Do you only record the credit card deposits that you make through your POS or Shopping Cart program? If so, you are not alone because this procedure is so ubiquitous in the Wine Industry, some folks consider it an industry standard.
If you are doing this, you are missing out on a wealth of information. Instead, we believe that you should be recording the details of the sales. For that reason, it is one of the steps in our Fundamental Five, which is our system to set up QuickBooks for the Wine Industry.
There are two ways to record the information in QuickBooks: the Push-in and the Summary Method.
The Push-in Method will create a sales receipt in QuickBooks for every sales transaction in your POS program. Whereas the Summary Method summarizes the sales into one sales transaction. This could be a daily or monthly summary. Both methods work, but our favorite programs will make this process easy.
A good program must have these characteristics:
- Record sales by channel. They might call this “sales type”
- Record the sale price of each wine after any discounts
- Have reports for the Summary Method or the Push-In Method
Some features that might be important to you:
- Supported by WGits by Wine Glass Marketing**
- Integrate with ShipCompliant/Compli
- Correctly handle split tenders
- Use on an iPad
- Accept tips for your crew
DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE LIST OF FEATURES AND QUESTIONS
**In 2022 I began using the WGit software that automatically syncs the sales in the POS program with QB. You can choose if you want to see the individual sales in QB (the Push-in method) or a daily summary by channel (the Summary method). AND you can choose if you want QB to use cases or bottles. This program is a game-changer. There are some excellent POS programs that do not work with this tool, so working with the WGit is not a Must-Have feature.
If you are shopping for a new POS program, be careful because the sales team will proudly show off all of their bells and whistles. These features are exciting, but they often mask a complicated program for your bookkeeping team to use.
Also, (and I don’t like having to give this warning because I love how the wine industry is so open and willing to share tools, advice, and even team members), please be careful when someone says “we love XX” or “we don’t like XX”. Unless that winery is willing to share its financials and financial management processes, you could be unwittingly relying on outdated and ineffective procedures.
We recommend that you first identify whether a program has the three primary characteristics listed above. Then identify any other features that are essential for your business model. Focus on that shortlist and pick a program with just a few useful bells and whistles.
Our Fundamental Five Course shows you how to set up both methods in QB Desktop and QB Online.
It will also give you a roadmap for setting up QuickBooks correctly. Once you get QuickBooks properly set up, you will be able to run powerful reports to see for yourself how the business is doing.
You owe it to yourself—and your investment to find out more about how the Fundamental Five Course.
