One record every tool reads, and only two tools write to.
The Cellar Record holds every lot: what it cost, which bin, what condition, whose hands it passed through, its house service window, and every bottle that has ever left. Depletion is append-only, so a correction is a new entry rather than an edit. Snapshots are effective-dated, so last year’s figure reproduces exactly instead of being rebuilt.
Every lot, described the way the trade describes it
Grower, wine, vintage, format, quantity, bin, cost, provenance, condition, duty status, house service window, list price, and whether it is on the glass.
Condition that means something
Pristine, sound, marked, suspect — with definitions attached, because a shoulder fill and an into-neck fill are not the same asset and an appraiser will ask.
An append-only depletion log
Every bottle out, with the reason: poured, corked, breakage, staff, comp, transferred, written off. No edits and no deletions, because a cellar you can quietly rewrite is a cellar nobody can audit.
Effective-dated snapshots
A frozen copy of the whole cellar on a stated date. This is the single thing that makes a past appraisal reproducible rather than a rebuild.
Import that refuses to guess
A vintage written four ways goes to a person, not to a confidence score. Nothing commits until an operator says so.
A count that reconciles properly
Shortfalls become breakage depletions and overages become corrections, in one transaction. A bottle short is a write-off, not a typo, and the log should say so.
The two rules it will not break
It will not invent a market price. A lot with no comparable sales is carried at cost, excluded from every market total, and shown as unresolved everywhere it appears. Interpolating from a neighbouring vintage is how a cellar looks complete and fails an adjuster.
It will not write to your point of sale. Not once and not optionally. It reads from Toast, BinWise, Backbar and their peers and sends nothing back, because a beverage system that edits the POS is a system nobody will authorise twice.
Questions people ask first
Do we have to replace BinWise or Backbar to use Aivin?
We just got the whole team onto BinWise. I am not moving again.
No, and you should not. Your inventory system counts bottles and reconciles against the POS, which is what it is for. What it does not carry is a market reference, an evidence grade, a house service window or a provenance chain, so it cannot tell an insurer what the cellar is worth. Aivin reads from it and never writes to your POS.
Our wine list is a mess. Will it import?
Three sommeliers have edited that spreadsheet. Good luck.
Not cleanly, and Aivin says so on screen rather than committing bad rows quietly. Half-case splits logged as singles, two growers filed under one surname, Ch. and Château as separate producers, bin cards that disagree with the sheet. An operator resolves that queue by hand, once, and you sign off before anything commits.
What happens to bottles you cannot find a market price for?
Half my Jura has never traded anywhere.
Carried at cost, excluded from every market total, and listed as unresolved on the face of the appraisal. Aivin will not interpolate from a neighbouring vintage or a producer average to make a cellar look complete. An estimate with no comparable behind it is the number that collapses the first time an adjuster tests it.
How long does it take to get a cellar into Aivin?
My team does not have time for an implementation.
Five to ten working days per property, and an operator does the work rather than your floor team. Send whatever you keep the list in — an export, a shared sheet, photographs of bin cards — and sign off on the resolved queue before it commits. Nothing to install and nobody to train.
Does it track allocations and pre-arrival?
Half my Burgundy is a phone call in March I cannot miss.
It flags them. Lots marked as allocation or mailing list appear on a twelve-month commitment calendar alongside closing house service windows, because skipping a year usually means losing the line and that is a cost no inventory report shows. Pre-arrival and en primeur positions are held as lots with a stated arrival rather than as invoices.
