TTB Reports: How much time are you spending?
Life, beer, and taxes. Taxation on beer production will always be a part of doing business whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, our beloved craft beer falls under a specific category of taxation and stringent government regulation.
You can equate TTB reports to simple checkups, or outright pulling of teeth, depending on the amount of time and effort you spend gathering data to complete the forms. The only variable you can control is the time and effort spent gathering data by putting systems in place to make things easier.
If you're like most breweries, you keep brewsheet data and information in a spreadsheet or binder. Once a month (or quarter) you have to go back and gather data from the production department, then find out how much was sold. Things get even more tedious when determining how much was transferred or sold if you have a brew pub or restaurant with multiple locations.
Gary Godfrey, our Director of Services and seasoned implementation consultant, has spent weeks on site with several breweries and the feedback regarding TTB reporting shares a common theme of frustration:
"What I hear from most brewers when I go onsite to implement the software is that they definitely do not "enjoy" the Brewer's Report of Operations. I hear things like: 'You have no idea much time I spend on it..."
The hours spent manually gathering data for the reports may vary by brewery, but according to Gary’s experience a brewer will spend an average of 6-8 hours, usually spread over a few days.
Gary has also spent a significant amount of time configuring and improving OrchestratedBEER’s reporting feature to help eliminate the time consuming process of filling out TTB reports. He explains how the software's reporting tools alone are worth the investment because of the time and energy saved by eliminating the process of data gathering and dual entry
"One of the biggest advantages of our TTB reporting tool that people may not realize is that as they go about their daily production duties, they're adding data into the system which automatically populates the database for future reporting. When it’s time to report, they simply define the dates and specify their production location and the report is instantly generated."
How it works:
When you sell beer, or transfer inventory from a warehouse to the taproom, it’s reporting that data automatically. Your brewery’s daily activities are creating the transactions and storing all the data in the system that the Brewer’s Report of Operation uses.
OrchestratedBEER’s TTB reporting uses a series of queries based on conditions, so every field in the Brewer's Report of Operations form is associated with a query. You can even print it out to see what the numbers are and see the transactions associated with those numbers. OrchestratedBEER accomplishes a 6-8 hour task in a manner of minutes.
How it’s different:
Gary has spent a lot of time with brewers to find out what they need from a system and has also evaluated other “TTB software” available in the market today:
“From what I've seen from other TTB software out there is a lot of manual entry that’s not as automated as you would expect. Some systems still require you to enter beginning inventory balances for individual items, and you're having to go gather that data and fill it out. Our system prepares that data for you automatically as you perform your daily activities.”
The Latest in TTB Reporting:
The latest OrchestratedBEER reporting advancements will include:
- Modifying TTB reports to handle additional circumstances for multi-location breweries & contract brewing.
- Adding additional tables on the report so address portions print uniquely for each location.
- Flagging “contracted” batches & specialty Items such as cider to be excluded from TTB
How much time are you spending filling out these reports? Consider the positive impact of allocating this time to focus on the brewery and less time gathering data.
The TTB reporting tool is just one of the many examples of how brewery management software can help your brewery streamline processes, avoid dual entry into multiple systems, and prevent what we call “information silos”. Visit our product page to learn more about which product is right for your brewery.
