The Importance of Brewery Keg Tracking to Reduce Keg Loss Costs

Does Every Brewery Need a Keg Tracking System?

Any cost that your brewery is incurring on a regular basis affects your profitability. One of the most preventable costs that breweries face is keg loss costs. Many craft breweries have employees wearing multiple hats and juggling numerous responsibilities, so it's no wonder that keg tracking is often overlooked.

But keg tracking doesn't need to be time consuming or difficult. According to Brewers Association, most breweries spend between $ 0.46 and $ 1.37 per barrel produced on keg loss costs each year.  That amounts to thousands of dollars walking out the door annually. 

So you need to track your kegs - how do you go about it? In this article we're going to cover two options, tracking kegs with serial numbers using some kind of barcode scanner, and tracking unserialized kegs. 

How to Track Kegs Without Barcodes or Serial Numbers

While using serial numbers or QR codes is ideal, it is possible to manage your keg fleet without serial numbers too. This could be a good option for you if:

• It isn't legally required for you to track serial numbers on kegs
• You only sell kegs to a handful of customers
• You work with one or two distributors who manage your kegs for you

So how does it work? First you should decide whether or not you want to charge deposits for your kegs. Charging deposits can help you hold your customers accountable, and ensure that you either get your kegs back, or the cost of them is at least partially covered. 

Next you will need to decide how you are going to track how many kegs each customer has. This could be handled through the software you use for invoicing customers. You will need to create some sort of product, item, or service to sell. If you are charging a deposit, you could tie the price of the deposit to the item, if not, you could set the price at zero dollars.

In order for this to work effectively, you should make sure that the system you're using offers the capability for you to run some sort of report where you can see the number of kegs sold to each customer, and whether or not deposits were charged. You will also need to mark kegs returned in some way when you take back empty kegs. This could be as simple as including the kegs on your invoice at a negative quantity. 

The Benefits of Serialized, Real-Time Keg Management

To get an even better handle on where every keg is, you might want to consider serializing your kegs. This approach makes it easier to:

• Track every keg's location, at every stage
• Recall a specific lot or batch number if you ever need to
• Access real-time data on your entire fleet of kegs

The first step in setting this up is assigning each keg a serial number. Then you'll slap a barcode or QR code on your keg and start tracking. There are lots of powerful keg tracking software options out there, but we can really only speak to how Brew Ninja keg tracking works in detail. Here's the idea:

• Scan the barcodes or QR codes on your kegs using your phone as you package them 
• Sell beer to your customers, scanning each keg that goes out upon pick up or delivery. Choose whether or not you want to charge a deposit based on who you're selling to. 
• When its time to pick up your keg, scan it again, to mark it as returned. Choose to automatically issue a credit for your deposit if one was charged, or carry the credit over onto a future invoice. 

This makes it easy for you to see exactly where each keg is at any time. Plus, you can easily run reports to see how many kegs different customers have, how many customers have had a keg for more than 30 days etc. 

Brew Ninja is an easy-to-use brewery management software with a keg management system built in. Interested in learning more? Book a demo with a member of our team!