Duty is one of the most significant financial exposures in the spirits industry, yet for many distilleries it remains one of the least automated and most manually managed parts of the operation. It sits quietly in the background until something goes wrong. A miscalculation. A missing movement. A strength change entered late. An inconsistency between the warehouse and finance. For an industry with such tight margins, these small issues can become expensive very quickly.
In this environment, spreadsheets and manual tools simply cannot support the accuracy required.
Duty is not complex because the rules are unclear. It is complex because the data needed to calculate it is spread across disconnected processes.
Most distilleries experience the same challenges regardless of size:
1. Manual calculations and inconsistent spreadsheets
Different people maintain different sheets. LPA logic varies. Manual formulas break. The numbers drift.
2. Duty and warehouse data do not match
Warehouse teams record movements one way, finance interprets them another way and the two never fully align.
3. Strength and volume changes are not updated instantly
A regauge performed today may not make it into the duty sheet until next week, which means duty calculations are already outdated.
4. Duty liability becomes unpredictable
Teams dread submission week because all the risk is concentrated into a few days.
5. Audits become stressful
When HMRC asks how a number was calculated, the answer should come from the system, not from a person who built the spreadsheet.
These issues drain time, create financial exposure and undermine confidence in the numbers.
Bottle ERP removes the guesswork entirely by connecting duty to the real operational data that drives it.
Every LPA movement is tracked automatically
No manual formulas. No reconciliation. No delays.
Regauges and strength changes update instantly
Duty positions shift in real time the moment the data is entered.
Bottling runs adjust liability without manual intervention
Yields, losses and final volumes flow directly into duty calculations.
Ownership and stock movements are fully integrated
Transfers, re-racks, samples and extractions update financials and duty consistently.
All duty postings go straight into the general ledger
This creates a complete audit-ready record of how, when and why liability changed.
Bottle ERP does not calculate duty as an isolated process. It calculates duty as a faithful reflection of what actually happened in the distillery.
When duty is automated and embedded inside a unified system:
Finance does not chase operational teams for data
Warehouse teams do not manage the burden of spreadsheets
Compliance does not fear audits
Leadership does not question the numbers
Duty becomes calm, predictable, and controlled. And the distillery gains the freedom to focus on growth rather than correction.
The distilleries that grow fastest and attract the strongest financial partners are not the ones with the most impressive spreadsheets. They are the ones with systems that tell the truth in real time.
Bottle ERP gives distilleries that truth. Not once a month. Not when someone manages to stitch together spreadsheets. But every single day.
Duty stops being a risk and becomes a foundation for confident decision-making.