Buying green coffee is exciting. You are on a quest for a specific profile to meet the requirements for an espresso blend, or maybe a distinguished single origin with unique flavor notes for your offering list. However, there is a side of green inventory that rarely anyone likes to manage: production and planning
Green coffee needs to be managed. Once a lot is purchased it is put into a production plan and shipped out as a product for your customers. This is very clear but what happens in between can become a little muddled. Whether you are a nano-roastery with a few bags or an enterprise ordering containers at a time it is crucial to track your every step: registering your coffee, deducting your batches from your inventory, managing warehouses and planning your next purchase volume. Tracking this information can be make or break as to whether or not you make the right decisions and Cropster makes that easier.
How Cropster helps you reduce the time and stress spent managing green coffee
1) Automatic inventory adjustments
Green coffee usage is the basis for production planning. Quite commonly, roasting businesses manage their green coffee in excel sheets and deduct each roast manually. This proves to be an annoying and unreliable method of tracking inventory that has to be checked and double checked on a regular basis.Cropster tracks each of your roasts and subtracts your used green inventory automatically, whether single lot or pre-roast blend. Inventory is kept clean and the roast is tracked in your production. - Available in ALL ROAST packages
2) Track production and green usage
Cropster creates an automatic production report. The report shows all lots, blend components, profiles, dates, weight loss and more. Pull the report at the end of the month or for a specific day, helping you to keep track of production by lot, profile and even worker. With this at hand, you will find it easy to plan green coffee buying based on your production.- Available in ALL ROAST packages
3) NEW: Show past inventory levels
Cropster keeps track of your green coffee history. You can check the inventory status for any given day. Just enter a date you want to view your levels and let Cropster do the work. This way youo can check your true historic inventory even without doing a physical check- Available in Roast BASIC and up
4) Manage multiple warehouses
Once your company reaches a certain size you will need to either move or keep your coffees in multiple warehouses. Cropster helps you split your lots between your roastery and external warehouses whether that be at an official warehouse or in a traders inventory. You can also get creative, tracking spent coffee, contracted lots and more.
With multiple locations you can easily move and trace your lots throughout your supply chain. No matter how big your operation, you can manage your stock with a few clicks - Available in Roast PLUS and up
5) Plan your roast schedule - and green buying
By integrating your roast scheduling into Cropster you can see what inventory is needed for production and how much will remain at the end of the roast day. This means you can tell if a long day of production will drain your inventory and if you should move some from your warehouse or order more - Available in Roast Plus and up
6) Keep track of samples and purchasing decisions
Purchasing coffee is a task that involves dozens of cuppings, analytical thinking and serious planning. With Cropsters sample management tools you can keep your sample inventory separate, flag samples for purchase and compare coffee scores. It is the ultimate tool to enter in coffees and write down why you are making a purchasing decision - Available in Roast PRO and up
7) Integrate with ERP systems
Cropster is powerful, but also has its limits. Sometimes you need to match up green or roasted coffee data with e.g. an accounting or ERP software. Cropster allows you to export your inventory or production data anytime into an Excel format. Also, our API allows you to integrate green coffee and roast data with external ERP systems and match them up periodically.
You would like to use your Cropster data externally? Please contact us on sales@cropster.com. We are happy to advise you and help set up an integration.
