Keeping track of kegs

[Battenkill]

I've been in business now for almost 3 months and I'm starting to get calls to fill orders. I'm filling, selling, and self distributing about 25 kegs (have 45 in my inventory for growth). I'm using a spreadsheet (not very efficiently) and wonder if anyone can help me with a better way of keeping track of where my kegs are in and out. Thanks,

Steve
Battenkill Brewing Company
Poulsbo, WA

[Woolsocks]

Send PM with your email and I'll send you our (efficient) spreadsheet for this purpose.

[Moonlight]

Numbering your kegs is a good place to start. When I started following my kegs, I wrote the keg numbers on the invoices, and kept a list of which was washed when.

[Woolsocks]

That's pretty close to what we do. Each has a number and you track who has what number and when you last cleaned each one. Only way to screw it up is to send out a dirty keg, in which case you've got bigger things to worry about...

[Battenkill]

Thanks for the great spreadsheet. It fit perfect with my operation and is in use now.

[Woolsocks]

I've sent it out to a bunch of people, so I figured I'd just post a link here instead of continuing to send everybody individual emails:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11335021/ho...t%20Public.xls

It's a little complicated with array functions and stuff, but bottom line is when the keg goes out, we enter it into the main sheet. Each keg has a unique number. When a keg comes back, or gets cleaned, we record the number in the "kegs returned" sheet, which in turn updates the main sheet. Then with data filtering, we can easily see what kegs are out, where they are, and how long they've been missing. Once it's set up, it takes maybe 1/2 hour a week to keep it up to date.

Let me know if you have questions!

[Woolsocks]

The question of charging deposits has come up off-forum. Here's a response I just sent about what we do:

We decided not to charge deposits because people then feel entitled to keep the keg if they're willing to lose the deposit. If we charged enough deposit ($150) to cover the lost keg, we'd lose sales because people wouldn't want to lay out the deposit. Add in the accounting challenges, and it just wasn't worth it.

Most people pay for the keg with a credit card, so we make them sign a sheet authorizing us to charge their credit card for lost, stolen, damaged, etc. kegs up to $150. We've never actually had to charge anyone's card, but we've had to threaten it a couple times. Seems to work.

[ottonut]

except some states (like PA) require a deposit by law...