Getting Started

Abstract

The distress of repeatedly making the same mistakes is perhaps only surpassed by the frustration of having made a good wine and forgetting how it was done. It is wise to keep a good price and expense history in the files, and essential to have up-to-date processing and inventory information to supplement records required by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). All of this obviously indicates that a functional recordkeeping system is essential in operating a successful winery business. A personal computer program, as discussed below and in Chapter 6, is ideal. It may, however, be good education and thrift to start out with manual card files and ledgers in order to fully experience all of the wine production, marketing, and accounting operations in detail before applying computerization. A flowchart for basic recordkeeping is presented in Figure 8-1.