Accounting software

[Peti]

Just as I was about to buy Quickbooks, I head that its not the best accounting software for manufacturers. What software have you all found best for a packaging brewery? Why? I appreciate any guidance you can provide. Thanks.

[Triple C]

I'd like to know as well

[Chicago Brew Supply]

While QB is not ideal for manufacturing because it's not an activity based accounting system, it works well enough for manufacturing (I use it for a modest injection molding business).

Basically, you will treat your recipes as a Bill of Material (BOM). This will allow you to keep track of how much grain and hops you use. You could also assign labor to the BOM. For instance, if a person spends an hour milling, two hours cleaning, etc. you could keep track of that also. the difficculty comes in when you want to treat your brewhouse or fermenter as a cost center. In other words, if you want your processing equipment costs reflected in every batch then you need to determine an hourly/daily/monthly/etc rate for your brewhouse and a rate for your fermenter. Not sure if it's worth all the effort.

[Mad-Brewer]

We use All Orders by Number Cruncher. I can change BOM every time we build/brew, and have multiple warehouses with individual costing.

[S.Foster]

Try Orchestrated Beer. The software has EVERYTHING you need for accounting plus a ton more. Based on SAP platform you cant go wrong with it. It's pricey and you have to purchase the appropriate licenses with it. This is the one program you'll ever need or want.

[Peti]

All Orders by Number Cruncher is simply an add on to Quickbooks correct? Thanks for your help and it is looking like Quickbooks is still the way to go. Anyone else?

[beermkr]

M.Y.O.B.

Works really well and tracks everything once you get it set up.

R/

[Ken_H]

Erp

I have a background in information management, so my inclination is to steer towards an ERP program like an SAP model, in this case, Orchestrated Beer. OB is a customized SAP deployment specifically for breweries.

Anyone out there using it? Its expensive, but its also comprehensive and robust. Much more robust than something like quickbooks. I just want to get a feel for how many breweries out there are really concerned about information management and enterprise planning.

Thanks

Ken

[GlassBrass440]

When you guys say expensive for Orchestrated Beer, how much are we talking about? $1,000? $5,000? $10,000?

[S.Foster]

GlassBrass440

$10k for the software and the different licenses needed for key personnel are priced accordingly to departmental requirements, i.e. Financial, Operations, Production, etc etc. They range anywhere from 3,400 to 1,500 as I recall but dont quote me on that but thats the general price range. This program is SAP based and it does everything for breweries (as it is specifically geared to breweries). This program produces TTB APPROVED printable PDF or emailable TTB Brewer Reports -in minutes- based on your production inputs and it also produces the monthly or quarterly reports as well! Very impressive software. It's worth the money.

http://www.orchestrateam.com/beer2

http://beer.orchestrateam.com/

[kererubrewing]

Xero with Brewery Management Software?

Is anyone using Xero with a BMS package?

[nateo]

Before you pick a software system, you need to decide what you need to do with it. Are you just using it for in-house cost management? Do you need it for external reporting (taxes, investors)? Do you need it to spit out automated reports? All of the above?

Generally speaking, the less you know about accounting, the more heavy-lifting your software has to do. The more your software does, the more expensive it is. How much does it cost to take a few accounting courses at your local college? Any software you buy is only as good as the person plugging in the numbers.

Some thoughts about a few accounting programs:
SAP - incredibly powerful, but rarely used to its full advantage in the US. If you're Deutsche Telekom and you want to define 20,000 cost centers, SAP's the only way to do it. Probably overkill if you're a small brewery, unless you have an irrational precision fetish like I do. OB is pricey, but it does all the heavy-lifting for you.

Excel - really cheap, incredibly flexible and powerful (if you know what you're doing). It's impossible to use for accounting if you don't have a solid grasp of the underlying principles. It's not intuitive at all.

Gnucash - It's free, and it does basically the same thing as Quickbooks, with a few problems. It doesn't allow multiple users to work on the same files concurrently though. It's also a lot clunkier than QB. QB is easy to use with basically no understanding of accounting. Gnucash also doesn't have any integration with tax-prep software, while QB does.

[revnatscider]

How about Orchestrated Beer's On Demand offering? Experience? Pricing?

[BH Tavern]

Bump

Anyone have pricing on OrchestratedBeer ondemand? I really despise when software companies aren't upfront with pricing.

[poltz]

Software

S.A.P. we always say that means...Send Another Payment. Be careful that the on-going license costs don't add up to more than it's worth. That stuff is for the big boys, with budget space. Their reply to what can it do.... "depends". "What do you want it to do?" It is tweekable to what you need....but for a price....

Good luck....