Water bottling software that costs the run, not just the sale

You are not selling water, you are selling packaging

The water in a 500ml bottle costs almost nothing. The preform, the cap, the label, the power for the blower and the diesel to reach the shops are your whole cost, and every one is priced in dollars somewhere upstream. When the preform supplier moves his price, your margin moves that day.

The other half is that a plant sells the same water in five formats at five margins — 500ml packs to kiosks, 5L to households, 20L refills to offices — and the fast mover is rarely the profitable one. Without a cost per unit for each, pricing a distributor's order is guesswork dressed as a discount.

PesaScope handles both ends. Raw materials come in at a real cost and go out against a batch; finished packs land in stock at the depot you choose and sell like any other product, on cash or on credit.

From delivery to depot

1. Book in materials at what you paidPreforms, caps, labels and cartons arrive with a supplier and a cost per unit. Buy in cartons and use in pieces — the two units are set separately.
2. Record the runPick the recipe and the number of batches, enter good and damaged output, and materials come out of stock while finished packs go in at the branch you choose.
3. Sell the packsShops pay cash, distributors take on account. Part payment is recorded as part payment, and the balance sits against that distributor with a date.
4. Watch each depot separatelyEvery branch keeps its own count, so a depot quietly out of 20L while the plant is full stops being news you get by phone.

The list a bottling plant sets up on day one

Pick "Water bottling plant" at sign-up and this list is already there. The formats you sell go in as products with a cost and a selling price; a delivery charge goes in as a service.

Preforms, caps, labels and cartons are not on this list. They are raw materials, and if you switch the Production module on they live there, with their own stock and reorder levels.

One run of 500ml, costed properly

The run cost 1,785,000 to put on a truck — about 298 a bottle, of which the preform alone is 160. A twenty-five shilling rise in the preform price takes 150,000 off this run, more than the whole delivery cost. Watch the preform, not the fuel.

Production is optional, and off until you switch it on

The Production module is where recipes and batch costs live, and it is opt-in. Nothing appears until you turn it on, because most PesaScope businesses buy and resell rather than make. Ignore it and the app stays simpler.

Turn it on and you define one recipe per format: how many bottles a batch makes, the materials it consumes, and the other costs of a run — labour, packaging, power, water, machine time. As you type it shows batch cost, cost per unit and margin, so a supplier's price rise becomes a pricing decision rather than a year-end surprise.

Recording a run through Quick Make deducts the materials, adds good units to finished stock and keeps damaged ones as waste. Production has no separate ledger — materials leave stock, finished goods enter it, and your ordinary reports stay correct.

Where a plant's money leaks

1. Damaged output recorded as goodBottles that blow badly or come off unlabelled are a cost already paid. Entering them as damaged keeps the cost per good unit honest.
2. Empties that never came backA 20L jar costs several times the water in it. PesaScope will not track jars out and back for you, so this one needs a count of your own.
3. Distributor credit with no ageTrade customers pay in parts. Each balance carries a date, so you can see who is holding a week of production.
4. Material prices drifting quietlyStock comes in at a weighted-average cost as each delivery lands, so cost per bottle moves when the market moves, not when someone remembers.

The detail, if you want it

Questions bottling plants ask