Off-site packaging & stock locations not there yet

[alex-hamilton-jones]

Hi,

I think I’ve raised these in various feature requests but I’m still not happy with how the off-site packaging process is and it was one of the main reasons we moved to Breww.

I’ve just received a batch we sent off back, I don’t know the losses per SKU as they just take in X volume and we get back Y1,Y2 & Y3 with the losses shared over the 3. On receiving this back I’m now having to ascribe all the losses to one of the SKUs. There should be a box to tick to say ‘spread all losses equally over all the batches received back against the single volume sent, based on the proportional volume packaged’ if we don’t have the detail per SKU. I also want to put in batch codes at point of receiving stock.

Equally on packaging, I’ve created POs for materials to land with our co-packer. I receive these in, but yet this packaging isn’t available for use at the packager, it needs to be moved to our main site to then be consumed. We do not store labels and crowns here, we store them there. The beer is packaged there, the packaging stock is consumed there. Why am I having to juggle it all about and am not able to accurately track where things actually are?

The same with goods going out - we have multiple stock locations - some is stored in the brewery and sold here, some is stored in a warehouse and sold there. Why can’t I specify on an order where the stock is coming from, and then have it auto assign based on the stock there? Or even better, assign customers to be fulfilled from one location with an option to make it a one-off from somewhere else.

We end up having to hold all finished goods and packaging stock in Breww in our brewery, which is 95% incorrect and requires additional work on our behalf to keep on top of it, remember what is where and carry out regular stock checks that we could avoid.

Finally when looking at margin reports I cannot for the life of me work out why we cannot assign a cost of delivery to an invoice and then have it pull through. The delivery/distribution costs can be massive - it’s at least 10-12% and can be as high as 25% in some instances. To not be able to include these on a margin report is very unhelpful and causes us to have to do all this extra work in the background.

Have I missed anything obvious with the above or do I have to continue with my workarounds until these feature requests can be implemented?

Cheers

[luke]

Thanks for the message, Alex, and I’m sorry that there are some parts of Breww that could work better in your case.

We’re working hard on improving Breww every day, but as I’m sure you can see from the feature request list, ideas come in thick and fast. This is great as it helps us make Breww better for everyone, but it’s a battle for us to try and keep up with them. We try really hard to be transparent with everyone on where we are with feature requests, hence we make them all public. We’re working on increasing the size of our dev team to allow us to build features even faster.

To answer your points:

@alex-hamilton-jones

I’ve just received a batch we sent off back, I don’t know the losses per SKU as they just take in X volume and we get back Y1,Y2 & Y3 with the losses shared over the 3. On receiving this back I’m now having to ascribe all the losses to one of the SKUs. There should be a box to tick to say ‘spread all losses equally over all the batches received back against the single volume sent, based on the proportional volume packaged’ if we don’t have the detail per SKU. I also want to put in batch codes at point of receiving stock.

You could leave the loss volume as 0L each time you receive products back from the 3rd party packager and then when you’ve received all the products back, you can close the 3rd party packaging action and all remaining volume will be marked as lost for you. This can be done with this button next to the original action where the beer was sent for packaging:

You then don’t need to guess a loss volume for each receipt of products. This won’t cause a problem with cost reporting as this is all based on success volumes. For more information on this, see How are batch costings and WIP value calculated in Breww?

@alex-hamilton-jones

Equally on packaging, I’ve created POs for materials to land with our co-packer. I receive these in, but yet this packaging isn’t available for use at the packager, it needs to be moved to our main site to then be consumed. We do not store labels and crowns here, we store them there. The beer is packaged there, the packaging stock is consumed there. Why am I having to juggle it all about and am not able to accurately track where things actually are?

Breww uses the batch’s site as the expected site for stock items used. At the moment, you cannot link a 3rd party packager to a site, but I’m sure this would be possible. Breww knows about sites and knows about 3rd party packagers, but they’re not linked at all. The reason you need to move stuff around is just because the two bits of information are not linked. This looks to be related to some of Ability to select which batches to move / put on hold after 3rd party packaging + improvements on 3PP but slightly different.

I’ve added in a feature request on this specifically for you at Link 3rd party packagers to their own site to allow pulling stock items used in packaging from their site. Could you please give it a vote.

@alex-hamilton-jones

The same with goods going out - we have multiple stock locations - some is stored in the brewery and sold here, some is stored in a warehouse and sold there. Why can’t I specify on an order where the stock is coming from, and then have it auto assign based on the stock there? Or even better, assign customers to be fulfilled from one location with an option to make it a one-off from somewhere else.

This is very high on the list as it has lots of votes and we fully understand the importance of this. This will be available very soon. The related feature request is Limit available product count to a single production site (available stock per site)

@alex-hamilton-jones

Finally when looking at margin reports I cannot for the life of me work out why we cannot assign a cost of delivery to an invoice and then have it pull through. The delivery/distribution costs can be massive - it’s at least 10-12% and can be as high as 25% in some instances. To not be able to include these on a margin report is very unhelpful and causes us to have to do all this extra work in the background.

Again, this is a great suggestion, but it’s not yet possible. It’s also high on the list and we appreciate its significance of it, so we’re planning to get to this soon. The related feature request is Tracking shipping/delivery costs/charges paid for by us

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We’re working hard on improving Breww all the time and will continue to do so. I hope my comments are useful and please do bear with us while we get these other feature requests implemented.

We really value your business and ideas and it looks like they’re in line with other highly voted feature requests so we will be able to have the outstanding points resolved for you before long. And I hope the suggestion on your first point makes it easier to use, but if you need any more on that, please do let us know.

Thanks,

Luke

[luke]

@luke

@alex-hamilton-jones

The same with goods going out - we have multiple stock locations - some is stored in the brewery and sold here, some is stored in a warehouse and sold there. Why can’t I specify on an order where the stock is coming from, and then have it auto assign based on the stock there? Or even better, assign customers to be fulfilled from one location with an option to make it a one-off from somewhere else.

This is very high on the list as it has lots of votes and we fully understand the importance of this. This will be available very soon. The related feature request is Limit available product count to a single production site (available stock per site)

Good news @alex-hamilton-jones, we’ve completed this feature request now and so this is all now possible

Find out more in our launch announcement at:

All orders & deliveries are now linked to a fulfillment site, allowing for available stock per site to be calculated

This is a big one! We’re delighted to announce that we’ve launched the heavily requested Limit available product count to a single production site (available stock per site) feature request from our community and also Expand the "sites and locations" feature to handle consignment model Keep reading to see what you need to know… If you only have one site in Breww, nothing important has changed for you, but if you have multiple sites, please keep reading. In order for Br…

We’re continuing to work hard on improving Breww every single day, and I’m looking forward to sharing updates on your other great suggestions with you in the future.