Beersmith Inventory

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mcartt11

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Just wondering if any Beersmith users actually use it for tracking and managing their inventory? I have been only using for Recipes and Brew Logs up until now, but have been considering using the inventory tracking.
 
I have tried to use the inventory function on BeerSmith and it does work quite well. My issue was remembering to remove ingredients or recipes from inventory when I brewed. The other feature that I didn't care for too much was the pricing. I wanted a aggregate pricing based upon purchases and current inventory value and BeerSmith cannot handle that. I would need to work out the price by hand before entering it into the inventory.

So now I have a separate spreadsheet where I track inventory, purchases, usage and prices. I can see clearly now when I have entered usage for a recipe.
 
I have tried to use the inventory function on BeerSmith and it does work quite well. My issue was remembering to remove ingredients or recipes from inventory when I brewed. The other feature that I didn't care for too much was the pricing. I wanted a aggregate pricing based upon purchases and current inventory value and BeerSmith cannot handle that. I would need to work out the price by hand before entering it into the inventory.

So now I have a separate spreadsheet where I track inventory, purchases, usage and prices. I can see clearly now when I have entered usage for a recipe.

Thanks, for the response. I'm guessing that I will probably forget as well since I am not really used to doing either.

As far as pricing, one of the first things I did before even starting to do my own recipes was to add pricing to all the typical ingredients that I use. It isn't perfect as the prices of things change and it is hard to account for sales, etc. I feel like it gets me a close to accurate price per batch however.
 
I tried using the inventory but bulk purchases generally don't come in accurate weights. To add to it, my 1oz hop addition is sometimes 0.9oz or 1.1oz. Multiply that difference over 20-24oz in a 10gal IPA batch and inventories get off quickly. It became too much work for me to keep up with.

When formulating recipes, I do change the cost of items because I like to have an idea of what a keg of beer is costing me to produce. Just adds to the pleasure for this bean counter when I see I can make delicious beer at 1/3 of the cost (never mind all the money spent on equipment and gadgets).
 
it's not the best system. I tried to use in the past with minimal results.

i've recently started to use it again as I've been buying in bulk lately. We'll see how it keeps up.

regarding hops, I use grams for hops units as it's easier to manage and more granular.
 
Thanks, for the response. I'm guessing that I will probably forget as well since I am not really used to doing either.

As far as pricing, one of the first things I did before even starting to do my own recipes was to add pricing to all the typical ingredients that I use. It isn't perfect as the prices of things change and it is hard to account for sales, etc. I feel like it gets me a close to accurate price per batch however.

I go back about twice a year and update Beersmith ingredient costs to my current pricing based upon my spreadsheet. This helps me determine a base recipe cost when designing and planning.
 
Its one of my least favorite functions in Beersmith. I usually forget to click the remove from inventory button and end up having to go back through my inventory to re-calculate everything.
Im going to start doing like others in here and develop a spreadsheet to track dates, amounts, costs an any other relevant items. Seems like that might be a better approach.
 
I use a spreadsheet. Some things I find useful:

-How many packages. Like 13+1+1 would be 13oz and two additional 1ozpackages. This makes it easier to see if something is open or if a bulk package exists.

-Columns for years. This makes it easy to see what is getting old. Though it makes for more mouse-clicks when changing items. Need to get fancy here with formulas when I get around to it.

-Reserved amount. Which planned recipes and how much each recipe uses. Useful for not using the Cascade when its saved for next month's batch.

Some things I might add:

-date last edited. Quick crosscheck with Brew log would make it easy to see if proper deduction was made.

vendor info
 
I don't worry about the pricing, but I do use it for inventory, because I like to know what I'm able to brew with what I've got left to make sure I'm turning inventory over and minimizing needless trips to the LHBS. And while yeah, bulk bags are usually off a couple percent, when I'm down towards the end of a bag of hops or a sack of malt I end up manually weighing what's left and go from there.
 
Like others here, I also "used" to use the inventory feature. It was great for bulk buys, in particular. The problem was it always seemed to screw-up the "removal" part of the process. I'd whip up a recipe and on brewday, if I remembered :), ask to remove ingredients from inventory. 9 out of 10 times it would tell me that one or more ingredients was not in my inventory. Not sure why this was happening, but it became so manual to double-check I just went back to spreadsheets. Good idea, in principal. . . just didn't work for me.
 
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