How to Count Bottled Beer Stock

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub licensees are losing money on bottled beer without realising it, because they’re counting what’s left instead of tracking what should be there. A 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year — and a proper weekly count catches it before it becomes a habit. The difference between a spreadsheet guess and a real number is the difference between knowing your margins and hoping for them.

You’re probably doing stocktake once a month or once a quarter, which means you’re blind for 25 days at a time. By then, the variance is already buried in the numbers. This guide walks you through a simple weekly count routine that takes 20 minutes and gives you the real picture of what’s moving and what’s stuck.

I built this system over years of running a Marston’s pub, moving from a tangle of spreadsheets to a disciplined count routine. Within a fortnight, my weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could actually trust — and that’s when I started catching the real losses.

Why Bottled Beer Stock Counts Matter

The most effective way to protect bottled beer margin is to count it weekly against till data, because monthly counts hide losses until they’re too big to recover. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and most pubs don’t measure bottled beer at all — they just assume it’s fine until the accountant asks questions.

Here’s the operator’s truth: 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 bottled beer hides it in forgotten tastings, staff drinks, and till operator error. A pint of lager that should ring at £4.50 gets rung at £4.20 by mistake — and nobody notices until you’re out by six bottles at the end of the week.

The number that actually matters is wet GP by line, not a single headline stock figure. If your bottled lager is showing a 5% variance and your bottled cider is showing 0.5%, you’ve got a problem with the lager — either the price is wrong, the portion is wrong, or something’s walking out the door.

Most pubs that move from a messy spreadsheet to a disciplined count routine claw back 1–2 GP points within a couple of months. That’s real money.

The Basic Count Method

Count bottled beer in three locations — the bar fridge, the back-of-bar cooler, and the cellar — then add them together and compare the total against what your till says should be left.

Step 1: Set up a counting sheet

Create a simple spreadsheet with columns for:

• Brand and size (e.g. Peroni 330ml, Guinness 568ml, Budweiser 12-pack)
• Opening stock (what you had at the start of the week)
• Bar fridge count
• Back-of-bar cooler count
• Cellar stock count
• Total physical stock
• Till data (how many units the till says were sold)
• Variance (difference between physical and till)

Don’t overthink this. Three columns and six beer brands is enough to start. Once you see the pattern, you can expand.

Step 2: Count what’s on display

Walk the bar. Count every bottle in every fridge, on every shelf, and behind every tap. Most licensees miss bottles because they’re not looking — one’s tucked behind the Coke, another’s at the back of the cooler. Be systematic. Start at one end and work across.

Write down the count as you go. Don’t try to remember.

Step 3: Count cellar stock

Check deliveries logged in and count cases, multipacks, and loose bottles. If you took delivery of six cases of lager on Tuesday and you’ve sold 2.5 cases by Friday, you should have 3.5 cases left plus whatever’s on the bar. If the numbers don’t match, something went wrong in the bar count — go back and recount.

Step 4: Record open/partial bottles

If you’ve got a half-empty bottle behind the bar, weigh it. A full 330ml Peroni weighs roughly 370g; a full 500ml weighs around 530g. A half-full bottle is worth half the sale price, not half the stock value. Record it as a fractional unit — 0.5 units — not as a full bottle.

How to Track Partial Bottles and Multipacks

This is where most licensees go wrong. They either ignore partial bottles or count them as full stock. Both are mistakes.

Partial bottles

If a bottle has been opened (e.g. a customer ordered half a pint and the remainder sits on the pass), weigh it on a small digital scale. Record the weight. Compare it against a known full bottle of the same brand and size. If a full bottle weighs 370g and the open one weighs 250g, it’s approximately 67% full — record it as 0.67 units. This matters because you need to know whether that remaining 33% made it to the till or disappeared.

Multipacks and cases

If you’ve got a 12-pack of Budweiser with 7 bottles left, count it as 7 units, not 0.58 cases. Your till rings individual bottles, not cases. Keep your count in the same unit as your till.

Damaged or unsaleable stock

If a bottle is chipped, leaked, or unfit for sale, separate it. Don’t count it as stock. Do count it as a loss — it’s a cost to you. At the end of the week, add up the value of damaged stock and record it as waste in a separate column. You need to know if breakage is normal or if someone’s being careless.

Reconciling Against Till Data

Reconciliation means comparing your physical count against what the till says you sold, and investigating any gap over 2% — because gaps don’t close by themselves.

How to pull till data

Check your EPOS system for sales by product line. Most modern tills let you export sales by brand and size for a specific date range. Pull the data for the same seven days as your count.

If your till doesn’t break down sales by individual bottle brand, you’ve got a bigger problem — you can’t see where the margin leak actually is. You’re working blind. That’s when an integrated system like StockTap pub stock app becomes essential, because it forces you to record what sold against what you counted, and spots the variance automatically.

Do the maths

For each beer line, use this formula:

Expected closing stock = Opening stock + Deliveries − Till sales

Then compare expected closing stock against your physical count.

Example:

• Opening stock: 24 bottles of Peroni 330ml
• Deliveries this week: 12 bottles
• Till says sold: 18 bottles
• Expected closing: 24 + 12 − 18 = 18 bottles
• Physical count: 17 bottles
• Variance: 1 bottle (5.6%)

That 5.6% variance is a red flag. One bottle isn’t a disaster, but it’s a signal. If it happens every week on the same brand, something’s wrong — either the price is ringing wrong, the bar staff are free-pouring, or stock’s being given away.

Acceptable variance

No count is perfect. Evaporation, rounding error, spillage — these things happen. A variance under 1% is excellent. 1–2% is acceptable. Anything over 2% needs investigation the same day.

If you’re running a variance of 3–5% every week, you’re leaking £40–£100 per week on bottled beer alone. Over a year, that’s the difference between a profitable pub and a struggling one.

Common Counting Mistakes

Mistake 1: Counting till receipts instead of physical stock

The till tells you what it recorded as sold. It doesn’t tell you what actually left the fridge. These are not the same thing. A staff member might have rung a half pint of lager at the wrong price, or forgotten to ring it at all, or given it away. The till doesn’t know. You do — if you count.

Mistake 2: Counting weekly but reconciling monthly

If you count every week but wait until month-end to compare against till data, you’ll never find the problem. By then, you’ve got four weeks of variances bundled together, and you can’t tell which week the loss happened in. Reconcile within 24 hours of the count.

Mistake 3: Not counting what’s on order

If you’ve got three cases of lager on order from the supplier but they haven’t arrived yet, don’t count them. Only count what’s physically here. The minute it arrives, log it and recount.

Mistake 4: Forgetting the staff area

Check the staff cooler. Check the back office. Check anywhere stock is kept. I’ve found bottles in the manager’s office, the storage room, even the kitchen. If it’s your stock, it counts.

Mistake 5: Assuming the brewery stocktaker will catch it

The brewery stocktaker is there to check they’re getting paid correctly — not to manage your stock. They’re not checking your till against your cellar. They’re checking their invoice against what they delivered. If you’re relying on them to spot a loss, you’re out of luck.

Building a Weekly Routine

A proper count takes 20 minutes. Here’s how to build it into your week.

Pick a day and time

The best time is first thing Monday morning, before service. You’ve got a clear head, nobody’s rushed, and you’ve got the weekend till data fresh. Write it in your manager’s schedule. Make it non-negotiable.

Who should count

You should count it, or your manager should count it, or a trusted duty manager should. Not a random member of staff. Not the person who works the bar the most — they’re too close to the stock and too tempted to skip bits. A count done by someone with a stake in the result is worth ten times more than a count done by someone just ticking boxes.

Recording and follow-up

Photograph the count sheet. Upload it to a folder. Date it. If the variance is high, flag it immediately. Send a quick message to your manager or the person on bar that day: “Peroni was down by 2 bottles. Till says we sold 12, we counted 10. Let’s watch it this week.” Make the numbers visible. Most staff don’t know if they’re making money or leaking it — when you show them, they start caring.

After three weeks, you’ll see patterns. One staff member consistently over-pours, or forgets to ring the till, or there’s a particular beer that’s always short. That’s the data you need to fix the problem. Most pubs that build this habit find it claws back 1–2 GP points within two months.

If you’re serious about building a system you can trust, SmartPubTools has built counting templates and reconciliation logic into a tool designed specifically for this — no spreadsheet juggling, no manual maths, no guessing.