Stonegate line check: weekly discipline that catches stock loss

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most Stonegate tenants think a line check is something the area manager does twice a year. It isn’t. A proper Stonegate line check is a weekly discipline you run yourself — and it’s the single biggest lever you have to catch stock loss before it becomes a 2–3 grand problem.

The reason this matters: a 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year. Most operators never see it because they’re looking at headline stock figures instead of actual variance by product line. The loss hides in over-poured spirits, warm cask beer, bad line cleaning waste, and measurement errors nobody ever bothered to reconcile.

After 15 years running a Marston’s pub on spreadsheets and guesswork, I built a simple weekly count routine around a dipstick and a set of scales. Within a fortnight, the variance went from “no idea” to a number I could trust and act on. That’s what this article teaches you.

You’ll learn exactly what to measure, how to do it without stealing hours from your bar staff, why the brewery stocktaker isn’t your backup, and how to spot the losses that matter.

What a Stonegate line check actually is

A line check is a weekly physical count of your wet stock — draught kegs, spirits, wine and alcopops — cross-referenced against till records the same day. It’s not a full stocktake. It’s not a brewery audit. It’s a snapshot of what you physically have versus what your EPOS says you sold.

Stonegate tenants sometimes assume the area manager’s quarterly or annual visit covers this. It doesn’t. The area manager’s stocktake is a compliance exercise — it verifies your opening and closing positions for the P&L. A line check is your operational tool. It’s the early warning system that catches drift before it becomes loss.

The three things you’re measuring in a line check are straightforward: kegs and cask (by dip), spirits (by weight on open bottles), and till reconciliation (what you rang vs. what you poured). That’s it.

Why weekly matters more than annual

If you stocktake once a year, you find out in December that you lost £4,000 in June. You don’t know when, why, or how to fix it. Weekly discipline means you catch a 2% variance in week two and investigate it while the memory is fresh.

The most effective way to catch stock loss in pubs is weekly measurement against till data on the same day, not annual physical count. A week is short enough that variance is usually attributable to one or two factors — bad line temperature, a staff member over-pouring, or wastage you actually remember. A year is too long. The trail goes cold.

At my own pub, I was running stock on spreadsheets and dipping kegs every few weeks. I still lost track of partial kegs and spirit measures. The variance at year-end was always 3–4%, and I never knew why. When I switched to a weekly dip, weigh and count cycle, the variance stabilised at 0.5–0.8% within a month. That’s the difference between discipline and guesswork.

How to run a proper line check

Step 1: Count your draught kegs (dip method)

Every draught keg on the bar or in the cellar gets a dip. A keg dipstick costs a few quid and takes 30 seconds per keg. Mark the volume on a simple count sheet. Record the date and the initials of whoever did the dip. That’s all.

Why dip instead of guessing? Because a full keg looks the same as a three-quarter keg if you haven’t tapped it recently. A keg at 60% capacity is worth £25–£40 in revenue you haven’t poured yet. Missing that in your count inflates your “stock position” and masks real variance.

Step 2: Weigh open spirit bottles

Every bottle of vodka, gin, rum, whisky or brandy that’s currently on the bar gets weighed on a set of kitchen scales. Record the weight. Compare it to the weight you recorded last week. Calculate the volume poured (1ml of spirit ≈ 0.79g, but for speed use a standard conversion sheet).

Cross-check against till data. If your till says you sold 12 measures of vodka but the bottle weight suggests 8–9 measures were poured, someone is over-pouring or free-pouring. A free-poured 25ml is often 32–35ml in real life. That costs you money and masks theft.

Step 3: Reconcile till records the same day

Pull your EPOS data for the last seven days. Total the number of each product sold (pints of Guinness, measures of Absolut, bottles of Peroni). Cross-reference against your physical count. If till says 40 pints of draught lager sold but your keg dip shows you only poured 35, you have a measurement error or a till ring issue — not a stock problem. Find it and fix it.

Spirits hide losses in over-pouring, draught hides it in cellar temperature and line cleaning waste, and most stock “theft” is actually measurement error and forgotten wastage. This is why weekly reconciliation matters. You catch the pattern fast.

Common mistakes that waste your time

Mistake 1: Waiting for the brewery stocktaker

Your area manager or brewery stocktaker will not do a weekly line check for you. They do an annual or quarterly compliance audit. They’re not your early warning system. If you rely on them to spot loss, you’ll find out when you find out — which is usually when it’s too late to investigate or correct.

Mistake 2: Counting everything

Don’t stocktake dry goods, crisps, mixers or glasses on a weekly cycle. Count only wet stock — kegs, spirits, wine and alcopops. Everything else either doesn’t move fast enough to mask loss or isn’t worth the time. A full stocktake is an annual exercise. A line check is weekly and narrow.

Mistake 3: Measuring the wrong number

Don’t obsess over headline stock variance. The number that actually matters is wet GP by line — is your Guinness making the margin you expect, is your vodka margin consistent, is your house wine over-pouring? One product can be running at 85% GP while another runs at 92%. Bundling them into a single “stock variance” figure hides both the winners and the problems.

Mistake 4: Running the check at the wrong time

Run your line check on a quiet day mid-week (Tuesday or Wednesday) at opening time, not during service and not on a Saturday night. You need 45 minutes of clear cellar access and someone who knows the stock position. Running it during a Friday shift will get abandoned halfway.

How to measure what actually matters

Stock variance falls into three categories: measurement error, controllable loss, and uncontrollable loss. Most operators lump them all together and call it “loss”. Breaking them apart is where the money is.

Measurement variance occurs when till records don’t match physical count due to rounding, ring errors, or forgotten pours — typically 0.2–0.5% and fixable with tighter discipline. Controllable loss is over-pouring, wastage, staff theft, and spillage — typically 0.5–1.5% and reduced by training and monitoring. Uncontrollable loss is keg pressure loss, evaporation and line cleaning waste — typically 0.3–0.5% and built into your expected margin.

If your total variance is running at 2–3% a week, you have a real problem. If it’s 0.8–1.2%, you’re normal but can still improve. If it’s under 0.5%, you’re running tight and should focus on turnover, not loss prevention.

Track this by product line over four weeks. Spirits should cluster around 0.6–0.8% variance. Draught should cluster around 0.8–1.1%. Wine by the glass should be 1.2–1.5% (higher because of the measurement complexity). If one line is an outlier, investigate that line, not the headline figure.

The real time cost and how to keep it short

A proper line check takes 30–45 minutes once a week, done by one person who knows the cellar and the till. That’s it. Not an hour per day, not a two-person job, not a Friday night exercise.

The trade-off is real: 30–45 minutes a week, or £3,000–£5,000 a year in undetected loss. Most pubs that move from a messy spreadsheet to a disciplined count claw back 1–2 GP points within a couple of months. At a typical wet turnover of £8,000–£12,000 a week, that’s £400–£600 a month recovered. The time pays for itself in a week.

The reason most operators skip this is time pressure, not complexity. If you’re short-staffed or running a one-person operation, delegate the physical count to a trusted team member and do the reconciliation yourself. The count takes 30 minutes. The reconciliation takes 10–15 minutes. Split it and it stops being a blocker.

This is where StockTap pub stock app helps. Instead of writing numbers onto a paper sheet and typing them into a spreadsheet later, you log counts directly on a device as you go. The variance calculates automatically. The till reconciliation is already built in. The data is timestamped and backed up. It compresses the 30–45 minutes into a tighter routine and removes the spreadsheet step entirely.

Building a system, not just a habit

A line check only works if it’s consistent. One week of discipline means nothing. Four weeks means you’re seeing a pattern. Eight weeks means you understand your baseline and can spot real drift.

Schedule it on the same day every week. Tuesday or Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. before opening. Same person (or same two people rotating). Same count sheet or app. Same till reconciliation process. Three months in, variance becomes predictable and actionable.

If you’re using SmartPubTools to run other parts of your operation — labour scheduling, cash handling, weekly P&L — the line check data feeds into the same dashboard. You see wet GP, stock variance and cash position in one place, not spread across three spreadsheets and an email thread.

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