Quickbooks for Brewery Accounting

[liebz15]

We opened our doors on September 18 and implemented Orchestrated Beer right away. While it is a wonderful and robust system, it is a bit too big and too expensive for our current needs. We have tentatively decided to use Quickbooks for our accounting needs. Does anyone have any feedback about using Quickbooks for brewery accounting and is there any add-on I should also look into?

Cheers!
Greg

[wlw33]

We use QB. It's ok for us (nano). Looking forward to upgrading to something more brewery-specific. Someone can probably back this up but Ekos is supposed to be pretty good and affordable.

[MatthewS]

EKOS with QB

In the past, I used QB and Excel for a brewery capable of 5000bbls. once the brewery hit 4000, it was clear a better system was needed.

I currently am in the permitting (just sent application in November), renovations and installation phase of our build out. We have decided to work with EKOS and integrate QB. We are 6-8 months away from opening, but I have already started inputting information into the EKOS system to see how I like it. Very easy and pretty intuitive. They have been very responsive with questions thus far. I like the look and feel of the system. Simple and clean design. Not clunky like others I have seen. Again.... we aren't open yet, so I am just working through the system now, but feel comfortable recommending this company.

Love to hear from other operating breweries who are using EKOS.

[ChesterBrew]

We haven't opened yet, but we're going with QuickBooks for our accounting. I am considering EKOS but am really sweating our cost overruns right now. We're a 3bbl setup, and using TouchBistro for our POS, so I'm seriously thinking of waiting to see if we have a problem before we add yet another fee to our monthly overhead costs.

[sopbeer]

Quickbooks

There is only one COGS line in the BOM at the header. This causes problems if you want to track and report on costs for individual products by line item. I logged an enhancement request 5 years, till today no such enhancement. You also can only track average costing. If you are trying to run a FIFO or LIFO inventory you are out of luck. You really can't get good cost detail reporting from quickbooks. If you are just looking to track inventory and simple costs then it works if you are looking for something more robust to be able to tell when products need to be phased out based on cost and performance then you will need to use an additional tool for analysis and will have a hard time exporting anything from quickbooks to help with this. They claim they have a manufacturing applications but they really don't.

Ease of use is there, cost to maintain is not too bad, when I can afford to switch I will. They could easily make it into a pretty good accounting system if they took the time to really figure out what they are missing. You can tell they don't have anyone on the staff with any advanced accounting skills directing the development or they would have never put the cogs line at the header, duh.

[Brewfist]

How much does Orchestrated Beer and Ekos charge? Is a subscription? Cloud based? I sent OB an email requesting this information in addition to available tutorials or seminars to learn the system. No response yet.

[bcockle]

How much does Orchestrated Beer and Ekos charge? Is a subscription? Cloud based? I sent OB an email requesting this information in addition to available tutorials or seminars to learn the system. No response yet.

Orchestrated has base pricing for their OnDemand (cloud based) product at: http://www.orchestratedbeer.com/onde...ewery-software

For the original question, Mary at Beverage Business Builders (http://www.beveragebusinessbuilders....uit-quickbooks) is a great resource when it comes to implementing and getting the most out of Quickbooks in a brewery environment.

--Brian