This again
That’s what I do as well.
It’s interesting how we differ - I am the opposite: I aim to be consistent in what I put for price to help me track spending, trends, etc. I always include BP as that is the realized price of an auction lot. I wish CT would let me book tax separately but it doesn’t therefore I don’t book it in my price but I put it in the bottle notes in case I want to manually add it up.
We agree on shipping - I do not include shipping as that is a logistical cost I book elsewhere.
The one are of art is mixed lots where the wines are not of roughly equal value. For those I try to look at relative value pricing and scale to the price of the lot.
I enter in cost plus buyer’s premium, no tax or shipping. I buy/cellar wine for my own consumption not for investment purposes, so total cost is not very relevant to me, particularly when I am looking at acquiring more of something. As others have stated, tax and shipping are different variables or markets, so I don’t like to muddy the waters. All of this is really just a long way of saying I’m too lazy to break down the tax and shipping per bottle(s).
I virtually never buy wines at auction (done it three times in 30 years), so it further simplifies things for me.
I enter the price I paid for a bottle. I want to know that number in case I later find it for sale and want to compare to what I initially paid.
I normally don’t pay shipping due to where I live and shipping will vary based on who is selling and shipping the wine anyhow.
Like most, I just do the flat cost per bottle and ignore tax/shipping. I never buy wines at auction, but would include buyer’s premium in cost per bottle if I did.
That said, tax+shipping is a big part of my choice in which stores I frequent. Best stores are out of state where they also comp shipping or it’s nominal, so cost per bottle is all in. Worst are out of state stores that charge both tax and $60/case+ shipping. I typically avoid shopping at those when at all possible.
I don’t have a standard methodology, but I probably include shipping and tax the majority of the time.
For what it’s worth, it looks like CT has this issue on their to-do list:
Are there any plans to add sub total lines in the wine cost area for shipping, tax and total cost?
This is on our to-do list. Meanwhile, users often ask whether their prices should include tax and shipping. This is an individual decision, but most users choose to enter their prices without tax and shipping.
This is how I do it as well. I almost never include tax into the final inputted price. No real reason why I don’t, it’s just how I do it
And yet, quite a few people think another one does…
I’ve increasingly started add those details in the purchase notes as my purchases started to include more out of state retailers and ones that don’t offer free shipping. I don’t buy from Europe, but that’s increasingly an interest for certain wines, and something I definitely want to pick your and Johnathan’s brain at some point about the logistics of it.
Another question for you and others who purchase abroad, how do you handle inputting the exchange rate in the cost? Do you enter in CT with the different currency or do you convert to USD on the spot? CT seems to adjust purchase price in foreign currency to whatever their latest rate is and not the day rate at the time of purchase. There’s also the issue that CT doesn’t seem to always update their FX rate as their current FX rates seem to be about 1 year old. I’m torn whenever I’m inputting the wines I purchase in Brazil.
I’ve gone back and forth on the FX question. These days, I mostly take the same approach as with overall price. That is, I put in the EUR or GBP price and let CT do the exchange. Then I record my actual USD price in the notes section. I tend to buy the same wines every year in Germany, the UK or France, so I want to know what the price in local was when I purchased it in the past without having to go find the invoice.
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Personally I convert Euros to Dollars myself with rate at date of purchase, and enter in Dollars…
As for original poll question - I just put in bottle price - I try to note shipping costs in notes section, and generally disregard tax. Not sure there is a right answer, but this tends to work for me
Same. Oddly enough, though, I do include the shipping price per bottle when something comes directly from Europe since that is a more fair reflection of the domestic price I would incur after someone else paid to ship it here, and I’ve found often in-line with what grey market importers are charging as a base price.
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To keep it more apples to apples I just use the price of the bottle, and I exclude any shipping and/or tax. Some wineries charge tax, some don’t, but either way they don’t keep that amount. Shipping is debatable but since sometimes I buy at the winery and sometimes I buy and have to pay shipping, it’s just confusing if you have the same bottle but different vintages at different prices just b/c you bought them in different ways. I do have a separate google sheet that I track my total cost just so I don’t go crazy.
In case anyone is curious, my purchases, which are all in the US, have averaged out to spending about 4% of the all-in price on shipping, and about 5% on tax.
I always add tax as that is really the price paid.
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Price + Tax + Shipping. If there was a buyer’s premium I’d add that to. I don’t add storage or insurance as it means I’d have to update the bottle cost yearly and that’s way too time consuming.
Would agree to add it all as that is the cost of the actual bottle.
If CellarTracker came up with a way to automatically increase bottle cost each year based on storage and insurance, I’d be all over that.
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