FAQ

Absolutely! Whiskey Systems is designed for distilleries of all size and product mix. If it is a distilled, blended, aged, flavored, barreled, or even rectified spirit, Whiskey Systems can track it. Whiskey Systems can even help you manage your sugar-blended products and recipes.

The tools on Whiskey Systems Online are available immediately after you confirm and register a new account. The self-setup wizard and training videos will walk you through everything you need to set up and use the system. There is no need to wait to start using the functions.

Included in your subscription is free training, free screen-sharing to review your Setup Wizard, and free assistance to get your starting inventory uploaded and reconciled. We can also offer on-site setup and team training for a fixed daily rate plus travel expenses.

Excel is an amazing tool but after years of developing customized spreadsheets, it is not ideal for tracking this type of critically important distillery data. Excel files can become corrupted, deleted, and can be challenging to use and manage. Some other disadvantages of Excel and other local files include:

• Excel is not perfect and can be challenging for the many different computer experience levels within a distillery workforce.
• Excel files, no matter how well developed, are corruptible.
• File sharing across different users is almost impossible. If multiple people try to open the same file at the same time or if someone forgets to close a file, it can create conflicting copies.
• You can only have one user entering data at a time.
• Complicated Excel files or files with macros cannot be updated via a mobile device or tablet.
• Macros and managing security level permissions for users is hard with internal IT administrative controls.
• If the Excel file has macros, users cannot email the file to internal company owners or officers.
• There is no way to completely lock or protect everything to prevent users from accidentally changing, deleting, or moving key data or functions. This creates a huge liability that your reporting or tax liabilities may not be correct.
• Making local upgrades, changes or adding brands and spirit types to your Excel files requires a business interruption.
• Excel for Mac does not allow users to edit ranges inside an excel file tab which means individual equations and functions cannot be protected.

Whiskey Systems is robust and flexible enough to track many internal metrics such as heads and tails yields, unique grain types, fermenter, pH, and temperature observations and even unique barrel experiment notes. Although Whiskey Systems cannot offer a tracking log for every possible internal metric or data point, it does offer Best-In-Class reporting tools and processes that will meet all TTB Reporting compliance regulations.

Absolutely! Whiskey Systems can accommodate and calculate Proof Gallons or Water Required to Cut to Proof using temperature, observed wine gallons, tank inches, or scale weights. Whiskey Systems can also accommodate temperatures and hydrometers or density meters to quickly calculate True Proof.

Absolutely! Whiskey Systems allows users to enter observations in liters or gallons as well as set up tank capacities in either liters or gallons. There is also a calculator for converting between gallons and liters as needed.

Whiskey Systems was originally developed in the US but is available for Canada and is in use in other countries as well.  Contact us at sales@fx5solutions.com to see how we can help you!

Absolutely! We are happy to help. Send us an e-mail describing what you are looking for in terms of support. For an additional fee, we offer a variety of consulting and confidential auditing services to help clean up incorrect past reports and FET Tax payments. Let’s work together to fix the past and use Whiskey Systems to make sure reporting is done right going forward.

Whiskey Systems users can easily manage their recurring distillery tours, set the number of available slots per tour, and see who has signed up. Whiskey Systems also provides each distillery a custom URL to link to the distillery’s webpage so customers can book their own tours online. We also allow you to collect credit cards payments in advance using Stripe.

We are excited to have you! Welcome to the Fx5 family! We’re happy to show you how to input historical data. Email Support for more details!

Absolutely! Using the easy to use wizard you can set up all your ingredients and recipes, track which formulas and labels have been submitted and approved by the TTB, and track which materials (spirits, blended ingredients, and packaging materials) are used or consumed during blending and bottling.

This system is not for you. This system is for users who are concerned with being 100% in full compliance with the law.

Your data is secure and backed up at all times. You own your own data and it is available for you to download at any time. You can easily download your data for your own local backup as often as you like. You control the setup of your data and what functions your distillery users see and access. You should feel confident that your data on Whiskey Systems is safe and secure.

World-class customer service and support is our #1 goal! Please e-mail us at any time with your frustrations or questions to support@fx5soutions.com to start a discussion. One of the best features of Whiskey Systems is the wealth of instructional videos and documented SOPs for running this system but we understand that sometimes personal support is needed. We will respond as soon as possible. We want you to be completely satisfied with Whiskey Systems.

We will be sad to see you go but there will be no hard feelings. You can terminate your service at any time without penalty. To cancel your monthly charge, email Support@fx5solutions.com with clear directions to cancel your monthly charge at least 15 days before your monthly billing date. You will still have access to your account until the Monthly Billing Date. Monthly subscription fees are due and are charged on your Monthly Billing Date and cannot be refunded or pro-rated after they are charged. It is recommend you export and download all your data before you terminate the subscription. After your monthly subscription has ended, all of your setup up data, preferences, production logs, and transactions will be no longer available. However, before you terminate, please reach out to us to see if we can help solve any issue or frustration you may be having.

We can normally restore an inactive account as long as you did not request that all data be cleared when you cancelled. This is possible up through the end of our data retention period detailed in our Terms of Service, which is 3 years.

There is a wealth of Demo Videos available including a Complete Demo video (11 minutes long) that shows many of the transactions and tools available in Whiskey Systems. Click here to see more!