What Is Stocktaking in a Pub?

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pubs are bleeding stock every single week and the landlord has no idea where it’s going. A 1% loss on wet sales might sound small until you realise it quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year—money that walks out the door untracked because nobody’s actually counting. You feel the pain in your P&L but can’t point to the cause. That’s what happens when stocktaking isn’t part of your routine. Stocktaking in a pub is the weekly count of your beer, spirits, and soft drinks against till records to identify losses, measure waste, and protect your gross profit. This article tells you exactly what it is, why it matters, and how to make it work without turning stocktaking into a full-time job. Stick around—the difference between a tight operation and a leaky one is usually just one simple discipline.

What Stocktaking Actually Means

Stocktaking is the process of counting what you have in your cellar, at the bar, and in storage on a fixed day each week, then comparing those numbers to what your till says you’ve sold. The difference between what you should have (based on opening stock plus deliveries minus till sales) and what you actually have is your variance. That variance is where losses hide—and where money leaks.

The most effective way to control pub stock is to count it the same day every week and reconcile it against till data within 24 hours. This isn’t about auditing your staff or playing detective. It’s about getting a number you can trust, so when your accountant asks where the 2% loss came from, you have a real answer instead of a shrug.

In my own pub, I was running stock on a tangle of spreadsheets and still losing track of partial kegs and spirit measures. I built a simple count routine around a dipstick and a set of scales, and the weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could trust within a fortnight. Once I had that clarity, I could actually do something about it.

Why Stocktaking Matters in Your Pub

Here’s the cold truth: your EPOS tells you what sold. It doesn’t tell you whether you actually made money on it. A pub can ring £15,000 a week and still be losing margin because stock variance is eating the profit. Stocktaking closes that gap.

The reason this matters isn’t about catching thieves (though a tight count does deter the odd opportunist). It’s about understanding your business. Once you know your weekly variance as a real number, you can:

• Identify which lines are leaking (spirits over-poured? draught waste from poor temperature control? forgotten spillages?)
• Measure the impact of cellar maintenance—bad line cleaning costs real money in waste
• Spot trends (variance creeping up after a staff change? after a new draught line installed?)
• Actually know your gross profit by line, not guess it
• Defend your numbers to your pubco or brewer when they question your performance

Most pubs that move from a messy spreadsheet to a disciplined weekly count claw back 1–2 GP points within a couple of months. That’s not because you’ve stopped staff stealing. It’s because you’ve stopped losing track of what’s actually there.

Where Losses Hide (and Why Your Spreadsheet Misses Them)

Spirits hide losses in over-pouring because a free-poured 25ml measure is often 32–35ml, draught hides it in poor cellar temperature and bad line cleaning waste, and most stock ‘theft’ is actually measurement error and forgotten wastage. These aren’t moral failures. They’re how pubs actually work when nobody’s measuring.

When you free-pour, you’re guessing. Most bar staff are generous—and they’re human. A 25ml measure that’s meant to be 25ml slips to 28ml, then 30ml, and till data still says you sold it at full price. Multiply that over 500 spirit pours a week and you’ve just lost a full bottle’s margin. A spreadsheet never catches this because you’re not weighing the bottle before and after service.

On draught, cellar temperature is the invisible killer. A cask at 16 degrees instead of 11 degrees oxidises faster, you pour more waste when lines are foamy, and partial kegs sit longer than they should. A proper dip (measuring the depth of beer in each cask) catches this. A spreadsheet doesn’t.

Forgotten spillage is real too. A dropped pint, a line cleaned at 11 p.m., a sample given to a customer, staff drinks at cost (if that’s your policy). None of these get logged. They’re not theft. They’re just loss. A weekly count catches them because you’re matching physical reality against what the till says.

How a Weekly Stocktake Works

Here’s the practical bit. A stocktake doesn’t need to be fancy. It needs to be consistent.

Step 1: Count Physical Stock

Set a day—usually Monday morning after the weekend—and count everything:

• Draught: Dip every cask and partial keg with a measuring stick. Record the depth in centimetres. You need to know your cask capacity and conversion rate (ask your brewer—most have charts that convert depth to litres remaining).
• Spirits and wine: Weigh every open bottle on digital scales. You need to know the full weight of each bottle (check the bottle when it’s new). The difference tells you volume consumed.
• Soft drinks: Count cans and bottles. Or measure syrup in post-mix systems if that’s what you use.
• Cask beer: Count unopened kegs as units.

This takes 20–30 minutes once you’ve got your system down. I use a simple printed sheet with each product line, columns for gravity reading or weight, and space to note anything unusual (e.g. “line cleaned today—extra waste expected”).

Step 2: Record Stock Data

Get those numbers into a form or spreadsheet the same day. Include the date, what you counted, and any notes about wastage or maintenance. Don’t wait three days.

Step 3: Reconcile Against Till Data

Pull your till data for the same period (usually the last 7 days). Compare:

• Opening stock (from last week’s count) + deliveries − till sales = expected closing stock
• Physical stock (what you counted) = actual closing stock
• Expected minus actual = variance

Express variance as a percentage of sales. Most pubs should be running 1–3% variance. Higher than that and something’s wrong.

Step 4: Investigate Trends

A single high variance is just noise. A trend is a problem. If spirits variance was 2% last week and 4% this week, look at which spirits are drifting. If it’s all of them equally, it’s probably measurement error on your scales or a till error. If it’s one line, it’s either over-pouring or a till ring issue on that product.

You don’t need to fix everything overnight. But you need to know what’s happening.

The Objections You Might Have—and Why They’re Wrong

Objection 1: “I Don’t Have Time for a Weekly Stocktake”

You have time to lose £3,000 a year, so you have time for a 20-minute count. The difference is that one is invisible and the other isn’t. Pick a quiet Monday morning and commit. After three weeks it becomes muscle memory. If you’re so busy you can’t spend 20 minutes protecting your margin, you’ve got a staffing problem, not a time problem.

Objection 2: “My Spreadsheet Works Fine”

Your spreadsheet does what you tell it to do. It doesn’t tell you if you’ve missed a partial keg, weighed a bottle wrongly, or forgotten to log a delivery. A spreadsheet is a graveyard of old counts that nobody looks at. A weekly routine that feeds into a tool—even a printed sheet at first—creates accountability because you see the trend. The spreadsheet only matters if you actually use it.

Objection 3: “Do I Really Need Special Equipment?”

You need two things: a dipstick (£15) and a digital scale (£20). That’s it. Anything else is a nice-to-have. The dipstick measures cask depth accurately. The scale measures spirit bottle weight. You can use a smartphone to photograph your counts if you want a backup. You don’t need software yet. But once you’ve got a paper routine working, the StockTap pub stock app saves you from hunting down old sheets and does the maths for you—it’s just faster and cleaner than a spreadsheet.

Objection 4: “Won’t the Brewery Stocktaker Just Do It?”

The brewery comes once a month and counts cask beer only (if you’re lucky). That’s three weeks of drift they’ll never catch. They’re auditing you for their records, not helping you run a tight operation. Your weekly count is for you. It tells you what’s happening in real time. The brewery’s monthly count is a checkpoint—and if your numbers don’t match theirs, at least you’ll know why before they ask.

Objection 5: “Isn’t a Spreadsheet Safer Than an App for My Records?”

A spreadsheet on your laptop can crash, get corrupted, or be accidentally deleted. An app like SmartPubTools stores your data in the cloud and backs itself up. You can access it from any device. If your laptop dies, your records are still there. The only risk with an app is if the company goes under—but SmartPubTools was built by a working pub landlord who’s dependent on it too, so there’s no vanishing act coming.

What Tools Actually Work

You can start with paper. Seriously. A printed form, a dipstick, a set of scales, and 20 minutes on a Monday morning. That’s enough to get real variance numbers.

But once you’ve been doing this for a few weeks and you realise how valuable the numbers are, you’ll want something that automates the maths and stores your history properly. That’s where a dedicated tool saves time.

The StockTap pub stock app was built by a working licensee for exactly this job. You enter your count, it pulls your till data, it calculates variance and GP by line, and you can see trends week-on-week without hunting for old sheets. It costs £97 one-off—no subscription, no monthly fees, works on any device. That’s less than what you’ll save in the first month from catching one line of over-pouring.