Pub Stocktaking: Why Weekly Counts Matter

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub landlords don’t know they’re haemorrhaging money every single week because they’re not doing proper pub stocktaking. You’ve probably heard the phrase “stock loss” and assumed it meant theft. It rarely does. A 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year, and it’s almost always measurement error, over-pouring, cellar waste, or forgotten spillage—not someone nicking bottles from the storeroom. The real cost isn’t the loss itself; it’s that you don’t see it until the pubco audit shows up, and by then you’re eight months down on margin and scrambling to explain it to your area manager. Weekly pub stocktaking isn’t busywork. It’s the only way to catch variance while you can still fix it. This guide shows you exactly how to set up a counting routine that actually works, what equipment you need, and why your spreadsheet isn’t enough.

What Is Pub Stocktaking?

Pub stocktaking is the process of physically counting and measuring every item of stock you hold—draught casks, kegs, spirits, beers, and soft drinks—and comparing it against what your EPOS till says should be left. The gap between those two numbers is your variance. Most landlords think of this as an annual chore done by the brewery or a hired auditor. That’s the biggest mistake you can make. An annual count is a photograph of one day. A weekly count is a film that shows you exactly where and when you’re losing control.

The most effective way to control stock loss in a pub is to count wet sales (draught and spirits) every week and reconcile against till data the same day. This catches variance while it’s small enough to diagnose and fix. When you wait until a monthly or quarterly audit, you’ve already lost eight weeks of profit on a line that’s running soft, and you won’t know whether it’s a line cleaning issue, a temperature problem, or measurement error.

Why Weekly Counts Beat Monthly Audits

A lot of pub tenants tell me their brewery does stock audits, so they don’t need to. That’s like saying your accountant checks your books so you don’t need to look at your bank balance. The brewery auditor is checking that you’re compliant with their agreement—not that you’re profitable. Their audit is once a quarter. By the time they show up, a draught line that’s running 10% heavy is already costing you £400 a month in lost margin.

When I first took on my 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 could see the real variance, I could spot patterns: our Guinness line was running heavy because the cellar temperature was creeping up, and our vodka variance was high because free-pouring was running 32–35ml per measure instead of 25ml. Neither of those problems would have shown up in a quarterly audit. Both were costing us serious margin, and both were fixable once I saw them.

Weekly counts reveal the line-by-line story that monthly audits miss entirely. You can see whether your draught is tight (good), your spirits are drifting (over-pouring), or your cellar management is slipping (temperature or line cleaning). You can also spot theft, but nine times out of ten, what looks like theft is actually one of those three things.

Equipment and Routine You Actually Need

You don’t need expensive software or a PhD in stocktaking. You need four things: a cask dipstick, a set of digital scales, a tally sheet (paper or digital), and 20–30 minutes on the same day each week.

Draught Stock

Buy a cask dipstick (around £8–15 from any pub supply merchant). Dip every cask and partial keg in your cellar once a week, always on the same day, always before service. Write down the depth reading. Over time, you’ll see whether a line is running consistent (tight) or variable (problem). A draught line that’s dropping 3–4 pints faster than your till says you sold is either leaking, being poured badly, or running too warm. A dipstick tells you which one.

Spirits and Sealed Stock

Weigh open spirit bottles every week. A 70cl bottle of vodka should weigh roughly 760g when full. If your open bottle is dropping faster than your till says you sold, someone is over-pouring or measurement is drifting. I’ve seen free-poured measures that run consistently 7–10ml heavy. Over a year, that’s thousands of pounds. A set of digital scales costs £20–30. Use them.

For sealed stock (unopened bottles), do a physical count and compare against your till. This is the quick bit.

The Tally Sheet

Use paper or a spreadsheet—it doesn’t matter. You need four columns: product name, physical count/measurement, till sales for the week, and variance. That’s it. Some landlords use StockTap pub stock app to automate the recording and variance calculation, which removes the arithmetic and lets you spot patterns instantly. Others are happy with a clipboard and a calculator. The tool matters less than the discipline of doing it the same way every week.

Reconcile your count against till data the same day you count. Don’t leave it three days. When variance shows up, you want to be able to ask staff whether something unusual happened—a spillage, a line bleed, a stuck till button—while it’s fresh. Three days later, nobody remembers.

The Metric That Actually Matters

Most landlords obsess over a single stock variance number: “We’re down 2% this week.” That’s useless information. What you actually need is wet GP by line. Spirits hide losses in over-pouring (a free-poured 25ml 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.

Here’s what matters: your Guinness line is running tight, your vodka is running heavy, your cider is bang on, and your Peroni keg is 2 pints down from yesterday—probably a slow leak. Each of those insights lets you do something. Running a line-by-line variance tells you where to look. Running a headline number tells you nothing.

Once you see wet GP by line, you can act: adjust your pouring technique, fix a leaking connection, clean a line that’s running heavy with gas pressure, or identify a staff member who needs retraining. SmartPubTools shows you wet GP by line in real time, so you’re not averaging losses across your whole operation—you’re seeing which lines are profitable and which aren’t. But even a spreadsheet will do this, as long as you’re disciplined about the weekly count.

The number that actually matters is wet gross profit by line, not a single headline stock figure, because it tells you exactly which product is causing the variance and what to do about it.

Common Stocktaking Mistakes

Counting on Different Days

If you count on Monday one week and Friday the next, you’ll never see the real pattern. Count on the same day every week—usually a quiet Monday morning is best. You’ll see trends in the data.

Forgetting to Account for Wastage

A cask that’s been on tap for three weeks will have some wastage: slow leaks from poorly seated taps, CO2 bleed, spillage during cleaning. Don’t blame staff for normal cellar loss. Understand what normal looks like for your set-up, then watch for deviations.

Not Matching Till Data to the Counting Period

If you count Monday morning, your till data should cover Monday–Sunday of the previous week. If you count Wednesday, your till data should be Tuesday–Monday. Mismatched periods will show false variance and waste your time.

Ignoring the Obvious Stuff

Staff training matters more than counting discipline. A bar staff member who doesn’t know the difference between a 25ml and a 35ml spirit measure is costing you money every single shift. Invest in training, not just counting.

Running a Spreadsheet and Ignoring It

I’ve spoken to dozens of landlords who’ve kept a stocktake spreadsheet for months and never looked at the variance column. If you’re going to count, act on what you find. If you’re not going to act, don’t count—you’re just burning time.

Related stocktaking guides

• Cask ale wastage & loss control
• How to count cask ale stock
• How to count spirits stock
• Best scales for pub stocktaking
• Pub stocktaking Excel template
• Bar inventory in Google Sheets
• Spreadsheet vs app for bar inventory
• Pub stock records: the legal side
• Liquor bottle weight chart

See also our UK keg guide — the top draught beers, pints per keg, and how to work out the GP on every line.