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Frequently Asked Questions – Production

Do I have to sign a contract?

No.   When you sign up for Vinsight, there is no setup fee and your only commitment is for the currently billing period which is usually a month. So generally: NO setup fee and NO commitment beyond the current month.  For further information see Terms and Conditions.

However, we do offer a version of Vinsight that can be hosted on your servers,  and there is an implementation fee and a minimum yearly commitment. Please ask us about this option if you are interested.

Can I change my subscription level?

Yes.   You can change your subscription level at any time by going to ‘Vinsight Subscription’ in the Settings > Setup area and editing the Subscription Type.   Monthly charges will be pro-rated to reflect the change.  See Changing Your Subscription for more information.

Can I add more users?

Yes.  Additional users can be added at any time from the ‘Users‘ page in the Settings > Setup area.  For more information see Adding Users.  Your subscription may contain a certain number of users already.  However you can purchase extra ones.  The pricing for this depends on which subscription you are on and can be found in Vinsight Subscription in the Settings > Setup area.

How do I work with barrels?

When creating a Winery Operation, such as an addition or racking where you might be working with many barrels or vessels, you can use ‘Advanced Vessel Insert’ to search for and select the barrels you wish to work with at the same time as allocating multiple additions, and then perform the operation in bulk.  Effectively you can work with groups of vessels based on the Batch Code they contain.  See Bulk Inserting Vessels and Additives.

How do I work with red wine on skins?

Rather than working with tonnages in tank, we generally advise that you fill your fermenters with a notional volume of red wine that you would expect from pressing even though your wine is still on skins.  This allows you to benefit from the automatic addition calculations when doing additions to your red ferments and gives you a notional bulk wine quantity to help you start planning tank capacities.

When you are ready to press your red wine, while the operation code might be “press red”, the underlying type will still be a transfer and you’ll simply explain any differences between your expected yield and actual yield by using the variance reason on the operation.

How do I record the items I use when bottling?

You can record the items used when bottling when you create a packaging operation (to transfer your finished blends to finished inventory).  Detail the items used in the ‘Packaging Used’ area of the packaging operation.  These items  will be deducted from your inventory levels when you ‘update’ the operation.  See Packaging Operations/Packaging Used.

How do I record the purchase of wine?

Record the receipt of  bulk volumes of wine or juice into the winery in a Bulk Receival.   This where you record the transaction details such as where the product is coming from (the supplier) as well as the wine’s volume and composition.  To move the wine into tanks in your winery you will need to link the receival to a winery operation.  As well as filling the tanks, this linked operation will put blend data on file for later reference.  For more information see Bulk Receival.

Currently you don’t need to raise a purchase order to process this inbound bulk wine.

Can I overfill a tank?

In short, the app will allow you to exceed the capacity of a tank.  This allows for poorly calibrated dip charts.  However when filling tanks the capacity will be auto-suggested as the amount to fill whenever you have sufficient wine, so you would actually manually override this suggestion to over-fill it.

Can I re-cost fruit once it’s in tank?

Yes, cost information can be updated even after the associated winery operation has been updated and the fruit is in tank.  When you change a cost the total cost will be propagated through all affected operations and vessels.  This is also true for re-costing bulk receivals.  See Costing Information for more details.

How can I get my accountant to help me?

If you have an in-house accountant you would simply add them as a user.  However if you are using external accountants to help you month to month, you should suggest that they join our partner program.  As members of our partner program, you can give them access your account at no cost to you and no cost to them.  See Partner Program for more information.

Do I have to have an item for every pack size?

Not generally.  When the pack sizes are simply different quantities of base product, then you only need one stock item.   For example,   if the smallest indivisible unit is a 750 ml bottle, but you sell these in  12 x 750mls cases, then you only need one stock item but have different conversion rates set up under this item (Stock Item conversion rates) and a price for each combination (Stock Item Sales and Purchases) .

The exception to this would be where the smallest indivisible unit is not substitutable.  For example, your customer wouldn’t expect that two 375ml bottles would be an acceptable substitute for one 750ml bottle.  Therefore you would want to create a stock item to represent the 375ml bottle (and pack size variants) and another one for the 750 ml bottle (and pack size variants).

See also  Stock Items.

What’s the difference between standard cost and purchase price?

Standard Cost (found in the ‘Costing’ area of a Stock Item) is the cost per unit of stock item.   When you use some of the item in a vessel or harvest, this cost is used to work out what cost to attribute to that wine or fruit.  For example if the standard cost of a kilogram of sulphur dioxide is $20 and you add 1 gram to a vessel, the wine in that vessel gets attributed with $0.02 as the cost of the added sulphur dioxide.

The ‘purchase price’  (found in the ‘Sales and Purchases’ area of a Stock Item) and used in purchase orders for that stock item, helps you maintain inventory levels and is a reference for when prices change. Changes in the ‘purchase price’ will not automatically update the ‘standard cost’ for a stock item, but you should use such changes as a guide to review your item’s ‘standard cost’.  For more information see  Stock Items and Setting Standard Costs.