Annual Finance & Accounting Checklist: A Guide for Winery Owners and Emerging CPG Brand Founders
Running a winery demands that you keep a dozen plates spinning at once — except those plates are full of grapes, employees, spreadsheets, and tax forms. Without a clear financial plan, you could wind up drowning in inventory or sipping from the cup of unexpected expenses.
A carefully structured annual finance checklist covers all the bases, from maintaining cash flow during peak production seasons to staying compliant with regulatory changes. It's a safeguard that allows you to continually fine-tune every part of your financial strategy, giving you the freedom to focus on crafting a successful future.
Let's look at how you can use this checklist to streamline your winery or CPG management tasks and keep success flowing.
Your Comprehensive Annual Finance & Accounting Checklist
The following checklist can help you achieve operational clarity and keep your finances in pristine condition.
1. At Least Once Per Year: Build a Multiyear Financial Model
Developing a multiyear financial model offers a clear, long-term view of your business' financial trajectory. The model should include everything from production volumes and distribution plans to headcount growth, equipment purchases, accounts payable, new product launches, and projected expansions. Planning ahead allows you to allocate resources strategically — perhaps you need funding for a new bottling line, expanding your tasting room, investing in eco-friendly packaging, or launching a DTC sales channel.
An accurate model sets the foundation for financial stability, enabling you to meet changing market demands without disruption. Projections around cash flow, capital expenses, revenue streams, and labor costs provide flexibility to explore growth opportunities and scale intelligently.
2. Every Year: Draft an Operating Cash Flow Budget
A comprehensive operating cash flow budget gives you a precise understanding of peak spending periods, such as during harvest, bottling, marketing campaigns, or product launches. This allows you to plan supplier payments, stagger capital expenditures, negotiate favorable terms with vendors, and allocate funds for unexpected repairs.
For example, knowing your largest cash outflows occur in the months leading up to bottling helps you manage liquidity effectively. Keep in mind that a cash flow budget isn't static. It adapts to changes in production cycles, sales patterns, regulatory fees, and operational costs to prepare you for any scenario.
3. Every Bottling: Calculate the Unit Cost of Each SKU
Understanding the unit cost of every SKU (stock keeping unit) produced gives you an intimate view of your profitability at the most granular level. Each time you bottle a new vintage or product line, calculating the exact cost allows you to price your offerings competitively while maintaining solid margins.
For example, calculating the unit cost per bottle for your reserve wine may reveal a higher production cost due to premium grapes, longer barrel aging, or specialized packaging. Armed with this data, you can set pricing that reflects the true value of the product without undercutting your margins.
4. Every Year: Evaluate FOB and Retail Pricing Annually
A thorough annual evaluation of your FOB (free on board) and retail pricing can reveal opportunities to optimize margins across distribution channels. Reviewing pricing data for each SKU allows you to compare gross margins by channel, identify inefficiencies, spot trends in consumer behavior, and make data-driven adjustments. If certain distribution channels aren't as profitable as others, adjusting your FOB or retail pricing can help balance margins while maintaining competitiveness.
5. Every Quarter: Review KPIs
Tracking KPIs (key performance indicators), such as gross profit margin, sales growth, inventory turnover, customer acquisition, and average order value, provides actionable insights into how your business is performing relative to your financial goals and industry benchmarks.
6. Every Month: Compare Budgeted Performance to Actual Performance Monthly
Monthly comparison of your budgeted performance versus actual performance is a powerful tool for identifying variances and making timely adjustments. The budget-versus-actual (BvA) analysis reveals where your financial forecasts were off, allowing you to adjust course before small issues grow into significant problems.
Say operating expenses exceed the forecasted budget for a particular month. A closer look may reveal unplanned maintenance costs, supplier price increases, or higher labor expenses. Identifying and addressing these variances early keeps you in control of your spending, helps maintain profitability, and allows you to respond quickly to evolving market conditions.
Why an Annual Finance & Accounting Checklist Is Essential
A comprehensive finance and accounting checklist acts as a safeguard against costly oversights and missed opportunities. Staying organized reduces stress, improves efficiency, supports growth, and helps you respond to external factors.
By clearly defining financial responsibilities, you cultivate a collaborative environment and ensure no important task falls through the cracks. The result is a business that's poised for short-term wins and long-term success.
3 Tips for Creating an Effective Finance & Accounting Checklist
No two businesses are identical, so you should craft a customized checklist that fits your winery's needs. Let's look at three strategies for developing an effective finance and accounting checklist:
1. Prioritize Your Financials
For many wineries and CPG brands, cash flow management, product costing, debt servicing, and performance analysis take precedence.
For example, prioritizing cash flow management during high-spending periods — think harvest, bottling, marketing campaigns, or capital investments — helps maintain liquidity, supports strategic decision-making, and gives you the flexibility to expand or scale down as necessary.
2. Set Realistic Deadlines
Breaking larger tasks into smaller, more manageable deadlines keeps your checklist actionable. Assign deadlines that fit into the rhythm of your operation. Monthly BvA comparisons, quarterly KPI reviews, annual pricing evaluations, and midyear inventory audits help maintain momentum without overwhelming your team.
Smaller deadlines prevent last-minute scrambles and allow you to spot trends early. If you break down a task such as tax preparation into quarterly reviews, you can be ready well in advance of filing deadlines, minimizing the risk of penalties, unclaimed deductions, or costly oversights.
3. Get Your Team Involved
Sharing responsibilities creates a comprehensive, actionable checklist everyone can contribute to and follow. For example, your vineyard manager may provide valuable insights into production costs and inventory management, while your accountant offers guidance on tax strategies, debt management, and cash flow planning.
Collaborating across departments fosters accountability, improves operational transparency, and strengthens overall business performance.
Best Practices for Staying Organized Throughout the Year
In a business where operations can shift with the wind and new opportunities often emerge from unexpected sources, staying organized is your best weapon. Adopting a few best practices can help ensure your tasks are completed on time, your financial health remains solid, and your team stays aligned.
Keep Track of Progress
Without a solid system in place to track each step, tasks can pile up, deadlines can slip, and your overall financial health can suffer. Software is a winery owner's and CPG founder's best friend. Work management platforms, such as Asana and Trello, and specialized financial tools, such as QuickBooks, offer customizable workflows and visual time lines that keep everyone in sync.
For example, a winery using Asana might break down year-end tax preparation into smaller steps: gathering receipts, processing deductions, and meeting with a tax professional. Each year-end financial task is assigned to the relevant team member with deadlines that fit into the overall schedule, so no task is left until the last minute. You might consider holding a monthly financial review where department heads report on their progress.
For more visual tracking, use dashboards that integrate financial metrics with checklist items. Dashboards available through accounting software, such as QuickBooks or Xero, offer real-time updates, allowing you to see how current financial performance measures up against your projections. They can be particularly useful for monitoring cash flow during harvest season, showing whether liquidity matches up with planned outflows for materials and labor costs.
Adjust the Checklist as Needed
Flexibility is vital in financial planning for wineries, and knowing when and how to adjust your checklist helps you stay agile and responsive to new challenges or opportunities.
Perhaps you sign a new distribution partnership midyear, and your priorities shift. Instead of waiting for the next scheduled inventory audit or cash flow analysis, adjusting your checklist immediately allows you to make informed decisions without delay.
For example, a winery expanding its hospitality offerings might need to update its checklist to account for new revenue streams, equipment, staffing needs, and compliance requirements. Similarly, if a major retail partner signs on to carry your CPG product, you may need to accelerate production, adjust your pricing strategy, and reallocate marketing resources to support this new venture.
Adjusting your checklist keeps you in control, no matter how the market or your business evolves. Consider using ChatGPT to streamline the process of updating your checklist.
Ensuring Financial Success With a Well-Maintained Annual Finance Checklist
Like great wine, financial success requires careful planning, ongoing refinement, and a commitment to tracking progress. A well-maintained annual finance checklist can help you meet your financial obligations and set your business up for sustainable growth.
When managing finances and accounting processes becomes too complex to handle alone, partnering with experts can take your business to the next level. Balanced Business Group specializes in providing personalized financial consulting services to help wineries and CPG brands like yours thrive.
