Bar stock taking sheet: the complete guide

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub licensees running a stock taking sheet are measuring the wrong thing—and catching losses far too late to do anything about it. You’re counting bottles and casks at month-end, reconciling them against the till, and calling it done. But by then, the damage is already priced into your GP. A 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year, and a sheet-based monthly count won’t catch it until it’s already happened.

The real problem isn’t the sheet itself. It’s that you’re counting stock instead of counting losses—and you’re doing it too infrequently to act on what you find. I spent years running inventory off a tangle of spreadsheets and still couldn’t track partial kegs or control over-pouring on spirits. What changed was moving to a disciplined weekly line check, using a proper SmartPubTools approach: dip every cask, weigh open spirit bottles, and reconcile against till data the same day. My weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could trust within a fortnight—and it cost me almost nothing to set up.

This guide tells you how to build a stock taking sheet that actually works, what to count, when to count it, and how to catch losses before they become your next trading problem.

What Is a Bar Stock Taking Sheet?

A bar stock taking sheet is a record of what you physically have in stock at a given moment—kegs, bottles, casks, optics, spirits, cider, beer—matched against what your till says you should have. The gap between actual and expected is your variance. Ideally, that variance is near zero. In reality, it’s 2–5% in most pubs, which means profit is walking out the door unaccounted for.

A stock taking sheet is not the same as a stocktake. A stocktake is a full physical inventory count—kegs, bottles, every spirit measure. A stock taking sheet is a running record of what you’re tracking and how it moves week to week. Most pubs do one or the other, but rarely both. That’s the mistake.

The sheet itself can be as simple as a printed checklist with columns for item, opening count, deliveries, till sales, closing count, and variance. Or it can be a spreadsheet. Or—and this is what I recommend—it can be built into a system like StockTap pub stock app that pulls till data automatically and flags your variance in real time. But the core principle is the same: you’re measuring stock movement against sales, and you’re doing it frequently enough to act on the numbers.

Why Weekly Counts Beat Monthly Reconciliation

Here’s what happens when you only count stock once a month: you lose two weeks of data before you even know there’s a problem.

Say you have a £1,000 opening spirit stock on Monday. Week one, you sell £300 but your actual stock only dropped £240. That’s £60 unaccounted for—over-pouring, free pours, spillage, or a mistake in your opening count. But you won’t know until week four when you reconcile. By then, you’ve had three more weeks to develop a pattern. If that pattern repeats weekly (and it will, if it’s operational—over-pouring, dodgy measures, unrecorded waste), you’ve bled £240 from your week-one variance alone, plus whatever happened in weeks two, three, and four.

A weekly count catches that variance in week one and lets you act immediately. Is it a measurement error on opening stock? Fix it. Is it over-pouring? Retrain your bar staff or fix your optics. Is it a line waste issue? Check your cask temperature and line cleanliness. The point is: the sooner you know, the sooner you stop the leak.

I was running a Marston’s pub with a messy month-end reconciliation for five years. When I switched to weekly counts—literally 20 minutes every Monday morning—my variance tightened within two weeks. I was clawing back 1–2 gross profit points within two months. The math is simple: a 1% stock loss across wet sales is £3,000–£5,000 a year. A weekly check catches it within weeks, not months.

What to Count (and What Not To)

This is where most sheets fail. You end up counting everything—every spirit bottle, every pint glass, every mixers bottle—and the sheet becomes a nightmare to maintain. You stop updating it. It becomes useless.

Here’s what you actually need to track on your sheet:

• Kegs and partial kegs (draught lines). Use a dipstick. A dip takes 10 seconds per keg. Record the depth in centimetres or use a ready-reckoner your brewery gives you to convert to pints.
• Open spirit bottles. Weigh them on scales. A full bottle has a known weight; a half-full bottle weighs half. This catches over-pouring instantly because spirits don’t disappear at the bar without being poured—if the bottle is lighter than it should be, someone poured more than they rang through.
• Sealed bottles and cans. Count by the case or by the individual bottle if volume is small. This is quick.
• Cider and bottled beer kegs. Same method as draught—dip or weigh.

What you don’t need to count every week: optics, measures, glassware, or non-alcoholic stock. These don’t move fast enough to reveal a weekly variance. Count them once a quarter if you need to, but your weekly sheet is about the stuff that sells and bleeds—spirits and draught.

Measure wet sales against wet stock, not headline stock value. The number that actually matters is gross profit by line, not a single headline stock figure. 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. Weigh open spirit bottles, dip every cask and partial keg, and reconcile against till data the same day. That’s the sheet that works.

How to Build Your Own Stock Taking Sheet

Step 1: Define Your Count Day and Time

Pick a day and time you’ll count every week—ideally a quiet morning, before the bar gets busy. Monday 9am or Tuesday 10am works for most pubs. Write it in your manager’s calendar and treat it like a till reconciliation. It’s non-negotiable.

Step 2: Set Up Your Columns

Your sheet needs these core columns:

• Item (keg number, spirit name, beer line)
• Opening count (last week’s closing count)
• Deliveries (kegs received, spirits ordered in)
• Till sales (pulled from your EPOS)
• Physical count (what you counted this week)
• Expected closing (opening + deliveries − till sales)
• Variance (physical count − expected closing)
• Notes (spillage, line issue, opening count error, etc.)

Step 3: Record Your Opening Count Accurately

This is where most sheets go wrong. Your opening count is last week’s closing count—but if last week’s closing was wrong, this week’s opening is wrong too. The error compounds. Always count down to a decimal place on casks (use a dipstick, not guesswork) and always weigh spirits, never estimate.

Step 4: Pull Till Data

Your EPOS will tell you exactly what you rang through in the past week. Pull this data by category (spirits, draught, cider, bottled beer) so you can match it against physical stock movement. If your till says you sold £400 of draught but your keg count only dropped by the equivalent of £320 in pints, you have a £80 variance to investigate.

Step 5: Calculate and Investigate Variance

Your variance column will show you the gap between what your till says should have left and what actually left. A variance of 0–1% is normal (rounding, tiny spillages, ice melt). Above 2%, you have a problem worth investigating. Below −2% (stock is higher than expected), you likely have a counting error or a delivery that wasn’t logged.

When you find a variance, don’t just accept it. Ask: Is my opening count wrong? Did a delivery not get logged on the till? Is there a line issue causing waste? Is someone over-pouring? Investigation takes 10 minutes. Ignoring it costs you £3,000 a year.

Common Mistakes That Hide Real Losses

Mistake 1: Counting Stock Instead of Variance

You count the headline stock figure and compare it to last month. It looks roughly right, so you sign it off. But you’ve missed the weekly pattern that’s been bleeding 2% all month. Count variance week to week, not headline stock value.

Mistake 2: Not Reconciling Against Till Data the Same Day

You count on Monday but don’t pull till data until Friday. By then, you’ve had deliveries, till corrections, and system updates that muddy the water. Your variance is impossible to trace. Pull till data the same day you count. Reconcile immediately. It takes 10 extra minutes and catches 90% of errors.

Mistake 3: Estimating Spirit Bottle Weights

You look at a spirit bottle and think “that’s half full.” Nope. Buy a set of scales (£15–20) and weigh them. A full 70cl bottle of vodka weighs 875g. A half-full bottle weighs 435–440g. The difference between an estimate and a weight is the difference between “I think we’re losing something” and “we’re losing exactly 8 pints of vodka this week.”

Mistake 4: Not Training Staff on What Counts as Waste

Your bar team doesn’t know they’re supposed to log spillages or dropped pints. They happen anyway—£20 a week minimum in most pubs. That variance ends up unexplained. Tell your team: every spill, every dropped pint, every line purge—log it. Add a waste column to your sheet. Suddenly your variance tightens because you’re accounting for the real waste instead of assuming it’s theft or theft-like loss.

Mistake 5: Running Monthly Counts Instead of Weekly

I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating: a monthly count is a snapshot taken too late. By the time you know you have a problem, you’ve already lost £500–1,000. A weekly count is early warning. Act on it.

When to Move Beyond a Spreadsheet

Does a Spreadsheet Work?

Yes—if you have the discipline to update it every single week and you understand how to calculate variance correctly. Most pubs don’t. They start strong, update for three weeks, then it laps. By week six, the data is a month old and useless.

What a System Like StockTap Does Differently

A purpose-built stock management system like StockTap pub stock app removes the manual data entry. It pulls your till data automatically, lets you log your physical count on any device (phone, tablet, laptop), and calculates your variance the moment you hit save. You get a weekly variance report, a trend line, and an alert if variance crosses your threshold (e.g., above 2%).

You also get a physical record that’s time-stamped and can’t be “lost” in a folder somewhere. If you need to show a brewery rep or an accountant your variance history, you have it—dated, numbered, complete. A spreadsheet on your desktop? That’s one accidental deletion away from being gone.

The case for switching from a spreadsheet is not convenience—it’s accountability and consistency. I built my own count routine using a dipstick, a set of scales, and a spreadsheet. It worked. But the moment I moved that routine into a system designed for pubs, I stopped second-guessing the data and started acting on it. The system doesn’t forget to remind you. The system doesn’t let you fudge the math. The system keeps you honest.

For a 20-minute weekly setup and £97 one-off (no subscription, no monthly fees), StockTap pays for itself the first time you catch a 1–2% variance early enough to fix it.