Inflow Inventory Review: What It Means For Your Pub

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub licensees think stock loss only happens when someone nicks a bottle. The reality is far quieter—and far more expensive. A 1% stock loss on wet sales silently costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year, and it almost never shows up as a missing case. It shows up as a margin discrepancy that creeps so slowly you don’t notice until the pubco’s annual stock count reveals you’re short.

An inflow inventory review is your first line of defence against that slow bleed. It’s the disciplined practice of tracking every case, cask, and bottle that arrives at your pub, then cross-checking what you’ve actually sold against what came in. Most pubs skip this step entirely. They wait for the brewery’s stocktaker to turn up once a year, by which time the damage is already done.

This article explains what an inflow inventory review actually is, why it matters more than you think, and how to set one up without turning stocktaking into a full-time job.

What Is an Inflow Inventory Review?

An inflow inventory review is a straightforward three-part comparison:

• What came in: Every delivery logged with date, product, and quantity.
• What you sold: Till data pulled for the same period, broken down by product line.
• What’s left: A physical count of remaining stock—open bottles weighed, casks dipped, shelves counted.

If those three numbers don’t balance, you’ve got a variance. The variance tells you whether you’ve got a measurement problem, a waste problem, or an actual loss.

The most effective way to catch stock loss is to reconcile deliveries against till data and physical stock counts weekly, rather than waiting for an annual brewery stocktake. Weekly reviews mean you spot a 2% variance on spirits this week, not a 15% variance discovered nine months later when you’ve forgotten which member of staff was over-pouring.

An inflow review isn’t complicated. It’s just disciplined. Most pubs don’t do it because they assume the brewery stocktaker will catch everything. That’s a mistake. The brewery stocktaker turns up once a year, does a count in an afternoon, and reports a figure. They don’t tell you where the loss happened, when it started, or how to fix it. By then, thousands have already walked out the door.

Why It Matters—The Real Cost of Ignoring It

Let’s be brutal: if you’re running a pub on a spreadsheet with a once-yearly stocktake, you are almost certainly losing money and don’t know it.

Most stock loss in pubs isn’t theft. It’s three things:

• Over-pouring: A free-poured 25ml measure often lands at 32–35ml. Do that fifty times a night across six spirits, and you’ve just given away £40 in margin without anyone stealing anything.
• Cellar waste: Bad line cleaning, temperature drift, or forgotten half-kegs cost far more than most licensees realise. A single cask at 4% margin loss is £15–£25. Miss one every fortnight and that’s £400 a year from a single line.
• Measurement error: Counting stock by eye, recording it wrong, or not accounting for partial bottles creates phantom losses that don’t actually exist—but they destroy your confidence in your numbers.

Here’s what I found in my own pub: I was running stock on a tangle of spreadsheets and still losing track of partial kegs and spirit measures. The variance report at year-end always showed loss, but I couldn’t point to where it happened or when it started. 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. More importantly, once I could see the pattern, I could fix it. Over-pouring dropped when the team knew I was checking weekly. That alone clawed back 1–2 GP points within two months.

The number that actually matters is wet GP by line, not a single headline stock figure. When you review inflow by product line—spirits, draught, wine, soft drinks—you can see which line is haemorrhaging margin. That’s where you fix it.

How to Run a Basic Inflow Review

You don’t need expensive equipment or complex software. You need three things: a delivery log, till data, and a count method.

Step 1: Log Every Delivery

When stock arrives, record:

• Date
• Supplier (brewery, cash and carry, wine merchant)
• Product name and code
• Quantity received
• Unit cost (for variance value)

A simple spreadsheet does this. Most pubcos provide a delivery sheet template. Use it. If you’re receiving mixed deliveries, separate them by product type in the log. A Marston’s cask is different from a Guinness, which is different from a bottle of Prosecco.

Step 2: Pull Till Data for the Same Period

Your EPOS system holds the truth of what you sold. Export a sales report for the same period as your delivery log—usually a week. Break it down by product line: draught, spirits, wine, soft drinks, mixers, snacks.

The till tells you volume sold. Combined with the delivery log, you can now calculate what should remain on hand.

Step 3: Count What’s Actually There

This is where most pubs fail. They count bottles on a shelf and write down a number. That’s not a count; that’s a guess.

For spirits: Weigh every open bottle on a set of scales. A full 70cl bottle of spirits weighs roughly 875g. A 50cl weighs roughly 625g. Partial bottles should be weighed and the contents calculated from the weight difference. This takes ten minutes per spirit line and removes guesswork.

For draught: Use a dipstick. Dip every cask and partial keg. Record the depth. Most dip cards show you the volume remaining from the depth reading. This takes five minutes per line and is far more accurate than guessing “about half”.

For bottles (wine, beer, soft drinks): Count the full cases, count the loose bottles in the opener, count the shelf stock. Be precise. A case of Peroni is twelve bottles. If you’ve got two cases plus eight loose bottles, that’s thirty-two bottles, not “about three cases”.

Do this count the same day you pull till data, ideally at a quiet time (Tuesday morning, not Saturday night).

Common Gaps That Cause Stock Loss

Once you’ve run an inflow review, you’ll see variance. The question is: what’s causing it?

Here are the gaps I see most often:

Forgotten Deliveries

A cash-and-carry run happens on a Tuesday. The invoices sit in the till. Three weeks later, someone finds them and enters them into the stock log. By then, the stock has already been counted and the variance looks worse than it is. Log deliveries the same day they arrive, not when you remember to do the paperwork.

Partial Stock Not Recorded

A cask runs out mid-service. Someone taps a new one but doesn’t log that the old one is now empty. On your count, you’ve got two casks registered but only one and a half physically there. The variance report looks wrong.

Complimentary Pours and Staff Drinks

Most pubs don’t account for staff drinks, customer comps, or promotional pours. If your team gets a free pint after a shift, that should be logged as a sale at zero value or recorded as wastage. If you ignore it, your till will show fewer sales than you actually served, and your variance will look like loss.

Temperature and Line Cleaning Waste

Draught lines need cleaning. During cleaning, several pints are flushed. Cold cellars waste more product than warm ones. A cask at 18°C will waste more than the same cask at 12°C. Track cellar temperature. If it drifts, your draught variance will spike. That’s not theft; that’s physics.

Building a Weekly Routine That Actually Works

The difference between pubs that catch stock loss and pubs that don’t is simple: one does a weekly inflow review, and the other doesn’t.

You don’t need to overhaul your whole operation. You need a thirty-minute routine every Monday morning (or whichever day suits you):

1. Review last week’s deliveries against invoices. Anything missing? Anything you forgot to log?
2. Pull last week’s till data from your EPOS. Export sales by product line.
3. Count draught (dip every cask), spirits (weigh open bottles), and stock shelves.
4. Compare: Deliveries + Opening Stock − Sales = Closing Stock. Does it match your physical count?
5. If it doesn’t, work out which line is short and by how much. Was it measurement error, or is there a real variance?
6. Write down the variance percentage by line. Track it week to week.

After two weeks, you’ll have a trend. After a month, you’ll know which lines are stable and which ones drift. That’s when you can act. If draught is consistently 3% light, check your cellar temperature and line cleaning. If spirits are 2% light, watch your pouring.

The StockTap pub stock app is built exactly for this workflow. It removes the spreadsheet guesswork by letting you log deliveries as they arrive, pull till data automatically, and record physical counts in a structured way. The variance calculates itself, and you get a report that shows you exactly which lines moved. Most pubs that move from a messy spreadsheet to a disciplined count claw back 1–2 GP points within a couple of months.

Spreadsheet vs. Proper Stock Management

The objection I hear most is: “My spreadsheet works fine.”

It probably doesn’t. Here’s why:

• Spreadsheets live in one person’s head. If that person is sick or leaves, the system dies. A proper system is consistent whether you’re working or your deputy is.
• Spreadsheets are slow. Manual entry, manual calculations, manual cross-checks. A system does it instantly.
• Spreadsheets hide errors. A formula can be wrong for months without you noticing. A system flags variance the moment it occurs.
• Spreadsheets don’t talk to your till. You have to manually export sales data, then manually enter it into the spreadsheet, then manually match it against stock. A system pulls till data automatically.

I’m not saying a spreadsheet is useless. I’m saying that if you’re doing an inflow inventory review seriously, a spreadsheet will waste more time than it saves.

SmartPubTools was built by a working pub landlord who got tired of the same problem. The StockTap module is designed specifically for weekly inflow reviews. You log deliveries, it pulls your till data, you record your physical counts, and it shows you the variance instantly. No formulas to check. No manual calculations. No guesswork. £97 one-off, no subscription, no monthly fees. It works on any device, so you can do your count on a tablet while you’re in the cellar.

A Note on Brewery Stocktakers

You might think: “Won’t the brewery stocktaker just do this for me?”

No. The brewery’s job is to verify they’ve delivered what they claim they delivered. Your job is to verify you’ve turned that delivery into profit. Those are different things. A brewery stocktaker will turn up once a year, count what’s on your shelves and in your cellar, and report to the pubco. They won’t tell you which lines are bleeding margin. They won’t tell you when the problem started. And they won’t help you fix it.

Your inflow review is what protects you in the meantime.