Wine Inventory With Accubar

Wine Inventory With Accubar

Simplifying the Problems of Tracking Wine

Often, potential customers ask us whether AccuBar works for wine inventory as well as it does for liquor inventory. The answer is simple: AccuBar offers a combination of features for tracking wine inventory that are unique to the industry, and any operation with a serious wine list should take note.

Here is an explanation of the features that will streamline your wine operations:

Handles bottles without barcodes
AccuBar uses a Palm-based handheld with a built-in barcode scanner for taking inventories. This greatly speeds up the inventory process, allowing users to save hundreds of hours of labor in a given year. But some wineries don’t seem to be in a hurry to barcode their items, so how does AccuBar handle that?

Simple. For any item without a barcode — whether that is a cigar, a steak, or a Bordeaux — AccuBar will assign it one. You then have a few options for making use of that barcode:

1. AccuBar makes it easy to print barcodes onto labels, which you can then attach to wine bins or other storage shelves. Then you can very quickly scan the label and enter the quantity.
   
2. You can also print the barcodes onto cards or sheets of paper by category. So you might have a sheet of Cabernet barcodes, another for Burgundies, and so on. You would then find the item on the sheet, scan the barcode and enter the quantity.
   
3. AccuBar gives you the option to print barcodes onto reusable neck tags, or to have us do it for you.
   
4. AccuBar also has a search function, which can be used to search for the wines by name or by bin number. So if you’ve got a bin numbering system, you can assign it to the proper item and find the item on the handheld without even needing a barcode.

Connect with a POS to get your perpetual and beverage costs
AccuBar offers an interface to most of the major POS systems, enabling you to pull in sales of wine by the bottle or glass. This automatic interface will give you item-by-item cost percentages on every wine in your list. It will also allow you to compare consumption vs. sales numbers and flag you on variances between the two. The interface also automatically depletes those sales numbers from your perpetual inventory, meaning it will be much easier to maintain an up-to-date perpetual no matter how big your wine list may be. And with an accurate perpetual, AccuBar’s reordering functionality will make it a snap to keep your wine cellar stocked properly.

More on neck tags
Neck tags can be a big help in handling a large wine inventory, particularly if you have numerous barcode-less items or if your wine list is constantly changing. Neck hangers can be beneficial in the following ways:

1. When a bottle is removed from the storeroom, the neck tag can be removed and saved for later scanning. This can allow you to create daily transfers after the fact, when you have time to scan them.
   
2. Neck tags allow you to visually locate a bottle more quickly since the item name is printed on the tag along with the barcode.
   
3. They also help compensate for multiple vintages that have the same manufacturer’s barcode.

Wine pouring cost made easy
AccuBar can give you instant calculations on your wine pouring cost for any given inventory period. Compare your sales vs. your consumption with a few clicks, and discover slippage on particular items. The system does this by pulling in sales figures on your wine bottles from your POS system to update the perpetual inventory that AccuBar maintains.

Make sure your wine list shows only what you have in stock
AccuBar gives you the ability to print out your wine list based on your perpetual inventory, so you’re only offering what you have in stock. A variety of formatting options will help you match the list to the look and feel of your menu, and even offer descriptions of your wines. AccuBar will output your list into a PDF, so you can easily post it on your website.

An instant count with our Templates function
AccuBar offers the ability to save the items in a particular location, such as your wine bins, as templates. You can then open that template to take the inventory for that bin, and quickly adjust any quantities as needed. With this function, you could inventory of your wine bins in a matter of minutes.

Accurate vintage accounting
Even though some wineries the same barcode for different vintages of the same wine, AccuBar allows you to select which vintage you’re counting.

Calculate profit on wine tasting events
If you host wine tasting events, AccuBar makes it easy to track the consumption and cost of that event. You can then compare that to sales and know quickly whether your event was in the black or the red.

Wine inventory is a small part of what AccuBar can do to help your F&B operations. To get an overall view of the ways we simplify bar inventory and kitchen inventory, click here.