How to Reconcile Inventory Across Multiple Locations as a Small or Emerging Brand
Inventory scattered across multiple locations is an operational reality I've seen countless emerging brands navigate. Maybe you’ve got wine aging at your winery, finished cases stored at a third-party warehouse, and partial pallets waiting at your distributor’s facility. Without a consistent reconciliation process, chaos quickly ensues — something I've helped many founders untangle at Balanced Business Group.
Put simply, inventory reconciliation is a core practice that directly impacts your cash flow, gross margin accuracy, ability to reliably fulfill customer orders, and your brand’s reputation.
When you can confidently pinpoint exactly how much inventory you have and where it sits, you eliminate a whole world of stressful guesswork. Get ready for a step-by-step walkthrough for creating an easy-to-follow, repeatable reconciliation process.
Step 1: Document Where Inventory Lives and Who Owns It
When I help brands tackle inventory reconciliation across multiple locations, the first step we take at BBG is creating a clear, simple map of exactly where inventory sits and who's responsible for reporting it. Too often, emerging brands jump straight into counting without first clarifying these critical details, leading to confusion, mismatched reports, and avoidable stress.
Start by making a basic inventory map. A straightforward spreadsheet or a visual tool like Miro works perfectly for most small brands. Here’s exactly what your inventory ownership map should include:
Physical locations: Clearly list each spot holding your inventory, such as your winery cellar, co-packer, off-site storage facility, or third-party fulfillment warehouse. Don’t skip seemingly minor storage points, such as a small showroom or sales office, because product can easily accumulate there.
Type of inventory at each location: Separate raw materials (empty bottles, labels, or bulk ingredients) from work-in-progress (like unlabeled wine bottles awaiting packaging) and finished goods (products ready to ship). Mixing these blurs visibility, making inventory reconciliation across multiple locations unnecessarily complicated.
Who owns reporting: Specify exactly who at each location provides inventory data. For example, your co-packer’s warehouse manager might send weekly updates on bottled products in production, while your fulfillment partner’s ops lead provides monthly finished-case counts.
It might seem overly detailed at first, but clearly differentiating WIP from finished goods is key to accurate inventory valuation, production planning, and maintaining healthy cash flow. Brands that skip this step often face surprise inventory write-offs or financial inaccuracies, issues that are easier to avoid with a clear, straightforward map in place.
Step 2: Create a Reconciliation Schedule and SOP
I've seen inventory reconciliation is most effective when it's embedded into your monthly operations, not handled as an occasional fire drill. At BBG, I strongly encourage emerging brands to reconcile monthly at a minimum, giving you regular clarity into your inventory accuracy and cash flow.
The answer is a detailed standard operating procedure. When your SOP clearly spells out every step, including the reports to pull, templates for organizing data, and how to resolve discrepancies, your reconciliation process becomes consistent and reliable.
A practical SOP for multilocation inventory management should include:
Detailed scheduling: Establish a fixed monthly reconciliation date, such as the 5th business day after month-end, to ensure data freshness and predictability.
Specific report instructions: Identify the exact reports required from each partner. For example, request an "Inventory Detail Report" from your 3PL, showing SKU-level quantities and product movements, and a "Production Status Report" from your co-packer outlining completed and in-process units.
Spreadsheet templates: Create and reuse a simple spreadsheet template that allows easy side-by-side comparisons of internal inventory data versus external reports. Columns should include location, SKU, description, internal count, external count, and variance.
Step-by-step discrepancy resolution: Document how inventory adjustments are made within each system. For instance, specify exactly how to enter an inventory write-off in QuickBooks or how to correct product counts in a Shopify inventory app. Providing screenshots or video walkthroughs simplifies execution.
Defined ownership: Typically, inventory reconciliation for small brands is led by someone in operations or finance — often the founder or a trusted ops manager. Explicitly assigning ownership prevents tasks from slipping through the cracks.
These inventory reconciliation best practices create clarity, reduce stress, and directly support healthier cash flow and better production planning.
Step 3: Standardize Units of Measure and Product Names
If I had to choose one step that makes or breaks multilocation inventory reconciliation for wineries, it’s standardizing your units of measure and product names. I’ve worked with winery clients who had barrels at the estate facility, bottled wine at a bonded warehouse, tasting room stock packed in mixed cases, and distributor allocations in transit — and every location used its own language to describe the same SKUs. Without standardization, it’s nearly impossible to reconcile cleanly across the system.
Wineries are particularly prone to UOM confusion. Your estate might track by gallons or liters in the cellar, your bottling partner logs by individual bottles, your fulfillment center works in cases or shippers, and your distributor wants to know how many 6-bottle shippers are available.
For example, one client might log pinot noir lots in liters at the winery, while the fulfillment center tracks by case — only they mean 12-packs, while the winery means 6-packs. Add in a tasting room using mixed inventory for flights, library releases, and club packs, and it becomes obvious why clarity is nonnegotiable.
If you’re not in a position to dictate how your distributor, 3PL, or co-packer logs your wine — and most emerging brands aren’t — you can still take control by creating a SKU master sheet. I always recommend including:
Internal product name and SKU: For example, 2022 Estate Chardonnay – 750ml
Common units of measure: Gallons, liters, barrels, bottles, 6-packs, 12-packs
Vendor-specific SKUs or nicknames: What your 3PL, fulfillment partner, distributor, or tasting room call the product
Conversion rate: E.g., 1 barrel = 59 gallons = 24 cases = 288 bottles = 48 6-packs
Step 4: Investigate and Resolve Discrepancies Promptly
Even with a well-built process, inventory discrepancies are inevitable. Say a tasting room rep pulls mixed cases without logging them or bulk wine gets moved from barrel to tank, but no one updates the spreadsheet. These things happen, but you have to stay on top of discrepancies relentlessly.
I always tell founders to make the adjustment right away, especially if you’re using QuickBooks Online. Here’s how I break that down:
Receiving logs: Were all incoming materials logged completely? Missing line items or partial deliveries often slip through the cracks.
Shipment records: Do your bills of lading, invoices, and internal pick sheets all match up? It's common for a distributor pickup to be recorded in one system but not the other.
Production activity: Has that wine been bottled, blended, or transferred? Cellar work often happens faster than the paperwork.
Once you’ve confirmed the physical reality, log the discrepancy. I recommend keeping a running file with SKUs, dates, resolution notes, and team comments.
When you’re ready to fix the root cause, that’s when I lean on the five whys, where you keep asking why to effectively problem-solve. For example:
Why is the inventory number off?
Why didn’t the system reflect the change?
Why wasn’t it caught during the last reconciliation?
Why wasn’t a secondary check in place?
Why didn’t the process guide the right behavior?
This aims to uncover blind spots in your multilocation inventory management. Remember, one single adjustment might fix the numbers.
A diligent mindset is the best way for emerging brands to grow into disciplined, scalable operations with fewer surprises and tighter control over the numbers that matter most.
Build Reconciliation Into Your Operations as You Scale
At every winery I’ve supported, the turning point comes when inventory reconciliation stops being a scramble and starts becoming a habit. Once you know what’s in the barrel, what’s at the bottling line, and what’s still sitting in the tasting room fridge, you can finally plan with confidence.
You don’t need a giant ERP or barcode scanners in every corner. You just need a system that fits your reality: one that tracks bulk wine, bottled SKUs, and DTC movement without second-guessing. At BBG, we build wine-smart processes that flex with your team and your tools.
If you're managing inventory across multiple facilities and chasing numbers you don’t trust, get in touch.
Our finance services and operational expertise can help you build reconciliation into your rhythm and make your inventory work for you.
Want to keep building inventory discipline across your winery? See:
Our step-by-step reconciliation guide if you’re not sure where to begin
Advanced inventory strategies for growing teams juggling multiple SKUs
Expert costing insights that connect your inventory accuracy straight to margin clarity
Author: Eileen Vasko
Eileen Vasko is an accomplished Accounting professional with over 10 years of experience in financial management, cost accounting, and compliance. As a former Controller at Iron Horse Vineyards, she excelled at managing complex financial operations, including inventory cost accounting. As the Accountant Manager Team Lead at BBG, Eileen specializes in building highly efficient accounting processes including accounts payable/receivable, payroll, and tax reporting. Eileen is highly skilled in using advanced accounting platforms and tools to drive efficient processes.
