Production Software

[rolstonb]

Hi there!
We are a growing brewery and looking to build upon our infrastructure. I am looking for recommendations for a brewing production software. Or any suggestions/advise on hiring someone to build one for us.
I would like it to maintain a recipe list, track brewsheets/brewing process, auto populate the TTB & excise reports. A perk would be to track inventory, and able to be used on an iPad.

The ones I have looked at so far are: Orchastrated Beer (very high monthly fee), BeerRun, and BrewSoft.

Any recommendations or advise would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Byron

[Dailybeer]

Production Software

We are close to purchasing software. We think we will be at 12,000 BBLs next year. We are have used whiteboards, QuickBooks and lots of spreadsheets until now.

Anyone with experience please pipe up or contact me directly.

Many thanks & many cheers,

Jeff Schrag
Jschrag@mothersbrewing.com

[nateo]

First, you probably need at least a standard-based costing system, which I'm not sure BeerRun or Brewsoft are capable of. I know SAP is capable of that.

BeerRun has a weird way of figuring costs. It looks like it uses actual costing for direct materials, and if there is a variance, it just overwrites the new qt or price to be the new standard. So it doesn't look like it's compatible with standard costing and variance analysis. I might be wrong, but it's something I'd look into before I pulled the trigger.

I'm also not clear on how it incorporates direct labor or overhead.

There isn't enough info about Brewsoft on their website to tell how it works.

Orchestrated Beer is a SAP-based ERP system. I know that it can handle standard costing, and much more. Yes, it costs more, but you get what you pay for. The more heavy-lifting you want a program to do, the more you have to pay for it.

It seems to me there's a "value gap." I don't see how BeerRun or Brewsoft are that much better than just using Excel and Microsoft Project, or some other open-source management software.

Excel is incredibly powerful, and is the most widely-used program for these types of applications. The learning curve is pretty steep though, and it takes a lot of skill with it to get reasonable results. There are plenty of people you could hire to set up some awesome Excel sheets for you, if you don't have the skills, although if you have the skills to set up the sheets, you'd probably be more capable of using them effectively.

So I guess my advice is: it's not a good idea to spend a few thousand to get the wrong software, when you could spend $10k to get the right software. Make sure the software actually meets your needs.