Pub licence stock records: what you need

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub licensees believe their stocktake happens once a year when the brewery sends someone round — and the rest of the time, stock management is someone else’s problem. It isn’t. A 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year, and by the time your annual audit picks it up, the money is gone. The difference between a pub that haemorrhages margin and one that holds it comes down to one thing: whether you have a system for tracking pub licence stock records that actually works in real time, not just on paper once a year. This article will show you exactly what those records should contain, how to build them into a weekly routine, and why spreadsheets alone will never catch the losses that matter. You’ll learn the specific measurements and reconciliation methods that give you a number you can trust — and the mistakes that every pub makes when they first start counting properly.

What Are Pub Licence Stock Records?

Pub licence stock records are the weekly or daily count and measurement of every cask, keg, bottle and optic in your pub, reconciled against what your till says you sold. They’re not the same as your annual stock take (though that feeds into them). They’re a running record that tells you, every single week, whether the stock that left your cellar matches the stock that came through your till.

In practice, your pub licence stock records should include:

• The volume (in pints or litres) of every draught line, measured by dipping the cask or reading the keg level
• The weight of every open spirit bottle (spirits hide losses because a free-poured 25ml is often 32–35ml in reality)
• The count of sealed bottles (wine, lager, cider, spirits — anything unopened)
• The date, who counted, and any wastage, temperature issues or line cleaning notes
• A running variance column showing what you expected to sell minus what you actually counted

These records live in two places: a physical logbook (so you have a paper trail if the pubco audits you) and a digital system where you can spot trends week to week. At my own 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. That’s what real records do.

Why Weekly Counts Matter More Than Annual Audits

Your brewery stocktaker comes once a year. By then, if you’ve had a margin leak, you’ve already lost three months of takings, or more. Annual audits are a compliance box-tick — they don’t help you run your pub. Weekly records do.

Weekly stock counts are your early warning system. If your variance jumps from 0.5% to 2% in a single week, you know something changed — a new barmaid is over-pouring, a cask has a slow leak, your cellar temperature spiked. An annual audit tells you the damage; a weekly record tells you how to stop it happening next week.

Most pubs that move from a messy spreadsheet to a disciplined weekly count claw back 1–2 gross profit points within a couple of months. That’s because they’re not fixing theft — they’re fixing the measurement error and forgotten wastage that was buried in the noise. Spirits are the worst: a free-poured spirit is a guess every time. Draught is second: a 2°C rise in cellar temperature can waste a full pint per cask per day through foam. And both of those errors disappear the moment you start measuring properly.

The number that actually matters is wet gross profit by line, not a single headline stock figure. Weigh open spirit bottles, dip every cask and partial keg, and reconcile against till data the same day. Do that every week, and you own your numbers. Don’t, and you’re guessing.

What to Record: Draught, Spirits, Wine and Cask Beer

Draught Beer and Cider

Every draught line should be dipped at the same time each week — I do it on a Monday morning before the bar opens. You need a dipstick (a plastic or wooden rod marked in pints or litres) and a record of which cask is on each tap. A standard cask is 36 pints; a keg varies by brand (Guinness kegs are different sizes than Carlsberg, for example, so check your delivery notes). Write down:

• The line name and beer type
• The cask or keg ID number (usually stamped on the side)
• The dip reading (in pints or litres remaining)
• Any notes (temperature, taste, line cleaning due)

If a cask was swapped mid-week, record that. If the cellar temperature was outside 13–14°C, record that too — temperature waste is real, and it shows in your variance. Draught variance should be under 0.5% of sales; anything above that means you have a leakage, a temperature problem, or line cleaning is eating too much product.

Spirits and Optics

Spirits are where most pubs haemorrhage margin because they can’t actually see what’s being poured. An optic dispenser (the mechanical measure that should deliver 25ml or 35ml) is a rough guide at best. The only accurate way to track spirits is to weigh every open bottle on a digital scales once a week.

A 70cl bottle of whisky weighs 875g full (bottle + liquid); empty it weighs 350g. So every 100ml poured is roughly 126g gone. Weigh the bottle, subtract the empty weight, divide by 126, and you know exactly how many measures have been poured. It takes 90 seconds per bottle. Most licensees don’t do this, which is why most pubs are losing 2–4 measures per spirit line per week to over-pouring.

Record the bottle name, the date, the start weight, the end weight, and the number of measures expected versus the number actually recorded in your till. That variance is where your money is.

Wine, Cider, Bottled Spirits and Sealed Stock

Sealed bottles are the easiest: just count them. If you opened a bottle of wine mid-week, record the start date and the amount remaining (using the same scales method as spirits). Most pubs sell wine by the glass, so you’ll need a record of how much is left in the bottle versus how many glasses you rang through the till.

For stock that moves slowly (premium bottles, ciders, alcopops), a monthly check is fine — you’re unlikely to have a variance on slow-moving lines. Focus your effort on the products that turn over fast: lager, spirits, wine by the glass, and Guinness.

The Measurement Methods That Actually Work

You can keep pub licence stock records on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in a digital system. What matters is consistency and speed — if the count takes longer than 15 minutes, you won’t do it every week.

Paper Logbook (Compliance Gold Standard)

A simple A4 logbook with a printed template for each week. Columns: Line name | Dip (or weight) | Expected sales | Variance | Notes. You write it by hand every Monday morning, and you keep it for two years. If your pubco or an auditor asks to see your records, you have them. This is your backup.

Spreadsheet

A Google Sheet or Excel file with formulas that auto-calculate variance once you enter the dip and the till sales. The advantage is that you can see trends over 13 weeks at a glance. The disadvantage is that most spreadsheets become a mess — formulas break, rows get deleted, and after two months you can’t trust the numbers any more. If you use a spreadsheet, lock the structure (don’t let anyone add or delete columns), and archive a copy every month.

Digital Counting Tool

This is where StockTap pub stock app comes in. Built specifically for the job, it has templates for each type of product (draught, spirits, wine, sealed stock), it auto-calculates variance against till data, and it keeps a running history so you can spot trends and anomalies. No guessing about formulas or whether you’ve left something out. You count, it records, and your numbers are clean. SmartPubTools was built by someone who’s actually run a pub, which shows — the interface is designed for speed, not features.

Whatever system you use, the golden rule is this: count the same way at the same time every week. If you skip a week, you lose the early warning benefit. If you change the method or the time, your variance numbers become unreliable. Consistency is what turns a number into a fact.

Reconciling Stock to Till Data

Reconciliation is the moment when you cross-check your physical count against what your EPOS or till says you sold. It’s where the truth emerges.

Here’s the process:

1. On Monday morning (or your chosen day), do your physical count. Record the dip, the weight, or the count for every product.
2. Pull your till report for the previous week. How many pints of bitter did you ring through? How many spirit measures? How many glasses of wine?
3. Calculate expected stock: Opening stock + Deliveries – Till sales = Expected closing stock.
4. Compare expected to actual. If you expect 10 pints left and you have 8, your variance is 2 pints (or 3.3% of the week’s sales).
5. If variance is under 1%, you’re in the green. If it’s between 1% and 2%, note it and watch for a pattern. If it’s above 2%, you have a problem to investigate.

The reconciliation is also where you account for wastage. If you cleaned a line on Wednesday and it took 3 pints to flush it, that’s not a loss — it’s a cost. Record it as “line cleaning waste” and it won’t skew your variance. Same with a training pour, a customer complaint pour, or a taste pour that wasn’t rung through. A proper record separates real waste from actual loss.

Do this reconciliation the same day you count. Don’t wait until Friday or the following Monday; by then you’ve forgotten what happened during the week. Same day, every week, and your numbers will be accurate enough to act on.

Common Mistakes in Stock Record Keeping

Not Recording Delivery Details

If a delivery came in on Friday and you didn’t record when it arrived, your variance for that week will be wrong. Every delivery should be logged immediately: date, product, quantity, bottle/cask ID. This is non-negotiable for reconciliation.

Measuring at Different Times Each Week

If you count on Monday one week and Wednesday the next, your variance calculations break down. A cask that sat in the cellar for an extra three days might have oxidised or foamed, which adds to the variance number but isn’t a loss. Count at the same time, same day, every week.

Ignoring Cellar Temperature

Draught variance shoots up when cellar temperature is outside 13–14°C. If you’re seeing a sudden spike in variance and you haven’t logged temperature, go down and check. Most pubs with high draught variance have a thermostat that’s drifted or a faulty compressor. Once you fix it, variance settles back down in a week or two.

Not Recording Wastage and Spillage

A barmaid spills a pint. A glass breaks mid-pour. A keg gets damaged in delivery. These are real losses, but if you don’t record them, they’ll show up as variance and you’ll blame the staff or the product. Build a “wastage” line into your record and note every spill, every broken bottle, every training pour that wasn’t rung through. It won’t solve the problem, but it will tell you whether the problem is real or just accounting.

Trusting the Brewery Stocktaker More Than Your Own Count

Once a year, a stocktaker from the brewery comes round and does a full audit. Their count is precise, but it’s also six months away from usefulness. By the time you get the results, you’ve already had time to build the problem. Your weekly count is your early warning system. The annual audit is just a check that your year-end numbers are correct.