Pub line check PDF template 2026

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pubs lose money on stock they never knew was missing. A 1% variance on wet sales — which sounds tiny — quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year, and most licensees never see it coming because they’re not measuring it. A pub line check PDF template is not a nice-to-have; it’s the tool that turns guesswork into hard data, and it only works if you actually use it every week. I’ve seen pubs move from a tangled spreadsheet to a disciplined count routine and claw back 1–2 gross profit points within a couple of months. This article will show you what a proper line check template needs to contain, how to use it, and why a PDF form beats a napkin or a mental note every single time.

What is a pub line check PDF template?

A line check is a weekly snapshot of your stock — a count of every cask, keg, spirit bottle, and measure in your cellar and behind your bar. A line check template is simply a standardised PDF form that keeps you measuring the same things, in the same way, every single week so you can spot trends and variance.

Unlike a stocktake (which is a full, item-by-item count of everything in your pub, usually monthly or at pubco audit), a line check is fast. You’re not counting individual bottles of lager or running a pencil and clipboard through the cellar for three hours. You’re dipping kegs, weighing open spirit bottles, and recording numbers in a form. The whole thing should take 30–45 minutes if you know what you’re doing.

The PDF template becomes your control sheet. You print it, fill it in by hand or on a tablet, and then you compare this week’s numbers to last week’s numbers. If a spirit bottle was 2.8 kg last Tuesday and 2.1 kg this Tuesday, and you only sold £420 of that spirit, something is wrong. That’s the whole point.

Why you need one (even if you think you don’t)

I ran my pub for years with a scribbled spreadsheet and a loose idea of what I had in stock. I knew roughly how much draught we had, I assumed spirits were fine because the tills looked healthy, and I never properly measured anything. One day I sat down and did the maths: I was hitting budget on sales but missing gross profit targets by 2–3 points every month. When I finally built a proper count routine around a dipstick and a set of scales, the weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could actually trust within a fortnight.

Here’s what a line check template solves:

• You spot losses fast. If you count every week, you catch a problem in week two, not in month three when it’s already cost you £2,000.
• You know which lines are leaking money. You measure wet GP by line, not a single headline stock figure. Spirits might be tight but draught might be haemorrhaging due to temperature issues or poor pours.
• You build discipline. If staff know you’re counting every Tuesday morning, they stop being loose with measures. A free-poured 25ml is often 32–35ml, and that adds up.
• You have proof. If you ever need to challenge a supplier about a delivery shortage, or justify stock loss to a pubco auditor, you have a week-by-week paper trail.

Most stock ‘theft’ isn’t theft at all — it’s measurement error, forgotten wastage, and over-pouring. A line check template forces you to measure, and measurement stops assumptions.

What to measure on your line check

The line check should have three sections: draught, spirits, and reconciliation.

Draught section

For every cask and keg in your cellar, record:

• Product name and keg number (so you can match it to delivery notes)
• Dip reading (the depth of beer in the keg, usually measured in centimetres or inches with a metal dipstick)
• Temperature (cellar temperature at the time of count — most cask ale should be 50–55°F, lager 38–42°F)
• Date opened (so you can spot old stock)
• Notes (any visible damage, sediment, or issues with the line itself)

The dip reading is your baseline. If you dipped this cask at 45 cm last week and 38 cm this week, and your till shows you sold 14 pints of that beer, you’ve got a 7 cm variance. That might be line waste, over-pouring, or a fault in the line. You need to know which.

Spirits section

For every open spirit bottle (not sealed stock), weigh and record:

• Product name and bottle size (75cl, 1 litre, etc.)
• Weight in kilograms (using a digital scale, not a guess)
• Date opened
• Expected weight at full (so you can calculate how much should have sold)
• Measures sold that week (from your till or hand-poured records)

Spirits are where most pubs bleed money silently. Weigh open spirit bottles, dip every cask and partial keg, and reconcile against till data the same day. That single discipline will recover more margin than anything else you do this year.

Reconciliation section

At the bottom of your line check, add a simple reconciliation:

• Opening stock value (last week’s total)
• Plus: Deliveries received (value from invoice)
• Minus: Stock sold (value from till, broken down by category)
• Equals: Expected closing stock value
• Actual closing stock value (calculated from your counts)
• Variance (expected minus actual)

This is where the PDF template becomes a financial tool, not just a cellar sheet. If your variance is negative (you have less stock than the till says you should), you’ve got a leakage. If it’s positive, you might have unrecorded deliveries, or your counts are high.

How to build one that works

You can build a line check PDF in about 30 minutes using Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or a free PDF editor. Here’s the structure:

Header

At the top, include fields for:

• Pub name and date
• Counted by (staff member name)
• Cellar temperature at time of count
• EPOS closing balance for the period

Draught table

Create a table with columns for: Product, Keg/Cask No., Dip Reading (cm), Temperature (°F), Date Opened, Notes, Variance vs Last Week. Leave 20–30 rows so you can add kegs as you change them.

Spirits table

Create a table with columns for: Product, Size, Weight (kg), Expected Full Weight, Measures Sold (from till), Expected Weight Loss, Actual Variance, Notes. Again, 15–20 rows.

Summary box

At the bottom, a simple calculation area:

• Total draught variance (sum of all draughts)
• Total spirit variance (sum of all spirits)
• Total variance as % of expected sales
• Signature line and date

Once you’ve built it, print it double-sided so it fits on one A4 sheet. That forces you to be disciplined about what you actually need to measure. If you can’t fit it on one sheet, you’re measuring too much.

Save the PDF to your phone or tablet so you can fill it in by hand as you go through the cellar, then transfer the numbers to a spreadsheet at the end for year-on-year tracking. This hybrid approach (PDF template for the count, spreadsheet for the analysis) works better than either alone.

Common mistakes with line check templates

After 15 years of running line checks and talking to other licensees, I’ve seen these errors over and over:

Counting at different times each week

If you count Tuesday morning one week and Friday afternoon the next, you’re comparing apples to oranges. The variance will be meaningless because the stock level isn’t comparable. Pick a time — I recommend Tuesday morning before service — and do it every single week at that time. Your staff need to know when it’s happening so they’re not moving kegs around.

Not reconciling against the till

You can count perfectly and still miss problems if you don’t compare your stock variance to what the EPOS says you sold. If the till says you sold £600 of spirits but your weights show a variance of £120 loss, you’ve got a real problem. If the till says you sold £2,400 and your variance is £80, that’s acceptable shrink (about 3%). The till is your ground truth. Always reconcile.

Using the template but not acting on it

This is the biggest one. I’ve seen pubs build beautiful line check PDFs and fill them in religiously for three weeks, then stop because they didn’t like what they were seeing. If your variance jumps to 5% in week three, that’s the week you need to act hardest — tighter measures, cellar temperature check, staff briefing. The template only works if you actually use the data.

Trying to count everything

Some templates I’ve seen are 10 pages long. You don’t need that. You need draught, open spirits, and a reconciliation. Sealed stock is fine — it doesn’t change week to week. Soft drinks are usually tight. Focus on wet sales, where most of your margin lives and where most variance hides.

When to move beyond a PDF template

A PDF template and a spreadsheet will get you 80% of the way there. You’ll spot losses, you’ll tighten discipline, and you’ll recover margin. But there’s a ceiling to what a manual system can do.

The problem is time. Even at 45 minutes a week, a line check is a drag. And if you’re manually entering dips and weights into a spreadsheet after the count, you’re duplicating work. The moment you’re confident in your counting discipline and you want to scale the insight — tracking temperature trends, automating the variance calculation, or linking your count directly to your till data — that’s when a proper pub stock app like StockTap pub stock app makes sense.

SmartPubTools built StockTap specifically for this: you count using your phone, the app calculates variance automatically, and you get a weekly P&L that shows you exactly which lines are making money and which are eating it. No spreadsheet, no manual reconciliation, no guessing.

But start with the PDF. Get the discipline right first. Then automate.