The questions independent drinks founders ask most — answered. Distilled from years of community knowledge so the good stuff never disappears in the feed again.
Unleashed is powerful for production tracking and batch traceability but requires careful setup and ongoing management—especially if integrating with accounting systems. **Key findings from the community:** - **Unleashed + Xero integration** — can cause serious problems if not set up correctly. Members reported duty being randomly allocated to balance sheets and P&Ls. One member had this issue and now uses Unleashed for production tracking only, deliberately not integrating it with Xero to avoid these errors. - **Professional implementation is essential** — multiple members emphasised that Unleashed "requires a team, training, and proper setup." One member previously tried integrating SOS Inventory with QuickBooks, which became "an absolute disaster" and forced them to run parallel systems for 2 years. They now use **Outserve** (philip.oakley@outserveweb.co.uk, https://www.outserveweb.co.uk) as their implementation and ongoing support partner. Outserve specialises in breweries and distilleries and understands excise duty treatment. - **Recommended use case** — Unleashed works well as a production-only system, especially when you need end-to-end batch traceability (required for SALSA compliance and larger customers). Members do not recommend setting it up without professional help or someone experienced with the system. - **Ongoing overhead** — expect significant monthly work for management accounts reconciliation. This is an interim solution before stepping up to enterprise systems like SAP or NetSuite (which are much more expensive). - **Cost trade-off** — Outserve support is not cheap, but members found it worthwhile to avoid the parallel-system nightmare and get proper excise duty handling. **Caveat:** Integration with accounting software can fail badly without expertise. Do not attempt a direct Xero integration without professional guidance.