Anyone in Switzerland who buys, presses, stores or sells wine keeps cellar records (Kellerbuchhaltung) and reports stock and volume to the Swiss wine trade control (SWK) every year. This page explains what that means in practice, which deadlines apply and which part of the work Vinosoft does for you.
What cellar bookkeeping is
Cellar bookkeeping is the full set of your stock cards (Sortenkarten) and the documents behind them. For every wine designation — product name, origin, vintage, grape variety and nominal volume, for example "Chasselas Twann Bielersee AOC 2024 0.75 l" — you keep a separate card with every receipt and issue. Each entry records the date, the supplier or customer name, what changed, a document number and the quantity. On 31 December every card is closed, and on 1 January it is reopened with the stock actually on hand.
The SWK does not insist on its own template. Instead of its Excel stock cards you may use wine bookkeeping or ERP software, as long as everything the stock card asks for can be shown clearly.
Who is covered
Since 2019 the SWK covers everyone who trades wine commercially: wine merchants, importers, wineries that buy in wine, and also growers who press and sell their own grapes. Only narrow cases are exempt, such as businesses that resell nothing but bottles filled in Switzerland by SWK-registered producers, neither import nor export, and stay below 1,000 hl a year. The details are in the guide Swiss wine trade control: who has to report?
The three obligations at a glance
- Book as you go. Every receipt and issue goes onto the stock card without delay, with a document. Sales may be booked in totals if a supporting list proves the individual sales.
- Stock as of 31 December. You record the stock of every wine product and the year's volume in litres, and submit both online in your SWK account by 31 January at the latest. More: The SWK stock report due 31 January.
- Stay traceable. On inspection day the inspector must be able to follow any bottle from the stock card to the document and back. How that works day to day: Wine traceability from purchase to bottle.
You keep business documents and cellar records for ten years.
What Vinosoft takes off your hands
In daily work, in every account. Every article carries vintage, size and SWK code. Delivery notes, invoices — including till sales — and webshop orders book stock out, credit notes book returns back in, and purchase orders book goods in. Every booking carries the document number and the customer or supplier name. Under Statistics → SWK, Vinosoft produces the detailed inventory as of 31 December with Formular A and Formular B as a PDF, and you count your stock-take against the list in Vinosoft.
With the cellar bookkeeping module. If you make your own wine, Vinosoft keeps the whole chain from grape lot to bottle:
- Grape lots with harvest sheet number, canton, grape variety, harvest weight in kg and must weight in Oechsle
- Pressing, blending and bottling as their own bookings; bottling books litres out of the bulk wine, bottles into the bottle article and the filling loss separately
- Vessel register with vessel number, type, capacity and current contents, printable and with QR labels that open the vessel on a phone
- Stock cards per bulk wine and per bottle size, with date, reason, document number, counterparty, receipts, issues and balance
- Lab analyses such as Oechsle, alcohol, acidity and SO₂ per vessel, wine or grape lot
- Year-end close as of 31 December with reopening on 1 January, run automatically in January
- SWK report with Formular A and B as a PDF and in the SWK's official Excel forms, separately per owner, so contract winemaking is covered too
The module is switched on per account. Setup maps your existing articles to wines and books the opening stock.
What Vinosoft does not do
Vinosoft does not send anything to the SWK; you enter the figures on the SWK portal yourself. A lot number is a detail on the article, not separate stock per lot, and vineyard parcels are not a record of their own — the single vineyard (Lage) is a text field on the wine.
Guides on this topic
- Swiss wine trade control (SWK): who has to report, and what is inspected?
- The SWK stock report due 31 January: steps and checklist
- Wine traceability: from purchase to bottle
How to do it in Vinosoft
- The SWK wine trade control report
- Stock movements
- Inventory (stock-take)
- Stock value
- Manage storage locations
- Article and stock management at a glance
The legal obligations described here are based on the Swiss wine ordinance (SR 916.140) and the SWK's guidance documents as of October 2026. The current documents on cscv-swk.ch are authoritative.