Breww’s stock labels are those generated in relation to a racking or packaging event. They don’t typically have a barcode on them for your own tracked containers and will only have a barcode on for non-returnable (NR) containers if they are printed after racking (and in relation to a specific racking).
For information on how to rack/package your beer, see Racking (packaging beer) in Breww.
Three ways to print stock labels
Before racking
This can be done via the Planned packagings tab on a batch or by using the button at Production → Actions → Rack (package) → Print labels pre-packaging. We recommend using planned packagings, over the other option here as adding your planned packagings to Breww has many other benefits and the process is simpler to follow.
These labels will never be able to show an NR number or barcode on them. This is because the NR numbers are not generated until you actually rack the beer.
Immediately after the racking process on a computer (not the mobile app)
After completing a racking on the website, you’ll be taken to a racking success screen. From here you can print the stock labels and these will show an NR number & barcode for the NR containers. This is possible here as in this case the NR numbers have already been generated for you.
Any time after racking (on the website or the mobile app)
Once a racking has been completed, you can go to the batch, then the Actions tab, and find the racking action in the list. If the racking has just been done, it will likely be the last row in the table. There is a print button here. As with the previous option, this will print labels with the NR number & barcode on them as again the racking has already been done and the numbers have been allocated.
Do you actually need NR barcodes on your labels?
You’ll need to decide if you want to track the specific NR containers that are delivered to customers or not (we have breweries who do this both ways).
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If you always want to “perfectly” track which specific container was delivered to which customer (and therefore have full end to end traceability from ingredient to customer), you will need to print the labels using one of the options after the racking has been completed. When completing deliveries, you will need to scan the container’s NR barcode to assign it to the delivery.
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If you are happy for Breww to automatically allocate your NR containers to your deliveries, on a first-expiry-first-out basis, then you don’t need to have the barcode on these labels. You can enable this setting in Settings → Delivery settings → Auto assign products → Auto assign non returnable casks and kegs. You can then use the “Auto assign” buttons in the deliveries area of Breww to let Breww pick an NR to use and assign it to the delivery.
If you wish, when using this method, you can check the automatically assigned container’s batch number and make sure to deliver one from the same batch. This way you can still maintain full end to end traceability from ingredient to customer, but it’s slightly more error-prone as barcode scanning isn’t used to reduce the chances of mistakes.
If you use your own tracked containers, they will always have their own unique barcode fixed to the container which will uniquely represent them and all 3 label printing methods are suitable.
If you would like to print a tracked container’s barcode on stock labels for tracked containers, you can do so by enabling the Display returnable barcode on stock labels option in Settings → Label settings.
We don’t usually recommend this, from a practicality point of view, as this means the correct stock label must be matched to the correct container after printing the labels, and the containers will have permanent barcodes on them already that can be scanned instead.