Five numbers every pawn shop should track
Short answer: to know whether your loan percentages are right, track five numbers per category: how many loans are redeemed, how long unredeemed items take to sell, what they sell for compared with the loan, where you lose money, and how often staff override the price.
1. Redemption rate
The share of loans that customers repay and collect. It differs by category, and it tells you how often you will end up selling the item.
2. Time to sell
How long unredeemed items stay on the shelf before they sell. Slow categories tie up money and space.
3. Sale-to-loan ratio
What an unredeemed item sold for, divided by what you lent on it. Below 1 means a loss on that item before costs.
4. Losses by category
Add up the items that sold for less than the loan, per category. One category usually explains most of the losses.
5. Pricing exceptions
How often staff lend above or below the suggested amount, and what happened to those loans. Frequent exceptions in one place can mean training is needed, or that the settings are wrong.
Use them together
A category with a low redemption rate, a long time to sell and a sale-to-loan ratio below 1 is lending too much. A category that always sells far above the loan may be lending too little and losing customers.
Start simple
A monthly table per category is enough. What matters is looking at the same numbers every month and adjusting the loan percentage from them.
How PawnMeter helps
PawnMeter gives every counter the same resale price from real sales, so the loans you review were made on the same basis. The loan percentage you adjust is a setting, applied the same way everywhere.
PawnMeter: Type the item. PawnMeter shows the resale price and a suggested loan, calculated only from what comparable items really sold for. When there is not enough data, it says so instead of guessing.
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