Hello again,
What would be the best practice to set up 5 L mini cask containers?
They need to be tracked as inventory as we buy them in so need to be listed there.
They need to be a taxable container type.
Ideally the cost of the container would pull through on the batch cost report.
Thanks,
Lewis.
Hi Lewis,
Thanks for your message. We’ve seen a number of customers using 5L mini kegs, especially in the last 12 months or so. The best way to manage these is to create an inventory item for the mini kegs, and add stock and price per unit as necessary.
Then you should set up a new smallpack container type to represent the mini kegs. We advise to go with smallpack as then you won’t need to enter container codes or have one-way barcodes generated for each racking instance. You can also associate the mini keg stock item to the container type to ensure that when you rack into a mini keg, you also consume one from your inventory. Once racked, the cost of the mini keg will be included in the batch cost report.
I hope that’s useful but please let us know if you need any further help.
Cheers!
James
Hi James,
Thanks for the swift reply.
I think we have the item set up as you suggest.
Can I ask now - in the cost report for a batch, under the Container by type section, will the cost of the container be included in the “Cost ex duty” cost? Currently the “Extra per non-returnable” is blank for us.
Can we drill down ourselves to see what makes up each lines cost?
Thanks,
Lewis.
Hi Lewis,
Good to hear the product is already set up as such, we’ve found that this is the best way to deal with mini kegs that blur the line between smallpack and keg, in terms of packaging formats at least!
With regards to your question, I think it might be useful to explain how we calculate costs in various locations in Breww:
Product cost report breakdown
This is an expected cost report which doesn’t look at actual batches of beer. Instead, it looks at the latest recipe version for the beer associated to the product and calculates the cost per litre for that recipe version (which you can get as well from the recipe itself by clicking the “Cost report” button), then it looks at the cost of the packaging items associated to that product and adds that cost to the per litre cost x the volume of the product.
So for the true cost of production, use the batch cost report. This is the accurate actual cost of how much that batch cost to produce, and also includes all the costs that come into the batch from other batches being merged in for example as well. It’s useful to be able to compare this to the expected cost report and the recipe’s expected cost report, in order to identify what / why the costs are different (i.e. usually it’s due to different quantities of ingredients being used than was planned in the recipe, or more packaging items used due to wastage than was expected etc.). The expected cost report is also useful for planning way in advance of a batch being brewed, before you have an idea of what the cost actually ended up precisely being.
Batch report
This is calculated by looking at the actual stock items added to that specific batch, both ingredients added to the beer and packaging items (or anything else) associated to a racking action / packaging event. So for example, to calculate the cost of a packaged 5L mini keg, Breww calculates the per litre cost of the beer, e.g. £1000 for 1000L of beer (£1 per litre). Then it looks at all 5L packagings and the total costs directly associated to those, e.g. £2 per keg → £2 + (£1 * 5) = £7 per 5L Keg.
Extra points
- We’re in the process of adding a full breakdown to the batch cost report, which will also present how figures have been calculated.
- Extra per non-returnable - This is actually an old feature that we will be removing soon as it doesn’t make sense with the way Breww now works with costs. It used to be a way of allowing users to add a nominal cost per non-returnable onto that display, but it is not at all used anywhere else and isn’t included in the actual costs on Margin Reports - instead 5L mini keg stock items should be added on the racking action and the costs will be taken from here. We will most likely remove this column and go with a cost breakdown to show how much was spent on which element of production and packaging.
I hope the above is useful to you but please let me know if you need anything further.
Cheers!
James