Wine
Automate your sales orders, stock allocations and tax calculations with our bespoke tech stack for both growers and sellers – and spend more time on the things you love
What are the Current Challenges Facing the Wine Industry?
Inefficient inventory management processes
Manual processes to maintain the inventory of wine is inefficient and time-consuming.
Lack of visibility of real-time stock levels
For producers, having visibility of the real-time stock levels is critical. Allocations of the stock to the different sales channels is important to monitor. This is because a finite level of stock is produced each vintage and so that margins can be maximised.
For merchants, getting the optimal level of stock within your business is critical. Too much stock adds overhead in the form of extra storage expenses. Too little stock can lead to lost sales or delays servicing customers, which lowers their customer experience.
Having non compliant tax invoices which do not show the WET and GST accurately
Accurately disclosing the Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) & GST components on tax invoices is always a challenge. Accurate record keeping and accounting entries to accurately capture both WET & GST requires manual work and is time consuming.
Allocation of wine to different sales channels
For producers, it is critical that they are managing the allocation of the wine produced to the different sales channels. The yield of a harvest can vary from year to year. This is often based on factors like weather that are outside of the control of the producers. A lower yield of grapes results in lower production which reduces sales and impacts cash flow.
Maximising margins on the sale of wine
Given that each vintage of wine is a finite product the aim is to maximise the margins which can be made on the sale of the wine. As a winey or wine merchant operates a multichannel sales business it is important to allocate more stock to the channels which provide the highest margins.
Dealing with Distributors
For wine producers, outsourcing the distribution of their product does allow for exposure into new markets like interstate or overseas. It is an option particularly when the producer is in a growth phase and they are wanting to outsource a function which they do not have the capability or capacity to do. The challenge is that using a distributor does mean that they lose control over where their product is sold and also the price that it is sold for. For premium wine producers seeing their product appearing in a major retailer at a discounted price does cause challenges as it impacts their brand’s reputation in the marketplace.
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What’s the Ideal Wine Industry Tech Stack?
The ideal tech stack will have the business’ sales channels connected to their inventory management system. For wine producers the main sales channels are:
Their website – Having an online store on their website allows for customers to purchase wine and have it delivered to their address.
Wholesale sales – Sales to wholesalers like restaurants, hotels and bottleshops can be done using an online portal which can be customised to the wholesale customer.
Cellar Door – A point of sale system used to record sales in the cellar door
The inventory management system becomes the central point of truth for the wine business as all of the business’ sales channels will import orders into one central system. This allows for greater visibility of stock which is available across multiple locations. Stock on hand updates can also be automatically sent back to the various sales channels as well.
The inventory management system also allows for winemaking production processes to be done in terms of converting the raw product into a finished product.
The inventory management system is also integrated to the business’ accounting system which will send all financial information in relation to sales, purchases, stock adjustments seamlessly.
Inventory Management
Accounting
Other
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