Deliveries & Distribution

13min

Breww's deliveries section allows you to track your pending deliveries, organise them into routes, prepare which items need to be loaded onto vans and take signatures on the road.

It's also the home to your collections, courier deliveries and POS fulfilments.

Delivery areas

A delivery area in Breww allows you to define an area of the country to have orders automatically scheduled for the dates that you deliver to that area - ideal if you deliver (some or all) orders on your own vehicles, and for example, go North every Monday & Wednesday and South every Tuesday & Thursday. You define the area(s) and which days of the week you visit each area (and the frequency) and Breww will handle the rest for you - saving you valuable time and reducing mistakes.

They can be defined by drawing a polygon (area) on a map, or by using the first half of the postcode (UK only). The first half of a UK postcode is known as an "outcode", e.g. the outcode for AL1 1AA is AL1.

Managing deliveries

Breww will organise your deliveries by the delivery date and comes with a number of simple yet powerful features to help manage deliveries for each date.

To begin you will need to set up your vehicles in the vehicle section of deliveries. Once set up you can take full advantage of Breww's AI routing and delivery allocation engine.

On a delivery date, simply click the Breww AI route optimisation button, and Breww will allocate your deliveries to your available vehicles and then create optimal routes for each vehicle.

Manual changes can easily be made to both the delivery allocations and the vehicle routes. Just click on the desired vehicle's icon next to each delivery to override Breww's optimised allocation, or to change route order select the Vehicle Run on the top bar and click Enable manual sorting .

If a vehicle is making multiple runs that day, you can specify that by clicking the arrows in the "Run" column to designate the run number.

Assigning items to deliveries

Before a delivery can be completed (or dispatched), you need to tell Breww which specific items are going to be delivered. Breww knows from the order what is expected, in terms of the products, and you'll need to assign specific containers, batches of beer, etc to match the order.

If you have your own tracked casks/kegs, you will need to assign these manually, this allows Breww to know which specific cask/keg was delivered to the customer and, therefore, can help you collect this from the customer again when it's empty. For all other items, including, non-returnable casks/kegs, smallpack (cans/bottles) and stock items (e.g. merch), you can either assign these manually to each delivery or let Breww automatically assign them for you.

You can enable or disable auto-assignment for different types of product in Settings -> Delivery settings -> Auto assign products. This allows you to set your defaults for all newly scheduled deliveries.

On a per-delivery basis, you can also choose to override your account defaults for auto-assignment by enabling or disabling this on the main page for the delivery and using the buttons shown.

Assigning tracked (returnable) casks or kegs to deliveries

Selecting a delivery will allow you to view full details of the delivery and assign specific casks/kegs to the delivery where required and handle container tracking. There are two common methodologies for handling containers on deliveries:

  • Assign individually before leaving the brewery - You assign all deliveries/orders to the specific containers before leaving the brewery. Breww will generate barcode labels that can be fixed to the containers at the time, meaning there's no messing around with labels whilst on the road or at customers' addresses. The trade-off is that (depending on how full the van is) you'll need to organise putting the containers to be delivered first onto the van last. Two containers of the same beer are now specific to the customer and the correct one will need to be delivered.
  • Assign containers at the point of delivery - You simply put the right number of each container onto the van before leaving the brewery and load them such that you can access some of each at all times. At the point of making the delivery, you assign any suitable container and apply the label then. Or you can do a combination of the two options if you prefer.

Assigning casks/kegs to deliveries can be done by picking them manually from the list, using our mobile app for Apple iOS and Android or by using our USB/Bluetooth barcode scanning feature (find out moreο»Ώ ). Smallpack (cans/bottles) can be assigned manually if you want to manage this yourself or you can use our FIFO auto-allocation.

Once the delivery vehicle has left the brewery, the deliveries should all be marked as "dispatched" as the beer duty becomes payable at this point (in the UK). Finally, the delivery can be marked as completed. If the delivery fails for some reason (e.g. there was no one there to accept delivery or the beer spoiled on-route) you can mark it as failed and your beer duty return will be updated accordingly. Don't worry, Breww won't have you paying unnecessary beer duty.

Assigning smallpack in different pack sizes

Breww can automatically handle converting your stock between different pack sizes, for example, building a 24 pack of bottles from two packs of 12 bottles. This is known as "Assembly" and "Disassembly", and can be configured to be done automatically, or left for you to do manually, in your delivery settings. For more information on this, please see Product assemblyο»Ώ.

Assigning mixed packs

Mixed-pack products (these contain multiple different beers, such as a sample box) are always automatically assigned by Breww. It's not possible for you to choose which specific mixed-pack will be assigned to a delivery. You can, however, choose to assemble these manually to you know which individual can/bottle stock was used, or you can let Breww do this for you automatically.

Mobile app for Apple iOS & Android

Our mobile app relies on the deliveries having been organised into runs (assigned to a vehicle) and then allows for simple on-the-road management, including:

  • Viewing the next delivery to make and which deliveries have already been completed
  • Launch navigation to the delivery address in your choice of Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps (platform and app availability dependent)
  • Click to call the customer
  • Cask, keg & smallpack beer assignment with built-in barcode scanner
  • Stock item assignment
  • Signature capture
  • Delivery completion

Collections & POS fulfillments

Breww can also handle customer collections of their orders. Simply mark the order as a collection instead of delivery and the date it's expected to be collected. On the deliveries dashboard, you'll be able to see any pending collections too. Other than these being grouped separately from your other deliveries, these work in the same way as normal deliveries with regards to stock assignment.

Courier orders

You can mark deliveries as courier delivered as well as allocate which courier will be handling the delivery. You can choose which couriers you use in you delivery settings. Having allocated deliveries to specific couriers, you can generate pick lists and even export all the address data to a CSV to import into your courier's address label generation tools to save manually entering addresses.

Breww integrate with a wide range of couriers, allowing you to print labels directly from Breww. For more information, please see our guide:Integrating couriers for shipping label creation & tracking of deliveries within Brewwο»Ώ.

Delivery driver manifest

This is a simple printer-friendly PDF showing all deliveries on a day/area, the customer names & addresses and the items. There's also an aggregate items list showing the total quantity of each product on the manifest.

On-screen signature collection

On-screen signatures can be collected using a touchscreen device like a mobile phone or tablet. Delivery drivers can collect signatures on the go to be securely saved against the delivery note and/or the order. The option will be shown once the delivery has been marked as successful.

Payment on delivery

Once a delivery has been completed, the driver can record that they have received payment (cash or otherwise). This will be recorded against the order and delivery (and synced to your accounting platform if you use one of our partners). We have a report to allow easy payment reconciliation once a delivery driver has returned to the brewery.

Barcode scanner assignment

Our recommended solution for barcode scanning is to use our mobile app (see above), however, if you prefer to use a USB/Bluetooth barcode scanner, we also support this process. Please see our dedicated guide to Label printing and barcodesο»Ώ in Breww.