The person who signs: opens the account, sets up the premises, invites the team and is responsible for what's filed.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. Create the account with the winery's name and your email address. Check the box to accept the terms. The app keeps the full text you accepted, not just a version number.
2. When the dashboard opens, read it before you change anything.
3. Find the two cards that matter on day one. Finish setting up offers short steps, and you can skip any of them. Still to fill in lists what's missing, and none of it stops you from working.

RecordsThe account, the winery and your acceptance of the terms, all saved together, so every account has accepted the terms.

NoticeA new dashboard is mostly empty. Every card and alert comes from something recorded, so an empty cellar looks empty rather than looking like a problem.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. Go through setup: the winery's name, location, time zone and vintage, with the registry and bond numbers; whether you're planning or already picking; and your first block or grower.
2. Check the time zone next to the state. It starts on the time zone of the device you opened the account on, and choosing a state with only one time zone sets it to that zone. The app uses this time zone for every date and time it works out for today.
3. Skip at least one step and notice that nothing breaks. Still to fill in lists what you skipped.

RecordsThe premises, the winery's time zone, the numbers the return is filed under, and the first block or grower, but only the ones you filled in.

NoticeSetup never blocks you. A first vintage is busy, so the app saves what you know now and lets you add the rest later.

Who can: Owner

1. Open the Switching card at the top of Settings. It lists the steps for bringing your records into Fermata, in the order they need to happen, and links each step to the form where you do it.
2. Work down the list from the top. It starts with the settings the later steps use, then the return you last filed (or, if there isn't one, the wine you already had). Next come the vessels, the shelf, the vineyard and the other bonded premises, the wine in your vessels and the wines in bottle. It ends with the movements since the day your books open, the people, the Does it add up? check, and the first physical inventory.
3. At the bottom of the card, read what stays where it is. Each line tells you where to find something Fermata doesn't hold.

RecordsNothing extra. Each step saves what its own form saves, and the card reads those records back.

NoticeYou don't check anything off by hand. A line shows as recorded once its record exists, and the card shrinks to one line after the first physical inventory is signed.

Who can: Owner

1. Fill in the premises card: the registry and bond numbers the return is filed under, and the filing cadence. The cadence sets the period each return covers and the day the physical inventory is due.
2. On the Other bonded premises card, add every bonded premises you move wine to or from, with its registry number.
3. Set the excise cadence on the Excise card. It sets the excise periods and puts each return's due date on the schedule.

RecordsThe premises and both cadences, and a card for each other premises with its registry number. Each transfer copies that number onto its own entry the day it's recorded.

NoticeLater, the app won't record a transfer in bond with a premises whose card has no registry number. The message points you to the card so you can add it.

For the returnThe form's heading and the period it covers come from this card. A transfer shows the other premises by the registry number on its card.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Accountant

1. Choose your display units for volume, temperature, sugar and tons. They only change what you see, because the app stores one unit of each. There's no single volume unit for the whole account, because the same cellar can show a barrel in gallons and a tank in liters.
2. Find Export. Every table is available as a CSV file from day one, whatever your subscription.
3. Find the archive: every export in one file, downloaded while you're signed in. It's what a closing notice points you to, and Fermata staff can't download it for you. It includes the winery's costs and tax, so only a role that can see costs can download it. Everyone else downloads the tables one at a time, without the money columns.

RecordsEach person's display preferences, and a log entry each time someone downloads the archive.

NoticeYour subscription controls filing. It never stops you from leaving with your records.

Who can: Owner

1. From the Team card, invite each person by email address and choose a role. The invitation contains a link that expires.
2. Choose each role by what the person is responsible for, not by seniority. The four roles are listed below, from the same table the app uses to decide who can do what.
3. Change a role or remove someone from the same card. If that person is also on another winery's team, they can still sign in there.

RecordsA team membership for each person, with their role, and each invitation until it's accepted.

NoticeIf someone's role can't use a control, the app shows which role can, so they know whom to ask.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. Add a passkey on each phone and computer you sign in with, under Settings, Passkeys. Confirm it's you with a passkey first.
2. Keep the ten recovery codes your first passkey comes with. They're shown once. Write them down or print them, and keep them away from your phone.
3. Remove a passkey for a device you no longer have. You can't remove your last one, so add another first.
4. If you can't sign in, choose Can't sign in? on the sign-in page. A recovery code gets you in at once. Without one, the owners of your winery are asked to approve.
5. As an owner, approve or decline a teammate's request to get back in on Settings. Every owner is told who decided.

RecordsEach passkey's name, when it was added and last used, and whether it's synced. Your recovery codes, in a form that can't be read back. Each request to get back in, and who decided it.

NoticeThere's no password and no password reset. Someone who gets into your email still can't get into your account, because getting back in takes a recovery code or an owner's approval.

Who can: Owner

1. Open Inventory Management in the menu. Until you subscribe, Click to subscribe appears under the Sales heading and opens Stripe Checkout for the add-on, and the add-on's pages show the offer: why it's worth having, what it records, what it won't do, and the price. DTC Sales has its own page of the offer, and one subscription covers both.
2. Subscribe from either page. One subscription for Inventory Management and DTC Sales, billed as a second line beside your main Fermata subscription and canceled on its own line in the billing portal.
3. Once Stripe confirms it, the line under the heading disappears and the pages open. If the subscription lapses, you can still read every page, but you can't record anything new.

RecordsWhether the add-on is active, read-only or not subscribed, along with the subscription's id. Only Stripe's own notices update this, never a form in the app.

NoticeEvery subscription includes the taxpaid removal on the ledger, Section B line 8 and the excise working paper. The add-on records what happens to the wine after it leaves bond, and the report doesn't use any of that record.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. On Locations under Inventory Management, add each place where you keep taxpaid wine: the tasting room, a storeroom, a festival stand, a fulfillment warehouse. Choose its kind, which sets the sales channel that kind of place usually uses. Change the channel if the place sells through a different one. Then choose whose place it is: your own, or someone else's warehouse or shop. Someone else's place needs its address, because moving cases into it is a taxpaid removal and the entry records who the wine went to.
2. For a place of your own, choose how it became taxpaid wine premises: named in your approved application (TTB F 5120.25), added by a notice of a change in use sent to TTB, or alternated under an alternation TTB approved. Enter the date if you have it. Or choose that it's a place you run at another address. That kind of place isn't taxpaid wine premises, and it needs its address. Fermata can't see your application, so it keeps your answer with your name. A place saved before this question was added shows as not stated, with a caution and a link to answer it.
3. Move cases out of bond from the overview. Enter the wine, the lot it comes from, the location, the container size, how many, and the date. The working under the count shows the gallons the ledger will record. The line under the location shows who the entry will record the wine as going to: the winery at its premises for your own taxpaid premises, the winery at the place's address for a place you run elsewhere, or the place's name and address for someone else's.
4. Read the confirmation. It shows the gallons removed taxpaid and the channel. If the ledger's record of the lot's packaged wine can't account for the move, the confirmation tells you instead of refusing it.
5. When you're done with a place, like a festival that's over, retire it instead of removing it. Its history stays, and nothing new can arrive there.

RecordsA location for each place, retired but never deleted, with how a place of your own became taxpaid premises and who entered that. For each move, two records saved together: the cased taxpaid removal on the ledger with its class and channel, and a stock arrival linked to that removal, with the containers at their size and the winery's name, premises address and registry number as the source.

NoticeThe move's gallons count once on Section B line 8 and on the excise working paper, in that day's figure for the class. The overview shows less wine in bond and the containers at the location. A removal entered on the ledger panel instead isn't linked to any location, and the overview lists it that way.

For the returnThe move is the taxpaid removal, the same entry the ledger panel makes. The location is kept in a separate record that the report doesn't use.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Open the location's page from Locations or the overview. It shows what should be there, by wine and size, based on every arrival from bond and every entry since. It also shows the history.
2. Use the one form to record what happened: sold (with the channel it sold through), poured or used, broken, transferred to another location, or returned to bond. Choose the wine and size from the list, or enter another, then enter how many and the date. For a sale of 80 liters or more (about nine cases of 750s), the form asks for the buyer's name and address, which 27 CFR 24.310 has the record carry. For smaller sales those boxes are optional, and a wholesaler's name is worth entering.
3. A sale, a pour or a breakage changes the stock record but not your ledger, because the removal already happened when the cases left bond. A transfer saves two entries on the same day: one out of this location and one into the other.
4. Returning cases to bond asks for what 27 CFR 24.312 asks for (the tax previously paid, the marks on the cases, where they were packed and the evidence) and the lot the wine goes back to. It saves the ledger entry and takes the containers off the location at the same time.
5. If you got a sale, pour, breakage or transfer wrong, use its Reverse button. The reversal is its own entry, dated today. Correct an arrival or a return on the ledger panel, where its entry is.
6. Under the history, read the taxpaid wine record: the record 27 CFR 24.311 has you keep of taxpaid wine on your taxpaid wine premises, laid out the way the section lists it. Each receipt shows who it came from, the registry number, the kind of wine, the tax class and the volume in liters and gallons. Each removal shows who it went to, where the regulation asks for that. You can download it as a file. Someone else's place and a place you run elsewhere don't keep this record, and their pages explain why.

RecordsA stock entry for each event, with the kind, the containers at their size, the date and who recorded it. A transfer is two linked entries, each showing the place at the other end. A return is the cased taxpaid-wine-returned-to-bond entry on the ledger with the §24.312 record, plus a stock entry showing the winery's bond as the destination. A reversal is an entry that points to the one it reverses.

NoticeWhat the location should hold changes by the number you entered. If a sale or other draw took more than the record expected, the confirmation tells you and records it anyway, because the expected figure may be the one that's wrong. The next count sorts it out. A return adds the containers' gallons to Section B line 4.

For the returnOnly the return to bond affects the report. It's the same entry the ledger panel makes, and it records the tax as paid by the winery, because the stock came from this winery's own bond.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. This is only for a place of your own that you've marked as taxpaid wine premises: named in your approved application, added by a notice, or alternated with TTB's approval. You can't add an opening entry for a place someone else runs, a place you run at another address, or a place whose status isn't stated yet.
2. On the location's page, open On hand when the books opened. For each wine and size already there, enter how many containers and where the number came from: your old records, a count on the day, or both.
3. Enter the kind of wine and the tax class shown on the cases. The form fills them in from the wine's lots where the lots agree, but the marks and labels on the cases decide. Leave out any cases no one can identify, and count them first.
4. To correct a line, use its Reverse button and enter it again.

RecordsAn opening stock entry for each line, dated the day the books open. It shows the winery's own bond as the source, by name, premises address and registry number, with the kind of wine and tax class from the cases and where the count came from. No ledger entry.

NoticeThe location now expects those containers, and the 24.311 record shows the line as a balance carried over from the old records, not as a receipt. If your count is higher than the old records' figure, the app flags it as a possible removal from bond that was never recorded or reported. Any correction on the bonded side is yours to make, and Fermata doesn't post one.

For the returnNothing. The cases left bond on earlier returns under your old books, so Section B line 8 and the excise working paper don't change.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand

1. On Counts, choose the location and the day of the count, then create the sheet. It lists every wine and size that should be there, with the expected number beside each.
2. Walk the place and enter what you find on every line. If a shelf is empty, enter 0. You can't sign while any line is blank, and the app tells you which one. Save as you go. The sheet is a draft until it's signed.
3. If you find a wine or size that isn't listed, add a line for it. Once you sign, what you found counts as an overage.
4. Check the box for the statement and sign. The sheet locks, and each line that differs saves an entry: shrinkage where you found fewer, overage where you found more, labeled with the count and its date. A line that matches saves nothing.
5. Read Shrinkage. By location, by wine and size, and by month, it shows the containers short and over and the shortfall as a share of what arrived from bond. Roles that can see the winery's costs also see its value, at the cost ledger's pooled cost per gallon where there is one.

RecordsA count for each walk-through, with each line's expected and found figures, locked once signed. One stock entry for each difference, linked to the count. Nothing on the ledger.

NoticeWhat the location should hold now matches what you found. If something was recorded at the location after you created the sheet, the app won't let you sign and asks you to create the sheet again. That way, no difference is posted against a figure no one actually counted.

For the returnNothing. Taxpaid wine left the report when it was removed from bond, so a count of it is only the winery's own record. The physical inventory of wine in bond is the one for the report, and it's under Reports.

Who can: Owner

1. In Commerce7, an Admin Owner installs Fermata from Apps & Extensions. Until it's installed, Fermata can't reach your Commerce7 account.
2. Open DTC Sales under Sales. Under The Commerce7 connection, enter your tenant ID and press Connect. It's the first part of your Commerce7 admin's web address, before .admin.platform.commerce7.com. You can paste the whole address.
3. Press Check the connection. Fermata asks Commerce7 for one product and keeps what Commerce7 answered. If the answer says the app isn't installed on your account, finish the install in Commerce7 and check again.
4. Under The SKU map, map each SKU, exactly as Commerce7 prints it, to one of your wines at one container size. If every bottling of the wine on record was one size, the size starts on that one. Otherwise, choose it.
5. For each SKU, choose where the shop sells it from: in bond, a taxpaid location, or a fulfillment house that holds the wine in bond. Choosing moves no wine.

RecordsThe connection, with your tenant ID, who connected it and when, and Commerce7's last answer to the check. A row for each SKU with its wine, its container size and where the shop sells it from. Nothing on the ledger.

NoticeA SKU that isn't on the map posts nothing when orders come in, and the order waits for you until you map it. You can always disconnect, even after the add-on lapses, and the connection's record stays.

Who can: Owner

1. Under The standing statement, read the sentence about when your staff mark a fulfillment in Commerce7. Check it only if it's how your staff work: on the day the wine leaves or is handed over, never the day it's packed.
2. Check every way your orders leave bond: shipped or handed over from bond, from a taxpaid location the cases were moved to first, or through a fulfillment house that holds the wine in bond.
3. Check the sales channels Commerce7 handles for you, then press Make the statement. Sales on those channels come in from Commerce7. Keep logging sales on every other channel by hand.
4. Under Which lot a sale comes from, choose a rule for each wine made from several lots: the oldest bottling first, in proportion to what each lot holds in glass, or one lot you choose. A wine made from one lot doesn't need a rule.
5. To approve each fulfillment yourself before it posts, press Ask me before posting each one under Orders from Commerce7. Otherwise, a fulfillment that passes every check posts by itself.

RecordsThe statement as a record that can't be edited: the exact sentence, the ways your orders leave bond, the channels, your name and the date. Restating it or withdrawing it adds a new record. A rule for each wine you set one for.

NoticeUntil a statement is in force, Fermata reads no orders from Commerce7, so nothing posts. A fulfillment dated before the statement waits for you, because it may already be on your records by hand.

For the returnEach order that posts is read under the statement in force on its day. The day your staff mark the fulfillment is the day the taxpaid removal is dated, and the day it counts on Section B line 8.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Under The count the shop is told, read each SKU's figure, worked out from the record: what the wine has left on the cased book for a SKU sold from bond, or what the record expects at a taxpaid location.
2. Press Read from Commerce7. Each line then shows what Commerce7 holds beside the record. If your Commerce7 account has more than one inventory location, choose on the SKU map which one each SKU's count goes to.
3. Compare the two figures, then press Send on a line, or send them all at once. A send sets Commerce7's available count to the record, less what Commerce7 already holds in reserve and in orders it hasn't fulfilled.

RecordsEvery send, as a record that can't be edited: the SKU, the record's figure, what Commerce7 held in reserve and in unfulfilled orders, the figure sent, and what Commerce7 answered.

NoticeNothing is sent until you press Send, because an order waiting for you isn't on the record yet. A SKU whose inventory Commerce7 doesn't track, or whose size Commerce7 shows differently, is held with the reason. Fermata never turns on tracking in Commerce7, and never reads a count back into your records.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Under Orders from Commerce7, read what came in. Fermata reads Commerce7 every 15 minutes and checks every order again once a day. Press Read orders now to read it at once.
2. A fulfillment that passes every check is posted as a taxpaid removal, dated the day it was fulfilled, and listed under Recent sales.
3. For each one waiting for you, read its reasons and fix the cause: map the SKU, choose a rule for the wine, or record a bottling the ledger doesn't have. It then posts on the next read. Where your own answer is the reason, such as a sale you know isn't a duplicate, or a day inside a filed return, press Post it and give the reason it asks for.
4. A refund comes in as its own item. If bottles came back, take them back under Recent sales. If none did, press No bottles came back.
5. Commerce7 has no way to cancel an order: you refund it and mark it No Fulfillment Required. That order comes in as one question. If no wine left, press No wine left.
6. Press Set aside, with a note, to close an item you dealt with another way. It writes nothing to your records.

RecordsA row on the queue for each fulfillment, locked once it's closed. A posted fulfillment saves what a sale typed on DTC Sales saves: a cased taxpaid removal for each lot, or a sale from a location's stock, with its channel, and a journal entry saying Fermata recorded it from Commerce7.

NoticeFermata never reverses a posted sale on its own. When Commerce7 changes, cancels or refunds an order after its sale posted, the queue asks you what happened, and Undo or Take back under Recent sales is how you correct the record.

For the returnA posted fulfillment from bond is a taxpaid removal on the cased book. It counts on Section B line 8 and on the excise working paper, in that day's figure for its tax class.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Under Club releases on DTC Sales, read each release that processes in the next 60 days. Fermata reads them from Commerce7 once a day. Press Read club releases to read them at once.
2. Each wine on a release says what its shipments need, what your record holds, and whether that covers it. Releases are read in the order they process, so a later release only counts what an earlier one leaves.
3. Where a release is short, read what's set beside it: a packaging run of the wine that hasn't run yet, bulk wine in its lots, or, for a SKU sold from a taxpaid location, the cases in bond you could move out to it. Book the run, move the cases, or in Commerce7 swap the product or take it off the release.

RecordsNothing of yours. Fermata keeps Commerce7's own figures for each release, replaced every time it reads them: the release, its club, the day it processes, how many shipments it has and what they need per SKU. Nothing about a member is read or kept.

NoticeA release that's short is on your schedule and on today's work, on the web and on your phone, until a later reading shows it covered or the release processes. A covered release stays quiet, because members can still change their shipments until the day before. Sales before the release processes aren't counted, and a packaging run that hasn't run is never counted as wine.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Under Record a sale on DTC Sales, enter the day and the channel, then a line for each wine and container size: how many, and where it was sold from, in bond or at a taxpaid location. One sale can be a single ticket or a whole shift.
2. For a sale of 80 liters or more in all, enter the buyer's name and address, which 27 CFR 24.310 has the record carry. For a smaller sale those boxes are optional.
3. If your standing statement says Commerce7 handles the channel, the card warns you. Record the sale here only if it wasn't made in Commerce7, or it will be on your records twice.
4. Under Recent sales, use Take back for bottles a buyer hands back. They go into bond, with the record 27 CFR 24.312 asks for, or onto a taxpaid location's shelf. Use Undo for a sale entered by mistake.

RecordsOne sale, linking every entry it made: a cased taxpaid removal for each lot a line from bond was taken from, using the wine's rule, and a sale from a location's stock for each line sold there. A take-back is its own entry, and the sale stays on the record.

NoticeUndo reverses every entry of the sale at once. If bottles were taken back against it, undo the take-back first.

For the returnA line sold from bond counts on Section B line 8. Bottles taken back into bond count on Section B line 4.

Who can: Owner

1. Subscribe from the Billing page. There's one tier, priced by the cases you bottle, in size bands listed on the page with their prices.
2. Your band is checked against the cased book, which is the bottlings on your own ledger, and the page tells you when they don't match. It only reports the difference. A move up to a higher band comes with thirty days' notice. To move down, talk to us.
3. AI credits are separate. The credits included each month are used first, a pack you buy never expires, and every button that uses a credit shows that beside it.

RecordsThe subscription and the band, set only by notices from the payment provider, never by a form in the app. Every credit used is saved as an entry that can't be edited.

NoticeIf you run out of credits, the app won't ask the AI model. It never gives you a cheaper answer instead, and nothing charges you automatically.

Who can: Owner

1. Stock the yeast strains, additives and spray products your cellar uses, so the app offers them when you're choosing. A shelf is the list of products you use. It doesn't record how much you have on hand.
2. Add your own product if the catalog doesn't have it. For a spray product, use Read it off the label, then check the intervals it filled in against the container.
3. Notice Unverified beside a spray product from Fermata's catalog. An interval shows as verified only when it has a source, a date and a name, and the entries in Fermata's catalog start out unverified.

RecordsYour three shelves, and any products you added yourself.

NoticeUntil a product is verified, the spray form asks you for the intervals from the container. The app won't guess at a figure that decides when fruit can be picked.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Your books need an opening day first. Enter the return you last filed outside Fermata, or enter the opening balance's year. Until you do, the card tells you the day is missing.
2. On the additives shelf's Deliveries and removals card, choose the material and On hand when the books opened. The date is set for you: the day your books open in Fermata.
3. Enter how much, in the material's own unit, and where the figure came from: the old records' closing balance, a count on the day, or a count with the old records' figure beside it. If there's a count, the account starts from the count.
4. Leave the supplier and invoice blank, since nothing arrived that day. Keep your old records, because they show how the stock arrived.
5. To correct it, enter it again with a note explaining why. The newer entry is the one that counts, and the first stays on the record, marked as replaced.

RecordsAn opening receipt that can't be edited, dated the day the books open, with the quantity, where it came from, the old records' figure if you took a count, and who entered it and when.

NoticeThe material's account on the sugar or acid record starts from the opening balance. A delivery or use dated earlier is listed as before the books opened, and isn't added to or taken from the balance. If a count and the old records differ, the record shows both and the difference.

For the returnIf the material is a juice or concentrate of another fruit, Part IV starts its column with this balance as on hand at the beginning of the period, never as received.

Who can: Owner

1. Load the demo cellar from the Demo cellar card. It adds two blocks with a season of samples, a grower, four vessels, two vintages under two house styles, and two lots in ferment.
2. Every exercise in this manual uses those records, and everything the demo adds has Demo in its name.
3. Remove it from the same card when you're done training. It removes exactly what it added.

RecordsA list of every record the demo added, so removing it takes those and nothing else.

NoticeIt only adds things that can be taken back out: no movements, sprays, filings or cost entries. Both lots are must in a fermenter, which doesn't post anything to the ledger.

ExerciseLoad the Demo cellar now. The rest of this manual assumes it's loaded.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. Start a sample winery at try.fermata.wine with Try a sample winery on Fermata's front page. It's a separate site with its own sign-in, so you add a passkey there too.
2. Do there first what your real books can't take back: file a quarter, sign a physical inventory, undo a sale, destroy a lot's wine. Then read what each one changed on the report and the lot.
3. Invite your winemaker or whoever keeps the books, up to 3 people, so you can try it together.
4. Its calendar opens on September 14, in the middle of harvest, and moves ahead a day for each day that passes. When you want a clean copy, choose Start over on the Sample winery card at the top of its Settings. It puts the calendar back at September 14 and keeps the same end date.

RecordsNothing in your own account. The sample winery is a winery of its own on its own site, with invented records, and it's deleted with its sign-in 14 days after it was made.

NoticeEvery page there says it's a sample winery and the day it ends, and every PDF it prints is stamped "Sample records. Not for filing.". The demo cellar is the other way round: it adds records to your own account and takes them back out, and because it posts nothing to the ledger, it can't show you a filing.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Accountant

1. Ask for the account to be closed. A closing period starts, the app keeps working the whole time, and the notice appears in the app as well as by email.
2. Download the archive while you're signed in, before the period ends. The account can't be closed until someone has downloaded an archive since the notice. The archive includes all the money figures, so only a role that can see the winery's costs can download it.
3. Before you decide, read what the card says about what's kept. It's the same wording as on the notice and in this manual.

RecordsThe notice with its dates, a log entry for each archive download, and, after the account closes, the business records, which stay. Each user's personal details are removed.

NoticeEach record is kept for at least three years from its own date or its last entry, whichever is later (27 CFR 24.300(d)). A TTB officer may require up to three years more. That duty belongs to the record and to the winery, and it outlives the account. Nothing counts down from the day an account closes, and nothing is scheduled to remove the books.