Whoever keeps the ledger and prepares the return: the owner in a small winery, or someone the owner gives the owner's role.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Log what the move screen doesn't: a receipt in bond with the registry number and the containers, a taxpaid removal with its channel, wine returned to bond with its origin and the rest of that record, a removal for distilling or to a vinegar plant, family use and breakage.
2. If a cased removal left as bottles, you can count it in bottles. The app converts to gallons and shows the working. Only the gallons are saved.
3. A removal from the bulk book comes out of the vessel the lot is in, and that vessel's fill goes down with the lot's gallons. If the lot is in several vessels, choose the one it came out of, or all of them in proportion to what each holds.
4. For a lot still in its fermenters, you can remove only what its presses have put on the ledger, from the tanks a press filled. If must is lost before the press, change the estimate on the lot's In the fermenter card. The lot's production is posted at the press or when it's gauged, never here.
5. To record a movement dated inside a filed period, you need to give a reason it's only being recorded now. The reason is saved with the entry.
6. A movement dated more than three business days ago is recorded with a caution. 27 CFR 24.300(b) defers an entry posted from a record made at the time until the close of the third business day after the day it records, and the report lists the period's entries written later than that.

RecordsA movement for each entry, which can't be edited, with its tax class copied onto it and every field that kind of entry needs.

NoticeCorrections are reversing entries, and nothing on the ledger is ever edited. The review sheet shows by how much each section doesn't add up.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. Read the cellar-versus-ledger check: what the lots add up to, compared with the ledger's closing balance. A gap tells you something, since wine evaporates and gets mismeasured. If the check could never show a gap, it would only be comparing the ledger with itself.
2. Read the fruit reconciliation: tons compared with production entries, each marked as matched or inferred, so you always know which it is.
3. Read Taxpaid removals by day under the two books: each day's removals in each tax class, to the tenth of a gallon. That's the summary 27 CFR 24.310 asks for, with the removals' own total beside it. Line 8 is the sum of the daily figures. The small difference from the removals is cleared in the same period, in each tax class's own column, on a Section B write-in line captioned OTHER.

RecordsNothing. All three are worked out each time you open the report.

NoticeThe demo cellar's two lots are still in fermenters, so their production isn't posted yet. The report lists them as fermenting, not as unrecorded.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. On Reports, find Commerce7 against the ledger. It appears once the winery has connected Commerce7. For the period, it sets the fulfillments Commerce7 recorded beside what's on the record from them, by wine, size and channel: posted, waiting, set aside, or undone.
2. Read each item listed under it, with the link to where you deal with it: a count the record doesn't match, an order Commerce7 changed, cancelled, deleted or refunded after its sale posted, or a sale logged by hand on a channel Commerce7 handles.
3. Check how far back Fermata's reading of Commerce7 goes, and whether anything is still to be read, before you file the period.

RecordsNothing. It's worked out each time you open the report, from what Fermata has read from Commerce7.

NoticeIt never changes the record. A difference is pointed out, the way the fruit reconciliation points one out, and you correct it on DTC Sales.

Who can: Owner

1. Read the working paper before you file. It shows every line the app fills, captioned in the form's own words. It lists every kind of entry the app doesn't place on a line, with the reason. And it shows any totals that won't add up.
2. On the reports page, make the standing decisions the app leaves to you. Each is recorded with your name and the date: which line samples go on, which line destroyed bulk wine goes on, and where the two sides of a reclassification go.
3. File. Your attestation is saved in a form that can't be altered, and the return is locked and always shown exactly as filed.

RecordsA filing with a copy of its figures, the decisions it was made under, the version of the Auditor Reference it was produced under, and the attestation.

NoticeTo amend a return, you file again. The panel shows both sets of figures, the button shows the amendment's number, and the replaced return stays on record.

For the returnAll of it. The table below shows the form's own line for every kind of ledger entry, and the reason when there isn't one.

Who can: Owner

1. From the filed returns archive on the reports page, open Enter a return filed outside Fermata. Type the return you last filed into the form's own grid, cell by cell, with the period, the date it was filed and its confirmation.
2. Or have the app read the paper first. Choose the PDF saved from the smart form, the Pay.gov confirmation, a printout or a photograph, and press Read the return. An AI model reads it twice, separately, and only what both readings agree on is filled in, each figure beside the line it came from. Anything the two read differently, or that only one found, is listed for you to type in. It's free.
3. Check the heading and the signer against the paper. They start filled in from Bonded premises and today's signer. For a return filed before you moved, enter the address it was filed with.
4. Read the form's own arithmetic as you enter the figures. If a column doesn't add up, the app points it out, but still enters the paper exactly as it was filed.
5. Check the box for the statement and enter the return. If you file quarterly, enter the return that closed last year and each quarter you've filed this year.

RecordsA filed return, locked and marked as filed outside Fermata: the cells exactly as on the paper, the figures Fermata reads from the lines that match one of its own kinds of entry, and the statement you checked, saved in a form that can't be altered.

NoticeIts closing balance opens the first report you file here. Its period is closed to late entries, and your books in Fermata begin the day after it ends. It's never recalculated or amended from this ledger. If you amended it on paper, enter it again as an amendment that replaces the first.

For the returnThe reprinted form shows the cells exactly as entered and nothing else. Its review sheet shows where the paper doesn't add up and which lines Fermata uses as its own figures.

Who can: Owner

1. Read what left bond taxpaid in the period, by class. Each class shows the sum of its daily figures (the same ones Section B line 8 adds up), with the removals' own total beside it. The second half shows the tax only while the rate table in use is current. Once the table's last check is more than a year old, the paper shows gallons only and explains why.
2. Enter the credit share the winery claims, for each tier and year, with a name and a date. Until you do, the paper shows the tax before credit.
3. Beside the share, enter the gallons a bonded house removed taxpaid for the winery that year. Where the conditions in 26 U.S.C. 5041(c)(5) are met, the house takes the credit on those gallons on its own return, and they count against the winery's tiers. The paper counts them before the winery's own removals.
4. File the excise return where you normally file it, then record the date, the confirmation and the figure here, exactly as they appear on the return.
5. If your books in Fermata began after January 1, enter beside the share the taxpaid gallons your old books removed that year. They're filled in from the returns you entered, and counted before every removal here. Until you save them, the paper applies no credit.
6. Record a return filed outside Fermata from your old books the same way, under Filed this period's return outside Fermata. No working paper is saved with it, and the schedule stops asking for it.

RecordsCredit allocations, and a recorded return for each period with a locked copy of the working paper beside it, or no paper for a return filed outside Fermata.

NoticeNothing here is a return. You type in the recorded figure, and the app never calculates it from the paper, so you can compare the two.

Who can: Owner

1. Start a count. The sheet lists every container the ledger says holds wine, with the book figure beside each. If a lot's vessels show something different from what the ledger holds for it, the sheet uses the ledger's figure and flags the lot. Signing sets each vessel to what was counted. Must and juice still fermenting are left off and listed separately, because they're the report's in-fermenters estimate, not wine on the ledger.
2. Enter what you found for every container. If a tank is empty, enter 0. You can't sign while any line is blank.
3. Read the section's statement, then sign. The count locks, and the difference for each lot on each book is posted as inventory entries dated the day of the count.

RecordsThe count and its lines, locked once signed. The differences, as ledger entries. And the figures a claim would be based on, saved with the count.

NoticeOn an account with nothing filed and no earlier count, the first count can serve as your carry-in, once. If you later save a carry-in by hand, it replaces the count, and the app tells you.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker

1. Post costs where they come up: a block's farming for the season, a grower's price per ton on the Weighmaster Certificate, a material's container price, labor on a lot, and overhead by period.
2. Allocate farming once the block is picked, and overhead once the period has ended. The app splits farming by tonnage and overhead by gallon-days, never by acre or by hour.
3. Read every cost figure with its grade: complete, partial or a floor. For a lot whose fruit was never invoiced, the app shows its cost as a floor, never as a full price per gallon.

RecordsCost entries that can't be edited. To correct one, add a reversal, which lands exactly where the original did.

NoticeExcise and fruit costs are recorded as entered, never calculated, because a tax rate depends on things this ledger doesn't track. Money is kept separate from gallons. A cellar hand sees the books in gallons and can log a dose that posts its cost, while dollar figures are shown only to the roles that can see costs.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Cellar hand, Accountant

1. Open a lot's history: the strains, every dose, every reading, the moves, the composition, and the records the regulations list. Each one is a section, and an empty section explains what being empty means.
2. Print it. The PDF shows exactly what the screen shows.

RecordsNothing. Everything is worked out from your records, and gaps are pointed out, never filled in.

NoticeA printed history looks official, and it often goes to someone who can't check it. That's why every grade from the screen is printed with it.

Who can: Owner, Winemaker, Accountant

1. On the Operations Report, find the Audit binder card. Choose a calendar year, an inventory year, or a filed return at each end, and download the binder.
2. Open the README first. It counts every file in the folder and lists what isn't there: photographs, any form that couldn't be filled in, and the records Fermata doesn't keep, by section.
3. Hand over the whole folder. binder.pdf is the report. returns/ holds each filed return, filled in on your own blank form. wines/ holds the history of each wine made from a lot with a record in that span, as the wine's own page prints it. The Auditor Reference is included at its current version, and each return's working paper shows the version it was produced under. tables/ holds every record as CSV.

RecordsA note in Fermata's own log that the binder was downloaded, with the span. Nothing in your records changes.

NoticeEvery page of the report shows your winery, the time it was generated (to the minute, in your time zone) and the version of the Auditor Reference it was produced under, so even a single page shows where it came from. Part 4 prints each lot's own entries for the span under the section that asks for them, and Part 5 lists every decision that's yours, with the name and the date.

ExerciseWith the Demo cellar loaded, download the binder for this calendar year and find the Demo lots in Part 5.