The bar stocktake checklist: a repeatable weekly routine

A stocktake is only useful if it happens on the same day, at the same point in the trading week, every week. An accurate count done monthly tells you less than a slightly rough count done every Sunday night, because trends are what you act on.

Before you count

• Close the till period. Counting mid-service guarantees a wrong number.
• Make sure every delivery that has physically arrived has been entered, and nothing that has not arrived has been.
• Move transfers between sites or bars off the floor and record them.

The counting order

1. Cellar and stores first — full cases, sealed and unambiguous.
2. Back bar and speed rails next, working left to right and never doubling back.
3. Fridges and bottle coolers.
4. Open bottles last: weigh them, or estimate to the nearest tenth. Pick one method and never mix them, because consistency matters more than precision here.

Two people, one counting and one recording, is faster and materially more accurate than one person doing both.

Reading the result

Your report should show, per line, what you should have (opening + deliveries − sales) against what you counted, with the difference in cash. Sort by cash value, not by units. A 40-unit discrepancy on cordial matters less than four missing bottles of the premium gin.

Look for lines that drift in the same direction week after week. A single bad week is a counting error. Four bad weeks in a row is a process problem — free-pouring, an untrained shift, a wrong recipe spec, or wastage nobody is logging.

FoxEra runs count sheets from a phone, including scanning a paper count sheet with the camera if that is how your team already works, and produces the variance report in cash automatically.