A missed hop shipment can derail an entire brew day. A packaging supplier who ghosts you the week before a big release can turn a profitable quarter into a scramble. And if you're still managing raw material orders through text messages, sticky notes, or memory alone, you're basically running your supply chain on luck.
The good news? Setting up a structured purchase order (PO) workflow isn't complicated. It just takes a bit of intentional planning, the right habits, and a system that keeps everything visible. Whether you're ordering hops in bulk, sourcing specialty malt from a single supplier, or keeping packaging materials stocked for seasonal releases, a well-built PO workflow saves you time, money, and a whole lot of stress.
According to the Brewers Association, thousands of craft breweries operate across the United States, and as they scale from pilot systems to multi-barrel production, supply chain management becomes one of the biggest operational challenges. A brewery management platform like BrewPlanner can centralize your vendor relationships, purchase orders, and inventory tracking in one place, but even before you choose software, understanding the fundamentals of a good PO workflow will set you up for success.
Let's walk through how to build one from the ground up.
Organize Your Vendors and Raw Materials Before Anything Else
Before you create a single purchase order, you need a clean foundation. That means organizing your vendor relationships and cataloging every raw material and packaging supply your brewery uses. Skipping this step is like trying to brew without a recipe. You might get something drinkable, but you'll waste a lot along the way.
Build a Vendor Database
Start by listing every supplier you work with. For most breweries, this includes hop dealers, maltsters, yeast labs, packaging suppliers (cans, labels, crowns, carriers), chemical suppliers, and possibly CO2 vendors. For each vendor, capture the basics:
- Company name and primary contact person
- Phone, email, and physical address
- Payment terms (Net 15, Net 30, COD, prepay)
- Minimum order quantities and lead times
- Items they supply (their catalog)
The vendor catalog piece is particularly powerful. When you link specific items to specific vendors, you eliminate guesswork when it's time to reorder. You know exactly who supplies your Cascade hops, which maltster carries your Maris Otter, and which packaging company handles your 16oz cans.
Many breweries maintain two or three vendors for critical ingredients like base malt or their flagship hop varieties. This redundancy protects you if one supplier runs short. Document these backup vendors just as thoroughly as your primary ones.
Catalog Your Items With Precision
Next, create a master list of every item you purchase. Group them into logical categories:
- Hops: List by variety, form (pellet, whole leaf, cryo), and typical unit of purchase (pounds, kilograms, boxes)
- Malt and grain: List by type (base malt, specialty malt, adjuncts) with unit sizes (50lb bags, supersacks, bulk)
- Yeast: By strain, format (liquid, dry), and pitch size
- Packaging: Cans, bottles, labels, crowns, carriers, shrink wrap, case trays
- Chemicals and supplies: Caustic, acid, sanitizer, filter media, fining agents
For each item, note the standard reorder quantity, the minimum stock level that should trigger a new order, and the typical lead time from order to delivery. A bag of base malt from a regional maltster might arrive in three days. A specialty hop from overseas could take three weeks. These lead times directly shape when you need to place orders.
This catalog becomes your single source of truth. When a brewer tells you they need 200 pounds of Centennial for next month's IPA series, you can instantly check stock, see who supplies it, and create a PO without hunting through old emails.
Connect Items to Your Product Recipes
If you're producing specific beers with defined recipes, map your raw materials back to those products. This is your bill of materials. For example, your West Coast IPA might require 400 pounds of pale malt, 50 pounds of crystal 40, and 30 pounds of Simcoe and Citra hops per 20-barrel batch. When you schedule that beer for production, your bill of materials tells you exactly what you need to have on hand, and if current inventory falls short, you know exactly what to order.
This connection between production planning and purchasing is where breweries gain the most efficiency. Instead of reactive ordering ("We're out of Citra, call the hop dealer"), you shift to proactive purchasing based on your production schedule.
Design Your Purchase Order Lifecycle
A purchase order isn't just a document you send to a vendor. It's a living record that moves through distinct stages, and each stage gives you visibility into where your money is going and where your materials are in the pipeline. Designing a clear lifecycle prevents orders from falling through the cracks.
Stage 1: Draft and Review
Every PO starts as a draft. This is where you select the vendor, add the items you need, specify quantities, and confirm pricing. The draft stage exists so you can review before committing. Are you ordering enough hops to cover the next six weeks of production? Did you account for that new pilot batch the head brewer wants to try? Is the pricing consistent with your last order, or has your supplier raised rates?
Drafts also let you batch orders strategically. Instead of placing five small orders to the same maltster over two weeks, you can combine them into one larger order that might qualify for volume pricing or reduced shipping costs.
For breweries with multiple people involved in purchasing, the draft stage is also your approval checkpoint. The head brewer might draft POs for ingredients while the operations manager reviews and approves them before they go to the vendor. This simple review layer catches mistakes and prevents duplicate orders.
Stage 2: Ordered
Once reviewed and approved, the PO moves to "Ordered" status. This means it's been sent to the vendor and you're waiting for delivery. At this point, the PO serves as your record of what was promised, at what price, and when it should arrive.
Track your expected delivery dates carefully. If your hop order should arrive by Friday and it's now Monday with no shipping confirmation, the Ordered status is your prompt to follow up with the vendor before the delay impacts your brew schedule.
Some breweries send POs via email directly from their management system. Others call them in and log the PO internally. Either way, the key is having a record that matches what the vendor confirmed.
Stage 3: Received
When materials arrive, you move the PO to "Received" and log what actually showed up. This is where item-level receiving becomes important. Maybe you ordered 500 pounds of pale malt across ten 50-pound bags, but only eight bags arrived. Or your can order came in full, but one pallet has dented cans. Recording partial receipts and discrepancies at the item level gives you the documentation to resolve issues with vendors and ensures your inventory numbers stay accurate.
Receiving should also trigger an inventory update. Those 400 pounds of pale malt should automatically increase your stock levels at the warehouse or storage location where they were delivered. If you manage multiple warehouse locations or storage areas, logging the specific location matters for production teams who need to find materials quickly.
Stage 4: Late Orders and Exception Handling
Not every order arrives on time. A good PO workflow includes a "Late" status for orders that have passed their expected delivery date without being received. This status acts as an automatic flag, prompting someone on your team to contact the vendor and determine the new ETA.
Late orders are more than an inconvenience. They can cascade into production delays. If your specialty malt for a seasonal release doesn't arrive on time, you might need to push back your brew date, which shifts your fermenter schedule, which delays your packaging run. Having visibility into late orders lets you make proactive decisions, like sourcing from a backup vendor or adjusting your production calendar, before problems compound.
Track Inventory and Spending to Improve Over Time
A PO workflow isn't just about getting materials in the door. It generates valuable data that helps you run a tighter operation over time. Every order you place and receive creates a financial and operational record that you can analyze to reduce costs, negotiate better terms, and prevent waste.
Monitor Stock Levels Against Reorder Points
Once your PO workflow is feeding accurate data into your inventory, you can set minimum stock levels for critical items. When your Cascade hop inventory drops below 100 pounds, that's your signal to create a new PO. When you're down to your last pallet of 16oz cans, it's time to reorder before your packaging run.
The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that small manufacturers maintain clear financial records and inventory controls to support healthy cash flow. For breweries, this translates directly to knowing what's on your shelves, what's on order, and what you'll need based on upcoming production.
Reorder points vary by item. Base malt that you use every week needs a higher minimum threshold and more frequent ordering than a specialty ingredient you only use in one seasonal beer. Set your reorder points based on:
- Lead time: How long from order to delivery?
- Usage rate: How fast do you go through this item?
- Safety stock: How much buffer do you want in case of delays?
A simple formula: Reorder Point = (Daily Usage x Lead Time in Days) + Safety Stock. If you use 100 pounds of pale malt per day, your supplier takes 5 days to deliver, and you want a 2-day buffer, your reorder point is 700 pounds.
Analyze Spending by Vendor and Category
Over time, your PO history reveals spending patterns that are hard to see when orders live in email threads and spreadsheets. Pull reports that show:
Analysis TypeWhat It RevealsAction You Can TakeSpending by vendorWhich suppliers get most of your budgetNegotiate volume discounts with top vendorsSpending by categoryHow costs split between hops, malt, packagingIdentify cost reduction opportunitiesPrice trends per itemWhether unit costs are rising over timeLock in contracts before price increasesOrder frequencyHow often you order from each vendorConsolidate orders to reduce shipping costs
This kind of reporting transforms purchasing from a reactive chore into a strategic function. When you sit down with your hop supplier for an annual review, you can show them your total volume and negotiate better pricing. When you notice your packaging costs have crept up 15%, you can shop alternative suppliers with hard data in hand.
Generating these reports manually is tedious. Tools that let you export purchase order data to Excel or other formats make the analysis much faster. Look for systems that track transactions at the item level, so you can drill into specifics rather than just seeing totals.
Tie Purchasing to Production Planning
The most mature brewery PO workflows connect purchasing directly to production schedules. When you plan your brew calendar for the next month, your system can calculate total ingredient requirements based on your recipes and batch sizes, compare those requirements against current inventory, and generate draft POs for any shortfalls.
This closed-loop approach eliminates the most common purchasing failures in small breweries: ordering too late, ordering too much, or forgetting to order altogether. It also makes scaling easier. As you add more beers, increase batch sizes, or open new production shifts, your purchasing workflow scales with you because it's driven by data rather than memory.
Putting It All Together With the Right System
You can run a basic PO workflow with spreadsheets and email. Plenty of breweries do, especially in their early days. But as you grow past a handful of beers and a couple of suppliers, the manual approach breaks down. Orders get lost in inboxes. Inventory counts drift from reality. Nobody remembers whether that hop order was placed last Tuesday or just discussed.
The shift to a dedicated system pays for itself quickly. Here's what to look for:
- Vendor management with item catalogs so you can link suppliers to specific materials and see all your options when it's time to order
- Purchase order tracking with lifecycle states (draft, ordered, received, late) so nothing falls through the cracks
- Item-level receiving so you can log partial deliveries and discrepancies accurately
- Inventory integration so receiving a PO automatically updates your stock levels across locations
- Reporting and export capabilities so you can analyze spending, generate financial records, and share data with your accountant or partners
- Multi-location support if you store materials across different warehouses, cold storage, or production areas
BrewPlanner was built specifically for this kind of brewery operations management. It handles vendor catalogs, purchase order lifecycles with item-level receiving, inventory tracking across multiple locations, and Excel report generation for purchase history and transactions. Everything connects, so your PO workflow feeds directly into your inventory and production planning.
If you're ready to move beyond spreadsheets and scattered emails, check out BrewPlanner's plans to find the right fit for your brewery's size and needs. Or if you want to dive in right away, sign up for BrewPlanner and start building your vendor database and first purchase orders today.
Your hops, malt, and packaging supplies are the lifeblood of your brewery. Give them the management system they deserve, and you'll spend less time chasing orders and more time making great beer.
