How long does pub stocktake take?

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub licensees think a proper stocktake takes half a day or longer—so they don’t do it at all, or they do it once a year as theatre for the auditors. That’s exactly backwards. A disciplined weekly count on the key lines takes 45 to 90 minutes, and that discipline is what stops the quiet bleed of £3,000–£5,000 a year that happens when you’re not looking. The difference between a pub that knows its margins and one that guesses at them isn’t equipment or software—it’s a routine you can trust.

This guide tells you how long a stocktake actually takes, what slows it down, and what happens when you stop measuring how long does pub stocktake take and start measuring what profit you keep.

How Long Does a Stocktake Actually Take?

A weekly stocktake of your wet stock (draught, spirits, wine) takes 45 to 90 minutes. That’s dipping every cask and partial keg, weighing open spirit bottles, checking temperature, noting waste and damage, and reconciling the numbers against your till. If your cellar is chaos and you’ve never done this before, add 30 minutes the first time. After four weeks, you’ll be down to 50 minutes because you’ll know the routine.

A monthly full stocktake—including packaged stock, mixers, energy drinks, nibbles, and tied items—takes 2 to 4 hours depending on your range and how much is scattered across the bar. The first one takes longer. If you’ve been winging it, allow extra time because you’ll find stock you’d forgotten existed.

Here’s what I learned in my own pub: the number that actually matters is wet GP 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. When I switched from a tangle of spreadsheets to a simple count routine around a dipstick and a set of scales, the weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could trust within a fortnight.

What Affects Stocktake Duration?

Bar Size and Product Range

A small village pub with six draught lines, three spirits, and house wine takes 40 minutes. A town-centre free house with 18 lines, 40 spirits, cocktail mixers, and a wine list takes 90 minutes or more. This is linear—more lines, more time. No way around it.

Cellar Organisation

If your draught lines are labelled, casks are positioned so you can dip without moving ten other things, and spirits are in one cupboard in size order, you save 20 minutes. If your cellar looks like a skip, you lose 20 minutes to searching, moving stock, and squinting at faded labels. I’ve seen both. The organised cellar isn’t obsessive—it’s just tidy.

The Tools You Use

A proper dipstick, a set of scales (digital, under £20), and a notebook take the same time as a spreadsheet. What slows you down is borrowing someone else’s tape measure, guessing cask weights, and then trying to enter numbers into an Excel file six hours later when you’ve forgotten which keg was which. The StockTap pub stock app is built around this reality—capture the numbers on your phone as you count, reconcile till the same day, don’t re-enter anything.

How Often You Do It

If you stocktake weekly, it takes 45 minutes because variance is small and there are no surprises. If you stocktake monthly, it takes longer because you’ve accumulated forgotten wastage, unreconciled damage, and you’re trying to remember what happened three weeks ago. Weekly is faster and more accurate.

Weekly vs Monthly Stocktakes

This is where most pubs get it wrong. They think monthly is easier because they do it less often. They’re wrong.

Measure	Weekly Stocktake	Monthly Stocktake
Time per count	45–60 mins	2–4 hours
Accuracy	High (small variance)	Low (accumulated error)
Waste tracking	Clear and immediate	Forgotten by month-end
Staff accountability	Clear	Vague
Margin protection	Proven (1–2 GP points recovered)	Wishful thinking

A 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year. A proper weekly line check catches it. Most pubs that move from a messy spreadsheet to a disciplined count claw back 1–2 GP points within a couple of months. Weekly isn’t harder—it’s faster and it works.

The Method That Actually Works

Forget the paperwork theatre. Here’s the routine I use, and it takes 50 minutes on Tuesday morning before service.

Step 1: Draught (15 minutes)

• Dip every cask and partial keg—record the inch reading or weight
• Note the line (e.g. “Guinness 1”, “Carlsberg 2”)
• Check cellar temperature (should be 50–55°F for lager, 52–57°F for cask ale)
• Flag any signs of infection or poor quality

Step 2: Open Spirits (15 minutes)

• Weigh every open bottle (vodka, gin, rum, whisky, brandy)
• Record the weight to the nearest 50g
• Note the date you opened it
• Don’t estimate—weigh. Over-pouring is where most margin goes.

Step 3: Wine and Fortified (10 minutes)

• Count sealed bottles (easy)
• Measure open bottles by eye or weight
• Flagged slow movers for next week

Step 4: Reconciliation (10 minutes)

• Pull till data for the week (units sold by line)
• Compare to your dips and weights
• Note wastage, damage, or comps
• If variance is more than 2%, investigate before you leave the cellar

That’s it. Fifty minutes. No spreadsheet arguments on Friday. No “I’ll do it next week.” No discovering in month 11 that you’ve been bleeding cash.

Common Delays (and How to Avoid Them)

You Don’t Know Where Things Are

If you’re spending five minutes looking for the vodka, your cellar needs organising. Spend 30 minutes on a Sunday evening labelling kegs, grouping spirits by type, and moving stock so the dipstick reaches everything. You’ll save that 30 minutes every single week for the next year. That’s 26 hours of your life back.

You’re Using a Pen and Paper, Then Entering It Later

Double work. Write it down once, on your phone, in a format you can reconcile the same day. The SmartPubTools approach is to capture numbers as you count, not to transcribe them later.

You’re Guessing Weights and Measurements

Guessing takes 10 minutes and gives you wrong numbers. Weighing takes 15 minutes and gives you numbers you can trust. It’s not longer—it’s just honest.

You’re Trying to Account for Wastage From Memory

If you had to throw away a keg or comped ten drinks last Tuesday, you won’t remember by Friday. Log it the day it happens. One note on your phone takes eight seconds. Trying to reconstruct it from memory takes 20 minutes and you’ll get it wrong anyway.

The Brewery Stocktaker is “Doing It for You”

The brewery stocktaker is doing it for the brewery. They’re not reconciling your till, they’re not measuring your over-pouring, they’re not chasing your margin. Their job is to check you haven’t run away with their stock. Your job is to know whether you’re making money on it. These are not the same thing. Do your own count.

Why the Time Matters Less Than the Number

I spent three years not properly stocktaking because I told myself I didn’t have 90 minutes on a Tuesday morning. In that time, I leaked somewhere between £9,000 and £15,000 in unmeasured losses. Ninety minutes a week would have cost me 78 hours a year. The leak cost me the profit equivalent of closing the bar for almost two weeks.

The time isn’t the cost. The ignorance is.

When you stocktake weekly, your staff know you’re watching. When you stocktake weekly, you spot a keg that’s gone bad before it ruins a line. When you stocktake weekly, you see which spirits are selling faster than your till says they should (over-pouring), and you can coach before it becomes a habit. When you stocktake weekly, your accountant doesn’t have to guess at closing stock and your bank manager can trust your numbers.

The time investment is 45 to 90 minutes. The return is the difference between running a pub and running it properly.