks are modelled estimates, labelled as such. They show what a change in visits would be worth if it happened; they are not a forecast of your bay.

Car wash questions

Can the card work without a till integration?

That is how it works: staff scan the customer's card from a phone at the bay or at the payment point. Autivia does not connect to a till or payment terminal, so nothing about your setup changes.

Most of our customers are passing trade. Does a card make sense?

A car wash on a main road has a lower repeat share than a local one, and the calculator will show that as a large non-repeat group. Whether a card is worth it depends on how many of those cars come back, which is what the repeat line measures over time.

We already sell a season ticket. How does that fit?

A season ticket and a loyalty card do different jobs: the ticket is paid up front, the card rewards frequency. Running both is possible, and the card's own numbers stay separate from the ticket's.

What is your average wash?

Tell us your wash types and the mix between them, and we will set a reward that does not cost more than the visits it brings.

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