Itemised per-batch product costing report

[thomas-jack1]

Create a finance-focused reporting feature that provides itemised actual product costs on a batch-by-batch basis, allowing comparison of costs across different production and packaging routes.

Business Problem

Current product costing views can mask cost differences by averaging costs across products. Where the same finished product is produced at different production sites and/or packaged by different co-packers, finance teams require visibility of the true batch-level costs associated with each route.

Existing reporting provides some of the underlying data but does not consolidate it into a single finance-ready report.

Proposed Solution

Introduce a new report that displays actual production costs at batch level, grouped by product and showing production and packaging locations.

Suggested Report Fields

• Product

• Batch Reference

• Production Site

• Packaging Site / Co-packer

• Volume Produced

• Volume Packaged

• Ingredients Cost

• Materials Cost

• Total Actual Cost

• Cost per hl

• Cost per Unit

These fields are based on the required output identified during the support review.

Key Use Cases

1. Compare the actual cost of the same product across different production sites.

2. Compare costs between different packaging sites and co-packers.

3. Identify cost variances that are hidden by averaged product costing.

4. Support finance reporting, margin analysis, and operational decision-making.

5. Provide a single source of truth for batch-level cost analysis.

Expected Benefits

• Improved financial visibility.

• More accurate product profitability analysis.

• Easier comparison of internal production versus co-packed products.

• Reduced manual data extraction and spreadsheet work.

• Better decision-making around production and packaging strategies.

Priority / Justification

High value for breweries operating multiple production sites, contract packaging arrangements, or co-packer networks where actual costs vary significantly between routes. The feature would address a gap in current reporting capabilities identified by Breww Support.

[luke]

Thanks for such a clearly written request, Thomas - the field list and use cases made this much easier to scope. This has now been built and is live

The new report can be found at Reporting → Costs → Actual cost by batch and product.

This gives you one row for every packaging run, so you can see the true cost of each route rather than an average across products:

• Product, batch and batch reference
• Production site - or the third-party brewery, for contract-brewed and collaboration batches
• Packaging site or co-packer - so in-house and co-packed runs sit side by side
• Volume produced and volume packaged
• Quantity packaged
• Production cost, packaging cost and total actual cost
• Cost per unit
• Cost per hL - this uses your brewery’s own volume unit, so it typcially shows per hL for UK breweries and per BBL for US ones

You can filter by date range, by drink, and by production site, and export the whole thing to Excel or CSV.

Because a single batch can be packaged into several products, in different container types, and sometimes at more than one location, the report is built at the packaging-run level rather than one row per batch. That’s what makes a genuine cost per unit possible, and it means comparing the same product across two sites is a straight row-to-row comparison.

We also made some improvements to the existing Cost summary by batch report:

• You can now filter by date range instead of picking every batch by hand. Leave the batch selector empty and you’ll get every batch started in the range - much quicker for period-end reporting. Selecting batches explicitly still works exactly as before.
• Added a cost per hL column (again, in your brewery’s own unit).

We hope this is helpful, and thank you for putting this request forward.