Hi Evan,
Thanks for posting! This is an excellent question, and there are a few points to this.
The purpose of the packaging approval function is to allow a quality control process to be implemented in Breww. This could be anything from an ABV reading range, colour, PH, or CO2. It could be a Yes/No or Good, Average, or Poor rating for a field of your own making for quality or sensory purposes, and you can also enter numeric readings with a target and record the actual result. Generally speaking, the packaging approvals function is a series of the same checks you would apply to all batches of a given beer, so it would not necessarily suit your request.
With the above being said, I do think you can achieve what you want to do in Breww, just with a couple of different areas. The first thing, I suppose, would be to cover working out what the team needs on packaging day. My suggestion here would be to make use of planned packaging in Breww. When planning or reviewing a batch after set-up, you will see an option to add planned packaging. This will tell the packaging team precisely what they should be preparing for. This might be that for Batch Number 20, you are planning to rack 20 x 24 330ml cans, 10 Firkins, and five pins of Beer A.
This tells the production team what to anticipate packaging on the day, but you can make this even more detailed by adding component stock items to your containers or products. I will give two examples of where you might use each.
- You may add component stock items to the container for a 330ml can to prompt Breww that each time I rack into a 330ml can, Breww should assign: 1 Can Lid and 1 Can.
- You may also choose to add component stock items to a product, such as a 12-pack of 330ml cans of “Beer A”, to tell Breww that each time I assemble a 12-pack of this product to assign 1 x 12-pack case
If you were to apply both of these above, then Breww would know that for each racking of a 12-pack of 330 cans of “Beer A”, it needs to allocate: 12 can lids, 12 cans, and 1 case for a 12-pack.
As your production team process rackings, they will be prompted as to which inventory items will be consumed and know exactly what components they need per container and product.
I hope all that makes sense, but let us know if you need any support. It may also be worth checking out this community feature request and the responses detailing the packaging approvals fields a little more, Sensory tracking & quality control (QC) records post packaging when batch is complete - #4 by luke.