CPA

A client of mine sent me this article today from yesterday's NY Times. I'm often asked about options for raising capital for breweries/distilleries so I thought I would pass it along to the group. It is a short article about direct to the public offerrings and an easy read. Could be a consideration for breweries or distilleries looking for $1 - $5 million in capital. Not a simple process but far less complicated/costly than an IPO and could allow companies to reach beyond angels, 'friends & family', and wealthy private placement type individuals. Here is the link: http://www.nytimes.c....=smallbusiness Best, Rich LINDSAY CPA LLC http://lindsayllc.com

Gordon, I can help you out with this but could use some more information to get the best fit: What accounting and inventory management system(s) are you planning on using? What is your entity type? (Sole proprietorship / partnership / LLC / S corporation) In what state(s) do you have operations? Do you have partners and / or investors? Do you have bank debt and / or 'corporate' credit cards Do you want to utilize costed mash bills or keep it simple with 'inventory purchases' and an end of month inventory to record cost of goods sold? Related to the detail level of reporting you are willing to maintain. Do you sell to retail a well as wholesale? Do produce on contract for other spirits companies? Do you outsource your production? Do you have a tasting room? Charge for tours and/or wearbles? Best, Rich

Sonja, One of my clients is a rum distiller and we will be looking to implement in a similar fashion later this year. There are two things to consider with using classes in QB Manufacturing edition. The first is the volume of transactions which you've already considered. The QB POS investment you can always make later when the tasting room deserves part to full-time staffing. The second thing to consider with classes is that you can only define them one way. For example you can use them for profit center reporting such as distillery and tasting, or you could use them for cost center reporting such as distillation, bottling, warehouse, etc. You get into trouble if you need both. But if you stick with profit centers the setup is straight forward by enabling classes in preferences, setting up sales tax items (I believe lake county is 7% for merchandise such as t-shirts etc but would double check) and then entering the inventory items and pricing. You should think through the customer setup with the simplest option being a generic "tasting room customer." You also need to think how you can maintain an audit trail for credit card transactions if you go the generic route. If you do decide to add your retail customers to quickbooks it does add time for the initial entry during checkout and you should make sure to select the customer type on their customer record to differentiate the retail vs. the wholesale customers. The good news is that once you have your items (inventory / sales tax) and customers setup you can reuse them in QB POS if you decide to upgrade. Hope this is helpful, Rich

I would be happy to help you out with the remote accounting. I provide cfo services like you've described to businesses on a part-time basis so they don't have to pay someone full-time. In addition to being a licensed CPA, I have six years of Controller and CFO experience at one of the large craft breweries. If interested please Email me -Rich