When we release a new red wine, we take a case at the beginning (when it is first brought to the tasting room) and set it aside for our library. Once the wine sells out as current vintage and the one library case is left, we change the SKU to LSwinename and change the brand to Library Wines (we did this for discount purposes, sometimes we do a library promo). So far, I have been removing that case from inventory then adding it back in when I change the SKU. This process hinges on me being here and being the one to handle the transition and has caused problems (EX: I was on maternity leave earlier this year). I remove the case from inventory to add back in later, so the wine changes to “Sold out!” once the current vintage allotment is sold out.
How does everyone else handle library wines in this respect? I’ve thought about creating a third inventory pool for this but can’t wrap my head around how that works ringing things up on the POS in the tasting room. I think there is a simple solution somewhere here but I just can’t see it. Open to ideas! Thanks!
We use a separate pool. We don’t generally sell library on a daily basis, for an event we transfer the wines back into the TR pool. I put them in a category just for convenience since that is a lousy basis for promos. We don’t change the SKU, that’s forever.
I use the End of Sale to Public date to make it show Sold Out on the website. That still allows POS and Admin sales as needed.
If we do a special promo we just put the SKUs in the promo, which seems about as labor intensive as changing Brands etc. Or I just set a Sale price directly in the SKU, depending on what we are doing.
Thank you for the suggestions. We sell library wine on an every day basis so I want to make sure they’re easy to ring up with other wines. I can’t remember why I changed the SKUs in the first place… I’m sure I had a good reason at the time but also didn’t realize the ramifications. If I change the SKUs back will that ruin everything more? Does changing the brand cause problems too? Two years into Vin65 and I am still learning a lot!
I suppose I could make a separate inventory pool to hold the wines until they are sold as current vintage then transfer it back once they are library selections.
All of your sales will be what they are. So if you change your system the old one will haunt you forever. But that’s how it goes and isn’t a reason not to change. I revamped my departments to better keep track of non taxables and special stuff. It just means going forward it is better.
We use a separate pool mostly because it is in a separate physical location and we have two TRs. If you just have wine in bond and wine in a single TR is tax paid, and you sell library regularly, I’d just keep it all in the one TR pool as far as Vin65 is concerned. The SKUs should take care of themselves since you do bake the vintage into them (right?)
If you use UPCs that like most of us stay the same across vintages with barcode scanners you do need to be careful about that.
All those prior vintages are searchable in the POS, and you could even put them in a POS category and page to them as needed.
Yes I do include the vintage in the SKU… I’m with you on the “better moving forward”. I’m trying to simplify so there are less nuances to handling inventory. All of our wine is tax paid (we do it at bottling) so right now I have a pool for our two locations (winery vs tasting room).
I think making a pool for holding wine until it is released as a library selection will resolve my inventory issue. Thanks for your time in answering my question!