September was a big month for Breww.
Alongside updates across production, stock, sales and deliveries, we delivered 42 feature requests backed by 427 community votes, across 13 product announcements.
From helping everyone on the brewery floor know what they’re doing that day, to keeping batch readings on schedule, working through customer call lists and making stock takes less of a headache, there’s plenty to get into.
Here’s what’s new...
Plan who does what in the brewery
When there’s a lot happening across production, knowing what needs doing is one thing. Making sure everyone knows who’s doing it and when is another.
Breww can now turn your production plan into assignable tasks for your team. Tasks come from brew sheets, transfers, packagings, batch readings, and cleaning and maintenance records, giving each person a clear view of what they need to get through that day.
Managers can see work across the whole team, including anything overdue or still needing an owner, while each team member gets their own production day showing just the jobs assigned to them.
You can also set rules for who normally handles different types of work, with staffing plans available for holidays, time off or more varied shifts. So when the person who usually knows who does what isn’t around, the plan doesn’t have to disappear with them.
And because tasks are connected to the work itself, they mark themselves as complete when that work is recorded in Breww. No doing the job and then remembering to tick it off somewhere else.
See how assignable production tasks work
Keep batch readings on track
Not every vessel needs the same readings at the same time.
Batch readings are now recorded against the vessel they were taken in, with rules determining which readings each vessel needs and how often.
That means the readings can follow what’s actually happening to the beer in each vessel, rather than treating every part of a batch in exactly the same way. It’s particularly useful for split batches, where readings can stay with the vessel they actually came from.
Explore the batch readings update
See when costs drift from target
Ingredient and packaging costs move. Now it’s easier to see when the cost of producing a beer moves with them.
You can set a target cost for each beer, including liquid and packaging costs, and Breww will show you the variance when a batch comes in over or under target once it’s packaged.
The new COGS vs target report gives you a wider view across batches and months, helping you spot where actual costs are moving away from what you expected. Targets are dated too, so if costs change, older batches can still be measured against the target that applied when they were brewed.
Margin reports also have more flexibility over which cost basis they use, including actual costs, target costs or a combination where actual batch costs aren’t available.
See what’s new with target costs
Make stock takes easier
Stock take day doesn’t need to mean spreadsheets moving between people and wondering whether something changed halfway through the count.
Your team can now count directly in Breww from one shared sheet, with mistakes flagged as you go. You can freeze stock movement while the count is happening, while still allowing ordering to continue, and choose to count only certain stock item or container types rather than everything at once.
There’s more flexibility around units too. If something is tracked in kilograms but you’ve weighed it in grams, for example, you can enter the unit you actually counted in and Breww will convert it.
We’ve also redesigned individual stock item pages so the information you’re most likely to need is front and centre. You can see stock on hand, stock value, nearest expiry where applicable and reorder level, followed by the individual batches you currently hold.
And if you buy the same item under several supplier product codes, you can now choose a preferred supplier SKU and hide obsolete ones. Breww will prioritise your preferred SKU when adding items to purchase orders, inventory receipts and supplier invoices, without losing the history behind older codes.
See the full stock take update
Stay on top of customer follow-ups
Weekly call rounds. Monthly visits to key accounts. Checking in with someone after their first order.
They’re easy enough to plan. Remembering exactly who needs contacting, who’s already been spoken to and when each customer prefers to hear from you is another matter.
Customer lists can now become recurring workflows in Breww. Choose the list your team needs to work through and how often, and Breww creates a fresh checklist for each period.
Your team can see who needs attention, access customer information and recent activity, log what they’ve done and create orders without leaving the workflow. Preferred contact days and times can also be recorded, helping the team focus on customers who are actually contactable at that point in the day.
Dynamic lists work with workflows too, including customers Breww predicts are overdue to reorder.
Creating those orders has become quicker as well. Once the order details are entered, Breww now takes you straight to adding products. Orders can also be created in a pop-up from elsewhere in Breww, so you can raise one while working through a customer list without losing your place.
Explore customer list workflows and preferred contact times
See the new order creation flow
Keep customer complaints connected
When a customer raises a problem, the details can quickly end up spread between an inbox, someone’s notes and the person who happens to remember what happened.
Customer complaints can now be logged against the relevant order, product and batch in Breww, keeping everything connected.
You can work a complaint through to a resolution, raise a credit note or ullage affected stock without leaving the complaint, and categorise issues so you can use reporting to see what’s coming up most often.
See the customer complaints update
Help Trade Store customers see their savings
Trade Store customers can now see the discounts available through their price book while they shop, including savings on discounted products and price tiers for quantity-based discounts.
If they’re close to the next price band, they’ll also see how much more they need to order to reach it. And where several products share a discount, customers can see the eligible range and mix and match products towards the better price.
And if you haven’t looked at the Trade Store recently, it’s now free with Breww, with no monthly fee, no commission on sales and no limit on orders.
Plan more than deliveries into your runs
A day on the road isn’t always just a list of customer deliveries.
Maybe your driver needs to collect a purchase order from a supplier. Maybe there’s a stop to set up a bar at an event. Those visits can now be planned into your own-vehicle delivery runs alongside the day’s deliveries.
For breweries using Advanced Deliveries, you can also plan trips over several days with overnight rests, set driver hours for each vehicle profile and have larger vehicles routed as trucks.
It means those extra stops can become part of the plan rather than relying on the driver remembering them or someone passing on the details before they leave.
For breweries in Canada, delivery areas can now also be defined using Forward Sortation Areas (FSAs), the first three characters of a Canadian postal code. Enter them manually or select them on the map, and Breww will match customers to the right area.
See what’s new with delivery run planning
A few more improvements
A couple of smaller changes landed this month too.
The settings page has been reorganised into clearer areas, with a new search box that finds individual settings as you type and takes you straight to them.
And for stock items bought under multiple supplier SKUs, you can choose the one you prefer Breww to use and mark old codes as obsolete, keeping them out of the way without losing their history.
You ask. We ship.
September wasn’t just a busy month for new features. It was a big month for ideas raised and voted for by the Breww community too.
42 feature requests delivered\ 427 votes behind them\ 13 product announcements
We’ve also launched our new Product updates page, where you can see what we’ve been shipping month by month, the feature requests and community votes behind those updates, and the ideas that have made their way into Breww.
Try Breww for yourself
Not using Breww yet?
Explore Breww using a test brewery account and see how production, stock, sales, deliveries and the rest of your brewery could work together in one place.
You’ll get unrestricted access to all features for 14 days, with no payment details required and a completely safe environment to experiment.
