The end of month blues.

We are approaching D-Day, the end of our fiscal year and the pressure is on to achieve our budget. At the moment we are about £13k short with three days to go. Its do-able, but somehow I just have a feeling we are going to come within a gnats chuff of it. But that wont stop us from pulling out all the stops over the next three services to come as close as possible. The end of the month usually means stocktake too, but with the added ballache of having to do the full cellar, holding stock and all. Usually we only count the holding stock every quarter which is fine, but obviously this falls into this months stocktake. Then as a final kick in the nuts, we have an auditor looking over our shoulder while we do it.

Now that might sound like a bad thing because perhaps we have something to hide. Thats not the case. But it is somewhat off-putting to have somebody watching you while you count the stock. Maybe its just me. So far everything seems to be going fine, but we shall have to see what they say after they witness Sundays fun and games. I confess Im not usually on top form on a sunday morning at the best of times, but to have to be in work at 9am to count thousands of bottles after four or five hours kip makes for some fun and games.

After thats over we have to empty the chill room for we are getting some new racking installed on Wednesday. This will allow us to rack up over 4 thousand bottles. So I shall be spending three full days down in the cellar next week moving stock from A to B, and back to A again. And after thats all done and racked, we have the task of adding all these extra wines to the wine list and then to the EPOS system, but the wine-list will be close to a thousand bins. Thats going to be fun to manage!