Mintsoft warehouse OS integration

Hi,

Our third party warehouse uses Mintsoft to manage their operation. We would love if Breww had an integration with Mintsoft so that orders placed on Breww were automatically placed on Mintsoft too. This saves us on double handling the order and minimises risk of data entry errors.

I appreciate the full integration is not a small task, however at first this could just be one way and only SKU, quantity, address, delivery date, order number.

Features at a later date could be push through order modifications, error checking, order posting lists, but for now this can be done manually.

Cheers
Alex

Hi Alex,

Thanks for putting this forward. To be honest, I think a full integration (even just one-way) is something that’s unlikely in the short-term (unless a number of other customers say that they’re also looking for this) as this would be a huge project for us to build and maintain going forward.

However, you should be able to export the data you need from Breww to a CSV file, to allow simple importing to Mintsoft. Mintsoft has a guide on this available here.

Within Breww, you can export data by going to Reporting > (Raw Data Explorer) Products sold (order lines). Then you can choose fields like the following (and customise this if needed):

You can use a BrewwQL filter to select the orders required, for example, this could be done once per day with a date filter, or export orders over a certain order number and update this number each time you make an export.

You can save this report in Breww so that you don’t need to configure the fields every time and will only need to update your BrewwQL filter to select the right orders.

I hope this is helpful and if you need any other help with this please do let us know. Cheers.

We’d also be interested in integration with Mintsoft - for us the ideal would be one-way with stock data from Mintsoft importing back into Breww. Mintsoft is used by a third party fulfilment centre for us who have the live/master view of those stocks at that location.

Happy to chat through more or be used as a guinea pig!

Rich

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Agree, we don’t want to override the Mintsoft stock level as that is where the bulk of our stock is recorded.

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Breww pulling stock information from another platform is far easier said than done, to be honest. Breww knows so much information about ingredient traceability, costings, etc that another platform just informing us of changes is prone to problems - for example:

  • Mintsoft says “there are actually 100 more bottles of batch 123” - why? Was more produced from the batch in the first place, was there a customer return, etc?
  • Mintsoft says “there are actually 100 fewer bottles of batch 123” - why? Was less produced originally, did some get damaged or lost, etc?

The point I’m trying to make is that just knowing a stock level has changed doesn’t tell us why or how to handle costings. If you had a batch that cost you £100 to make and you produced 100 bottles, Breww would know that each bottle cost you £1. If 80 bottles are sold (so there are 20 left in stock), then we’re suddenly informed that there are actually 70 bottles, where did these extra 50 come from? If in fact originally 150 were produced, not 100, then we should adjust the cost per bottle down from £1 per bottle to £0.67 per bottle. But if these extra 50 were returned from a customer, we shouldn’t touch the cost prices.

What happens when Mintsoft says to us “There are 100 bottle of batch 456” and Breww has no record of a batch 456? What do we cost these at? Possibly the batch number was just a typo, or there’s a batch that’s been missed in Breww somehow. Again, what would be the right course of action for Breww here?

Our philosophy in Breww (to date at least) has been that Breww is always the source of truth and the centre of all knowledge. All our integrations (such as web-shop platforms), will have their stock levels replaced by what Breww says is correct (unless you disable stock syncing). Breww will never pay any attention to what another platform says is correct from a stock level point of view. As soon as there are two sources of truth, I can guarantee there will be conflicts, confusion and mistakes.

A Mintsoft integration in any form will be an extremely complex and substantial project. Some parts will be easier (such as us telling Mintsoft that there’s a newly placed order) and some will be more difficult (such as us being told by Mintsoft that our stock level is wrong).

Can I twist the whole idea on its head and ask… Why do you need Mintsoft in addition to Breww? What does Mintsoft offer you that you don’t see in Breww? Maybe Breww can add some missing features to remove the need for a Mintsoft integration altogether? Depending on your answers here, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this was less for us to build than building the integrations talked about.

I’ve found one other reason why we would really want an integration with Mintsoft, to your question Luke, the main one being we want orders we create in Breww to automatically populate into Mintsoft (I appreciate there is a csv work around).

As it stands we sell our beers in multiples of 6 bottles, up to 24 bottles. Customers can have 2x6 Lager, and 2x6 Session Pale. This goes into one case, so only uses 1x24 bottle box.

As it stands I am about to set Breww up so that every 6 pack sale through Shopify is going to have a 6 pack box associated with it. Clearly too many sales of the above order is going to put our packaging stocks way off whack.

Cheers

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I appreciate that one work-around here is to build out a SKU for every permutation, however that becomes a lot to manage.

The other reason it’s important is the source of truth for us is actually our warehousing partners. If they’ve got 100 in stock and it’s been verified, then we have 100 in stock, whether Breww says 95 or 105. Discrepancies come from returns as you’ve said, also breakages. Somehow it would be good to factor these into the cost in Breww, sounds a toughie though.

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Thanks, Alex, this is useful information, and we’ll give this some thought on how it could be implemented :+1:

Do your warehouse partners also use Mintsoft? Is this why the correct stock levels can be found in Mintsoft?

Adding to this thread - integration with any WMS should be a priority for order transactions (not inventory management) Mintsoft is a common WMS system and the action (without relying on CSV files) of transferring and getting updates on order processing, whilst isolating inventory, supported by regular inventory reconciliation outside of the integration would be a really useful facility

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