Pallet management in Breww

[max]

Pallets allow you to group stock together, which can then be delivered and moved as one item, helping to streamline your stock management.

Assembling a pallet

Pallets can be assembled in two ways, either manually or automatically, when packaging (racking) new stock.

Manual assembly

To assemble a pallet manually, head to Production → View → Pallets, and click Assemble pallet. Select which location you are assembling your pallet into, and Breww will create an empty pallet for you.

To add stock to this new pallet, click Actions → Add items to pallet, and select the product, batch and quantity to add.

You can remove stock from a pallet as long as it’s not assigned to a delivery by clicking the Remove from pallet button next to the relevant stock in the pallet’s Contents section.

Assembly during packaging

If you are packaging stock and adding it to pallets as you go, Breww can automatically assemble your stock onto pallets for you. This means when you’re done, you can simply print your pallet barcodes and stick them onto the appropriate pallet.

To do this, simply fill in the Number of products per pallet field when going through the packaging process with the number of this product you will add to each pallet. Breww will then create the required number of pallets and add the stock that has just been packaged.

If you are scanning containers or reserved non-returnable numbers when packaging, Breww will assemble them onto the pallets in the order that they were scanned. This makes it easy to ensure that the contents of your pallets in Breww match exactly with the pallets you’ve assembled.

If you have scanned some containers and in addition entered a “Number of non-returnable containers packaged”, the new non-returnable (NR) container codes generated will be assembled on to the final pallets (i.e. Breww build pallets with scanned containers first, then assembles the NRs generated during the racking process onto pallets).

Printing pallet labels

You can print labels for an individual pallet by going to the pallet and clicking the Print label button or for all of your pallets by going to Production → View → Pallets → Actions → Print all labels. They can also be printed immediately after packaging directly onto pallets from the packaging confirmation page.

Pallet labels contain the barcode that can be used to scan the pallet onto deliveries and site transfers, as well as a summary of its contents.

Assigning a pallet to a delivery or site transfer

You can scan pallets onto a delivery or site transfer in the same way you can with containers and non-returnables. When scanning the container barcodes, simply scan the pallet barcode.

You can also manually assign a pallet to a delivery by clicking the Assign pallets button on the delivery page. This will show you all the pallets that could be used to fulfil this order.

Transferring a pallet between sites

As well as scanning pallets onto site transfers, you can manually move a pallet by going to Production → View → Pallets → Actions → Move pallets, selecting the pallets moved and the location you’ve moved them to.

Stock takes

For more information on how pallets affect stock takes, please see the Pallet section of the stock takes help guide.

[justin-hutton]

Hi guys, this looks great. Quick one on the pallet labels, is it possible for it to also have the BBE print on the pallet label? Or possible the ability to create custom labels for pallet labels like you can for kegs and small pack?

[tom-goodingham]

Hello @max !

Thanks for your hard work!!

I think I’m not grasping the function so well on this, could you explain a bit more how you envisage this being used in an ideal manner?

I think I can see a couple different ways it can be used, but just not sure what that intention was. Sorry.

[Langers]

Hi everyone.

We tried using this feature for the first time today. Unfortunately, we were unable to make use of it.

We’ve just racked off a a load of casks. We wanted to add them to a pallet as we stacked them and put them away. However we are unable to do so, as we have a weeks delayed release for conditioning, and so are unable to select the casks.

This next bit is probably for another thread, but carries on from the above (for us here anyway)… We test a random cask out of every single batch prior to release. Once we have tested it, the beer gets sold though our shop. To keep on top of stocks, we used to ‘move’ this cask to another location (ie ‘The Shop’). However, you cannot change the location of unreleased beer (This is where the similarity with the above problem comes in)

[this is the post i was on about @harry-wakeley ]

[jon-kyme2]

We can change the location of a whole racking of unreleased stock - at least within the same site. “Update Details” on the Delayed Racking release screen? But not a single container out of that racking, it seems. I guess you’d need a way of splitting a/some container/s out of a racking - presumably creating another racking - which you could then move…

Or, until things change, I guess you’d have to put your QC cask in a racking of its own at the outset. But then you’d have to release two rackings. Sigh.

Your other, main, point is a bit of a blocker though, isn’t it? Does the " Assembly during packaging" way not work for delayed releases?

[max]

Hi Justin - thanks for the suggestion here! We’ve added the Best before information to the pallet labels now We can certainly look at custom labels for pallets too. I’ve split that into a separate feature request so that we can track it separately that you can subscribe to, as it will take a bit longer to implement:

Custom pallet labels

The ability to create custom labels for pallets, as you can for products, container types and beers.

[max]

Hi Chris - ah apologies, this was an oversight on our part! Pallets should be fully compatible with delayed releases, and you were able to assign delayed stock to a pallet during packaging but not when assembling a pallet from existing stock We’ve resolved this now, so you should be able to add those conditioning casks to a pallet.

On your second point, I have good news! As part of the pallets feature, we made a number of improvements to the flexibility of delayed releases. Previously, a delayed release had to be fixed to a specific product and location. However, with the release of this feature, that is no longer the case - so you should be able to move that cask now to another location even if it is part of a delayed release!

[max]

Hi Tom - thank you and not at all

The aim is to improve the efficiency and ease of stock management and batch traceability for breweries that work with pallets.

As you can now group stock into pallets that can be scanned during site transfers and deliveries, this should either reduce the time spent scanning stock to the new location or, if you were previously moving stock on a FEFO basis with Breww’s auto-assignment, then it will improve the batch traceability and stock location accuracy by making scanning pallets a quick and easy and more traceable alternative.

It should also make stock takes easier for breweries who store their stock in pallets, as you only need to check that a certain pallet is in stock rather than needing to count the stock each physical pallet contains, add it all together, and then compare that to the stock take CSV.

In addition, palletised stock will never be included in the pool of stock available to auto-assign to deliveries. So, if on a delivery day, your team disassemble pallets to use the contents for the day’s deliveries, they should be able to record which pallets they’ve disassembled to make stock available for dispatch and then simply auto-assign (or scan the stock) from there, which again should improve batch traceability and stock control.

We’ve tried to make it easy as well to record when you “split” pallets by including pallets in the universal search (the search bar at the top of each page). So if your team ever split a pallet, either completely or by removing only a single item, it’s (hopefully!) easy to open the Breww app, type the code into that search and record what they’ve done in a maximum of a few clicks.

I hope that explains a few of the ideas, but if there’s something else you’re wondering about, please let us know! We fully anticipate adding more functionality/tweaks around pallets now that the feature is out in the wild and we begin to receive feedback on how breweries are using it/would like to use it to improve their processes. So please let us know your thoughts as you start to dig into it!

[tom-goodingham]

Thanks Max for the clarity on the subject!

[Langers]

Hi Max.

Firstly, thank you for the feature implantation/update.

As a further point of ease, the ability to scan the containers on to the pallets would be beneficial, rather than having to search/type it?

[jon-kyme2]

Langers, there’s a FR for this, here: Containers linking to pallets