Owned & rented containers
For the purposes of understanding Breww's terminology, examples of Non-Returnable (NR) containers may include E-Kegs, Kegstar, MicroStar, PolyKeg, KeyKeg & others. Non-returnable containers are those you don't own yourself and don't need to collect when empty, so this includes rented and single-use containers. In this article, we'll use Kegstar as an example of a non-returnable container to aid with explaining the process. Breww is not necessarily affiliated with any of these brands in any way.
If you use both your own kegs and NR containers, then you first need to decide if you'd like to sell these as different products to your customers or as the same product (you can still choose which container to give the customer at the point of delivery if you use a single product).
If you use multiple brands of NR container, the same idea applies and you'll need to choose if you would like them to share a single container type (and product) or not.
Having separate products allows you to set different prices and keep track of the quantity in stock of each product rather than having a single "pool" of stock.
- If you wish to sell as different products - in this case, you'll need to create two container types, one for your own kegs and one for the non-returnable, e.g. "30L Keg" and "30L Kegstar" and then create a second product which points to the beer and the "30L Kegstar" container type.
- If you wish to sell as the same product - this is simpler as you need just the one keg container type and one product for the beer in that container. Breww will still know how many of this product you have in rented kegs and for your own kegs will know the exact keg numbers which are filled with the beer.
Once you've got the 1 or 2 products created (as per how you'd like it to work), you simply need to rack into them from the batch.
- First, go to the batch.
- Click Actions in the top-right.
- Choose Rack (package).
- Select the vessel and relevant product (make sure to choose the product that points to the "30L KegStar", if you go with the option to sell these as separate products).
- On the next screen, you'll have the option to enter or scan containers, but for non-returnable containers, this should be skipped completely.
- On that same screen, there will be an input box labelled Non-returnable quantity. Here you simply enter how many non-returnables you have filled.
- Continue to fill in the form and complete the process.
If you are dealing with more than two types of keg, you may choose to use a combination of both approaches. For example, you might treat your own tracked containers and Kegstar containers as a single product, and have another product for Keykegs and Polykegs.
In addition to all of the above, you may wish to keep track of which NR containers are from which brand. This is particularly useful if you're using the Breww integration with Kegstar/MicroStar and have chosen the single-product approach.
If you are using the single-product approach, then you will be sharing a container type, but the Kegstar/MircoStar integration determines which containers to include based on the container type. Following a great suggestion on our feature requests area - Allow specifying a "Non-returnable container brand" when racking NRs and filter on this in the Kegstar/Microstar integration - you now have the option to record which NR containers are from which brand when racking. This then allows you to configure in the Kegstar/MicroStar integration which brand should be included in the reports sent to Kegstar/MicroStar.
You can set up and manage your NR Container Brands from within the Containers area of Breww.