The idea is simple: BrewLedger works on a principle of everything being linked together, and maintaining a state of truth about exactly what's going on in your brewery. New to BrewLedger? See What is BrewLedger? for an overview.
If you're a new brewery, here's the order of operations.
Locations
The first thing you do is add your Locations—the different rooms or spaces where your beer and materials are kept. Could be a Keg Room, a cold room, a cellar, a cabinet near your brewery floor, etc. Add anywhere you store stuff as a location.
Items
Next, create your Items. Items are any and all raw material, packaging supply, or chemical—anything that's part of the brewing or operations process that you need to track inventory of. It's easy to add items through the Items tab.
Receive
Creating an item only creates a record of its existence. You need to receive inventory to add it to your own. The Receive page handles adding any new inventory to your brewery—whether from an order, reclaiming empty kegs, or anything else. Any new inventory you're adding to record goes through this page. Select the location you're receiving to, select items and quantities, hit done, and you've officially received it.
Beers
Beers is a map of your brewery's finished beers. You don't need to worry much about this—it all happens somewhat automatically. You can add beers bound to recipes. This is mostly tracking for what beers you have. Packaged beer works as items; for instance you may see "Pale Ale 1/2 bbl," which means a 1/2 bbl keg of Pale Ale is being stored somewhere.
Transfer
Transfer is a simple menu used to record moving inventory from location A to location B.
Par Levels
Par levels, or reorder thresholds, let you set a number that represents the minimum amount of an item you can have on hand. If the amount you have drops below the threshold, you get a warning and a re-order suggestion. Par levels can be set globally ("I need X 1/2 bbl empty kegs in the facility at a time") or location-specific ("There should always be at least 3 packs of can lids in the cellar").
Ready to track your brewing process? Batch Tracking Quick Start walks you through batches, milestone templates, ingredient additions, readings, split/transfer, and Mark Production Complete.