Stock takes
Breww has an advanced CSV stock take (also known as a stock count) function, that allows you and your team to perform accurate and auditable full counts of all your stock whenever you need. The stock take process will update your stock levels to those you specify in your CSV, whilst leaving a clear trail of changes throughout the process.
The process is considered as a "wall-to-wall" stock take, where everything is counted and confirmed in one go, while no changes are made during the process. If you simply need to make a few adjustments, please use the adjustment tools on stock items and products instead of this process.
Although a good knowledge of programs such as Excel, which allows editing of CSV files, is not required, it can be very useful at speeding up the process - especially for businesses with large quantities of stock.
We highly recommend that you avoid all stock changes, including dispatches, racking, adjustments, or movements, from pressing start to the file upload of the stocktake. Treat this as a βlockdownβ for all stock transactions except assigning stock to orders where stock does not require movement. Ensure all stock that has left the building for delivery is marked as dispatched before starting. For more, see our FAQs below.
To begin a stock take, navigate to Products -> Tools -> Stock takes -> Start stock take. There, you will have the option of choosing which site you are performing your stock take. You can select multiple sites if you are performing a simultaneous stock take at multiple sites.
Next, select whether you are performing a stock take of your Stock items or Products:
- A Stock item stock take will allow you to perform a stock take of all of your ingredients, packaging materials and any other item in the Stock items section.
- A Product stock take will allow you to perform a stock take of all of your packaged beers found in the Products section.
After choosing your stock take type, you will be taken to your stock take summary page. This will contain a file to download, containing all of your current stock at the chosen sites. Now we simply need to update it and re-upload it to Breww.
You don't need to do both types of stock take in quick succession, although this is common practice, especially at "year-end".
Next, you will need to update the CSV with your correct stock levels. Each row contains details about the stock and has a quantity column at the end. The process differs slightly depending on the stock take type (Stock Items or Products), so that's been broken down below.
For each row:
- if the quantity is correct, leave it untouched
- if the quantity is wrong, update the quantity column
- if the stock you have doesn't appear, add a line - filling all applicable columns
From just these actions Breww will calculate whether the stock has moved, been created/increased, or been reduced. When updating a line, you should usually only update the quantity column. The exception is when moving stock completely to another location, in which case you can simply update the site and/or location columns.
The Products stock take is slightly more advanced than the Stock items stock take. This is because, as you will know from using Breww, all packaging events are either associated with a returnable cask/keg, or they are assigned a unique ID called a Non-returnable number.
This means that it is possible you will discover stock labelled with a non-returnable number that Breww does not think you have. In this situation, Breww will produce a new non-returnable number for this extra stock, rather than use the old number.
This means that the process is as follows. For each row:
- if the quantity is correct, leave it touched
- if the quantity is lower, update the quantity column
- if the quantity is higher, create a new line underneath and put the additional quantity in the quantity column. If it has a non-returnable number, remove it from this new line, and we'll provide you with a new one at the end. (Note: If you have chosen to Group non-returnable containers you can simply increase the quantity column for non-returnables)
- if the location is incorrect, reduce the quantity on the existing line, and create a new line with the correct location and quantity in that location (or if it has all moved, simply update the location and site on the row).
- if the stock you have doesn't appear, add a line - filling all applicable columns, but always leaving Non-returnable number blank.
If you have been using the pallets functionality, your stock take will also include a row for each pallet in stock. The process for managing pallets in a stock take is exactly the same as above, except it isn't possible to increase the stock of a pallet. If a pallet is removed in a stock take, its contents will also be removed.
Once you have your updated file, you will need to upload it to Breww from your stock take detail screen. Breww will perform a thorough validation of the file before pre-processing it.
Once processed, you will be presented with all changes that are about to be made, so you can either approve them or upload an alternative file if you realise a mistake has been made.
Please review this to make sure you are happy - any mistakes cannot be undone once confirmed.
In the below example, the stock of Citra has been reduced by 16.5842kg.
If you are happy, simply click Confirm stock take import, and Breww will update your stock! If the changes to be made aren't what you anticipated, click Cancel stock take import and review your file and this help document to make sure changes were made correctly.
For businesses with lots of stock, you will find your Products CSV file, in particular, may have lots of lines. Unfortunately, this is the nature of auditable "wall-to-wall" stock takes. We'd recommend breaking up the CSV file into shorter files and assigning a location or section to each person or team. Then, once all are complete, someone with some Excel experience will easily be able to put them back together into a single before uploading it to Breww.
The rule of thumb is that you shouldn't change your stock levels between taking the export and importing the result of your count, as this might result in things becoming difficult to track. Breww will always update your stock to match the import file at the point you import it, so in theory, you can add or remove stock in Breww between the export and the import as long as the import also reflects this.
You can also do the two separate processes of "Stock" and "Products" on different days if that helps with the logistics of completing the process in one go.
The following are the key actions that affect stock levels (and if they affect the "Stock" or "Products" process):
- Updating the status of an inventory receipt to "Added to stock". Will only affect "Stock", not "Products". (Other statuses of inventory receipts and all statuses of purchase orders will not affect stock levels).
- Manual changes to stock levels on stock items or products. This will affect whichever stock take process is appropriate to the item edited.
- Marking an order (delivery) as dispatched. May affect both processes, depending on the items on the order.
Things like placing an order (but not dispatching it) only affect the available quantities of items, not the actual quantity that you have, so these can continue to happen as normal.
If you remove an entry from the stock take file completely, this will be processed in the same way as if you had set the quantity to zero - the stock will be removed from Breww when the file is processed.
What if I add a tracked container or non-returnable to a site through my stock take that's currently at a different site in Breww that isn't part of my stock take?
For example, let's say we have a tracked container, F0001, which is physically at Site A, but in Breww, it is at Site B. During a stock take of Site A, we include that F0001 is on-site and upload the CSV. Even though Site B isn't part of our stock take, Breww will still recognise that F0001 must have been moved and move it from Site B to Site A.
Not yet, sorry, but there is an open feature request for adding this functionality at Improve stock take to allow a web (non-CSV) based solution. If you'd like to see this too, please can you vote for that feature request to help push it up the priority list?
Breww will look through the following options to try to find a sensible expiry date to use for any stock found in a stock take. As soon as an option finds a result, it will be used an subsequent options will be skipped.
- If you are simply increasing the stock level of something already in stock (only applicable to smallpack), then the existing expiry date will be used.
- If your have already racked the container type on the beer batch in question already, Breww will use the same expiry date as that stock had. If there are multiple dates, Breww will pick on at random.
- If you have racked anything on the beer batch at all (regardless of container type), Breww will use the date this happened as a "racking date" and will determine the expiry date based on the number of weeks for the container type (as set on the beer) from on this racking date.
- If the batch is complete (and nothing was racked), Breww will assume the racking occurred on the date the batch was completed and add the number of weeks of expiry from this date.
- Finally, if none of the above options find a date (i.e. the batch is not complete yet), Breww will assume the racking occurred today and add the number of weeks of expiry to determine the expiry date.
Part-filled products are not currently part of the CSV stock take process. This is by design and not something that we plan to change in the short term. The problem is that if they are included in the file, Breww thought you had one, and you increased this to two, Breww couldn't know how full the extra one was.
Most products are a simple quantity, but these need to know a fill level too, which is out of the scope of the CSV stock take tool. We appreciate that they could have been included and restricted to just being reduced in quantity, but this presents quite a few complications for us and we opted to just keep them completely out of the stock take tool. For now, these will need to have their stock levels manually adjusted.