Why Proper Inventory Management is Crucial for Wineries

Winery owners and operators have a great many things to monitor and manage, from vineyard conditions and production costs to marketing, sales, and distribution. Many of these logistical challenges can be made easier with the right point of sale (POS) software tools. One of the most important of these challenges is inventory management.  What can inventory management software do for your winery?
Monitor depletion tracking in real time.

Always know what you have on hand and what you don’t, to avoid outages (resulting in disappointed customers). Ensure, for example, that you have enough of the merlot that is next month’s wine club selection to fill all subscriptions. You should be able to track both finished products and ingredients used in production, as well as monitor costs and profits. With cloud-based inventory management software, you can check your inventory figures at any time and manage discrepancies between reported and actual inventory. You can set up alerts to notify you when stock levels reach a certain threshold, and you can even send reorders to your vendors directly from the inventory program.
Connect and manage all of your channels.

Today’s marketplace is omnichannel, and you need a single, centralized inventory management solution that coordinates data for all types of sales, including wholesale, retail, license, and export. It should integrate with your POS system to track in-house sales on the tasting room floor, online orders from your website or mobile ordering app, wine club subscriptions, and phone orders for large catered events such as weddings or reunions. Integration of online payments should be uncomplicated as well. If you have multiple locations, you should be able to view inventory for an individual location or all of them, and be able to transfer inventory easily between them.
Track the production history of each bottle.

Using inventory management software will help you eliminate the hassle (and potential for human error) of juggling complex spreadsheets. There are solutions that provide batch traceability and allow you to track each bottle through the entire process from grape to glass. You can also view profitability reports, gauging how well a particular category or individual product performed during a specified time period. And you can track total cost of goods sold and compile histories of product prices.
Create an audit trail. 

In the event of an excise tax audit by the U.S. Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, you’ll want a complete paper trail. The inventory management module of your POS system automatically and accurately records all of your transactions, ensuring regulatory compliance and reliable accounting data.
SalesVu offers a suite of POS apps and cloud-based services that will help your winery grow, including inventory management. And SalesVu products are backed by always-available customer support. Contact SalesVu for more information or to set up your free account and start experiencing the difference the right tools can make for your business.