Cave is a complete operating system for wine and spirits importers and distributors: purchasing, inventory, sales, accounting, and the industry-specific reporting generic tools never get right. It has been in continuous development for more than twenty years.
See Cave on your own numbers Explore the systemThe Gap
Free ordering and marketplace platforms handle the storefront: taking orders and connecting distributors to accounts. They are useful, and they are free, but they are storefronts, not back offices. They do not keep your books, reconcile your warehouses, file your state reports, or tell your suppliers what depleted where.
So most SMB importers and distributors run the other default: QuickBooks plus spreadsheets plus bolt-ons, sometimes layered with a general-purpose inventory or e-commerce system built for retail or wholesale broadly, not for beverage alcohol specifically. That setup works until it doesn't, and it gives out in predictable places: multi-warehouse inventory, case-to-bottle conversion, customer-specific and state-specific pricing, depletion reporting suppliers actually accept, and compliance filings that change by jurisdiction.
Above you sit the enterprise ERPs built for 100-person regional houses, priced and staffed accordingly. Between the free ordering layer and the enterprise stack there is a gap, and it is exactly the shape of a 3-to-50-person importer-distributor. Cave was built for that gap, and has lived in it for over twenty years.
What Cave Does
AR, AP, and GL are native to Cave, not synced to it. Inventory, costs, and books agree because they are the same system.
Cave tracks cases and bottles, vintages and lots, across multiple warehouses, with landed cost calculated from the purchasing side and allocations by rep, customer, and channel.
Cave generates depletion reports with allowance automation, handles vendor bill-backs and price posting, and exports state-formatted filings in gallons, liters, bottles, or cases, by jurisdiction.
Cave supports office order entry and Satellite, its mobile rep interface, so reps see real-time inventory and account pricing and can place orders from the road.
Cave carries region, appellation, and grape detail; ratings from unlimited publications; full vintage management; and unlimited state price plans with quantity breaks.
Cave connects via EDI and data feeds to SevenFifty, Provi, Beverage Data Network, Trade Pulse/VIP, Fintech, and public warehouses, and we build new integrations to order when yours is different.
Who It's For
Cave serves US wine and spirits importers and distributors, typically 3 to 50 people, often multi-state, always carrying a real compliance load. If your portfolio has vintages, allocations, and suppliers who expect depletion reports, you are who this was built for.
We are deliberate about fit. Cave takes on companies it can serve properly, and will tell you honestly when your setup calls for something else, including when the answer is to stay on QuickBooks a while longer.
Why Cave
Cave was designed and built by Ross Merken, who has spent four decades building order-processing and accounting software, the last two devoted to beer, wine, and spirits. Matt Cory, an early SevenFifty team member with twenty years in the industry as a rep, buyer, manager, and owner, has worked with Cave and with Ross since 2023. Support answered by people who know what a depletion allowance is has always been the product's spine.
Contact
Tell us a little about your operation and we will set up a working demo around it, not a slideshow. Prefer email later? Every reply comes from a person.