Sending & receiving beer from third-party packagers

Setting up 3rd party packager for the first time

To create a third-party packager in Breww, go to Production -> View -> 3rd party packagers and select New 3rd party packager. You can then set all details for the 3rd party packager as you would with a normal customer or supplier such as contact details, delivery address and more.

Sending beer for off-site packaging

To send your batch for off-site packaging, go to the Production menu, then click the Actions drop-down menu to select Send for off-site packaging. This will give you the option to select which vessel you are sending beer from. Once you click Next, you will be given the option to choose which third-party packager you will be using and the volume you are sending for this packaging instance. You can then also enter the volume lost (if any) and the reason.

Receiving products from off-site packaging

To receive the product you have sent for off-site packaging, go back to Production -> Actions -> Receive from off-site packaging. You will see the batch that you have sent for off-site packaging. Click next to choose which product you have received back. If you are receiving back a cask or keg product, you can manually select any of your own containers in addition to the number of non-returnables used.

Once you have selected the date and time when you received these back, you can then add any stock items used and this will then deplete the stock from your inventory and you can finalise your received product.

Items received back from 3rd party packagers are held in duty suspense.

Tracking your off-site packagings

The Off-site packagings list shows every batch you have sent to a third-party packager, how much has come back so far and how much is still to come. To open it, go to Production -> View -> Off-site packagings, or press Off-site packagings at the top of the 3rd party packagers list. Once you have sent beer for off-site packaging, Off-site packagings is also listed under Production in the main menu.

Each row shows the batch, the beer sent, the packager, when and how much was sent, when products were last received back and the total volume received so far. The Outstanding column is the volume sent, less everything received back and any volume recorded as lost, so a packaging that has been marked as complete always shows nothing outstanding.

Choosing which packagings to show

The list opens showing only the packagings that aren't complete yet. Use the dropdown next to the list title to switch between:

• Outstanding - packagings you are still waiting to receive products from
• Completed - packagings that have been marked as complete
• All - every packaging, whatever its status

You can also search by batch number, beer or packager, build your own filter with Edit filter (see Introduction to BrewwQL), and export the list with Export.

Receiving products from the list

The buttons at the end of each row open the batch, the beer and the packager. While a packaging is outstanding and its batch is in progress, there is also a Receive from off-site packaging button, which opens the receive form already filtered to that batch. Users with access to sales but not production can view the list, but can't receive products from it.

To see the off-site packagings for a single packager, open that packager and select the Off-site packagings tab.

Reporting on off-site packagings

To build your own report, go to Reporting, open the Build a new custom report section and click Raw data next to Off-site packagings in the Production group. The report starts with the batch, beer, packager, date sent, volume sent and whether the packaging is complete, and you can add, remove and filter fields as with any Raw Data Explorer report.

Managing contract packaging (when you package on behalf of someone else)

Contract packaging is a common practice in the brewing industry, and you can use Breww's contract brewing function to handle it through these steps:

1. Create the customer you are packaging for as a customer in Breww.
2. Create the customer's beer that you are about to receive for packaging, where you can also use the "Quick-create products" functionality to quickly create the products you are packaging for them.
3. Then create a new batch for that beer, select the Brew type as "Contract brewed in-house", select the customer you are packaging for, the volume they are sending to be packaged as the planned volume and select the appropriate duty option. You might also want to give the batch a prefix like "CP" to keep the batch numbers separate from your own batches.
4. Next, start the batch, which will move into your brew kit as if you were brewing it yourself, then immediately transfer it to the vessel you are storing the received beer in. This part doesn't exactly match what has happened in real life, as it hasn't actually moved through your brewing system.
5. Finally, you can package the beer as usual, add it to an invoice for that customer and send it back to them.
6. If you don't expect to package this beer for this customer again, you can then obsolete the beer and the related products.