CSV stock takes

About Breww's CSV stock takes

Breww has an advanced CSV stock take function, that allows you and your team to perform accurate and auditable stock takes whenever you need. The stock take will correct and update your stock, whilst leaving a clear trail of changes throughout the process. Although a good knowledge of programs such as Excel, which allow editing of CSV files, is not required, it can be very useful at speeding up the process - especially for businesses with large quantities of stock.

Okay, how do I get started?

To begin a stock take, navigate to Reporting > Stock takes > Start stock take. There you will have the option of choosing either a Stock item or Products stock take:

  • A Stock item stock take will allow you to perform a stock take of all of you ingredients, packaging materials and any other item in your Inventory section.
  • A Products stock take will allow you to perform a stock take of all of your packaged beers found in the Products section.

After choosing your stock take type, you will be taken to your stock take summary page. This will contain a file to download, containing all of your current stock. Now we simply need to update it, and re-upload it to Breww.

What do I need to change?

Next you will need to update the CSV with your correct stock levels. Each row contains details about the stock, and has a quantity column at the end. The process differs slightly depending on the stock take type, so that's been broken down below.

Stock items

For each row:

  • if the quantity is correct, leave it;
  • if the quantity is wrong, update the quantity column;
  • if stock you have doesn't appear, add a line - filling all applicable columns.

From just those actions Breww will calculate whether stock has moved, been created or increased, or been reduced. When updating a line, you should only update the quantity column. For example if the batch has moved, set the existing batch location to 0 (or whatever the remaining quantity is), and create a new line by copying the original row and updating the location.

Products

The Products stock take is slightly more advanced than the Stock items stock take. This is because, as you will know from using Breww, all packaging events are either associated to a returnable cask or keg, or they are assigned a unique ID called a Non-returnable number.

This means that it is possible you will discover stock labelled with a non-returnable number that Breww does not think you have. In this situation, Breww will produce a new non-returnable number for this extra stock, rather than use the old number.

This means that the process is as follows. For each row:

  • if the quantity is correct, leave it;
  • if the quantity is lower, update the quantity column;
  • if the quantity is higher, create a new line underneath and put the additional quantity in the quantity column. If it has a non-returnable number, remove it from this new line (we'll provide you a new one at the end);
  • if the location is incorrect, reduce the quantity on the existing line, and create a new line with the correct location and quantity in that location.
  • if stock you have doesn't appear, add a line - filling all applicable columns, but always leaving Non-returnable number blank.

And that will do it!

Uploading the file to Breww

Once you have your updated file, you will need to upload it to Breww from your stock take detail screen. Breww will perform a thorough validation of the file before pre-processing it.

Once processed, you will be presented with all changes that are about to be made.

Please review this to make sure you are happy - any mistakes cannot be undone once confirmed.

If you are happy, simply click Confirm, and Breww will update your stock! If the changes to be made aren't what you anticipated, click Cancel and review your file and this help document to make sure changes were made correctly.

FAQ

My CSV file has lots of lines, how can I speed-up the process? For businesses with lots of stock, you will find your Products CSV file in particular may have lots of lines. Unfortunately, this is the nature of auditable stock takes. We'd recommend breaking up the CSV file into smaller ones, and assigning a location or section to each person or team. Then, once all are complete, someone with some Excel experience will easily be able to put them back together before uploading to Breww.