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    4 Replies Latest reply on Dec 29, 2010 7:26 PM by mikevcpa

    Wine Business Exploding - Accounting too! Help!

    AlcoholAndy Newbie
      Currently utilizing Quickbooks for my business accounting, however, business is like a "fire in the hole," and moving quicker than my thoughts. Now currently in search of a CPA to relieve the stress and keep me in check. Questions on deck:

      1. My vineyard owners are providing wines to me which I cannot place a price point on because many wines are used for tastings and samples. So my inventory has no value, per say, until sold, if sold. The only thing is this creates a nightmare in the accounting system. Anyone have similar situation?

      2. Wine shipments are now weekly which creates the Freight Expense journal. Sales and Income on the wine happens each time a case is moved from my warehouse, regardless of whether that case is for sampling or tasting. Then my cost of goods sold is enormous which includes the commission I pay to my salespeople (Indedendent Contractors). I can't figure out how my income and profit is negative, even though income is made from the movement of the wine. Anyone familiar with this situation?

      3. International sales and income is placed in banks abroad. The funds remain in country and are not transferred back to the U.S. With sales increasing rapidly I am now second guessing on whether this is okay now. Are there other options?

      Thanks to all and Cheers!
        • Re: Wine Business Exploding - Accounting too! Help!
          bm911tax Adventurer
          1. You will need to do a year end valuation of wine that you have stored.
          2. If you are doing this correctly, you should have a profit. The negative amount may be the timing. It take time to receive payments from your customers so if you are counting all the expenses but have not received all the payments you will be in the red until you get paid.
          3. Is the bank account titled to your company? Why you don't transfer the money back to the US?
          • Wine Business Exploding - Accounting too! Help!

            Hi Andy,


            Those questions are very industry specific to your business.  In truth the answers would probably require a number more questions.  Do you not currently have a CPA?  If not please feel free to shoot us an email or give us a ring. 




            • Wine Business Exploding - Accounting too! Help!

              They are lured by an


              growth curve and land prices that can still be downright cheap.


              James Hood

              • Wine Business Exploding - Accounting too! Help!

                Hi Andy,


                I think there are a lot of business owners out there that would love to have your problems. 


                1). As for your inventory, I'm not clear on what you mean by placing a "price point".  If you are buying these wines, then your "price point" or the amount you enter into quickbooks under an Inventory account code would be the amount on the invoice.  If they are sending you the wines for free for some reason for resale, then you would enter zero dollars into quickbooks.  As far as I understand, Quickbooks does not have a very good way to track inventory.  This means you need to track it using a third party software or even Excel (although, if you are growing quickly, Excel might hold you back).  As a previous poster mentioned, it's always good to do an end of year inventory.  When you sell wine, you should check your inventory schedule and move the relevant amounts from Inventory to COGS. 


                If you are growing the grapes, fermenting the wine in some warehouse and packaging the bottles, then you have some manufacturing accounting on your hands.  Basically, it's a way of getting all those overhead costs (vineyards and related maintenance, warehousing costs, manufacturing facilities) into each bottle of wine.  These costs will show up as a Work in Process during the grape to bottle timeline and inventory when it's ready.


                2) This is a hard one to answer without knowing how your freight expense journal and your sales and income ledger make their way into your Quickbooks file.  This could be a matching issue.  Your first point indicates your inventory accounting might be suspect and that is a major COGS driver.  Also, I might consider sampling and tasting product to be some sort of sales and marketing expense (Please talk to a CPA before you make that determination.).  You might want to pick a handful of random samples of sales during a particular period to see what kind of profits should have been expected. 


                3) Wow, this is a major can of worms question.  At the end of the day, it's mostly a tax issue.  So, it has huge differences based on what country your banking is held in and whether or not you have situs (some kind of presence) there.  There are all kinds of tax treaties between the US and various countries not to mention transfer pricing precedent, etc.


                Good luck with everything, I would be more than happy to chat with you offline if necessary.

                mike, CPA

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