More stocktaking tips. Performing a liquor stock take in the licensed trade serves the main purpose of reducing stock shrinkage and thus maintaining gross profit. The pub trade is a very liquid industry so keeping a close eye on your stock is vital. That said knowing your stock is disappearing is one thing paying a stock taker to tell you that is another. Most stock takers will be able to tell you the extent of your stock short falls and the effect that it is having on your gross profit margins but very few will be able to pin point the cause of the stock loss.
That may or may not be their fault indeed even if you perform you own stock takes you yourself may still have no idea as to where you stock has gone. The cause of this problem is in the main your till or more importantly you till reports. The worse till to have in operation in the bar is one that reports just department sales as one lump sum. To really feel the benefit of any stock take you must invest in a good fully stock reporting till. By this I mean a till with preset buttons and PLUs the advantages of which are phenomenal, first off your staff will never get a drinks price wrong. They will also be able to ring rounds in as they go reducing the chance of missing a drink off of a round. You don't have to teach new members of staff all your drinks prices. You can check that a full round has been rung in every time.
The real advantage comes when you wish to ascertain where your stock is disappearing, you will be able to check each product line against the stock takers report and see exactly which lines are under achieving. A good till makes having a stock take worth while a bad one makes it virtually a waste of time and money.
By using my excel based stocktaking software, excel is by far the favorite choice for professional stock takers, simple to use and easy to adapt and very powerful and great value. In fact at just £9.99 with instant download available you could save yourself £100's in stock takers fees. Money you could invest into buying a new powerful till.
Another way of monitoring your beer stocks is by flow meters, if you are a tied house or manager then the chances are that they are already fitted in your cellar and you should be able to poll them yourselves. By doing this you will have covered the greatest portion of your wet sales. If you are a free house you may consider investing in them a good system can cost as little as £500.
Just a not on flow meters for tied houses and house managers, there are two ways in which you can get yourself into trouble with your breweries. The first being the obvious one "buying in" or buying your beer from none approved suppliers the other one that you may not realize is that not only do they record how much beer you have sold but remote polling meters can also tell at what time you sold the beer. Any movement after your licensed hours could show that you are performing "over's" or "lock-ins" which could put you in conflict with your pub company. After all your are putting the premises licence at risk.
For the purpose of a liquor stock take all bar snacks such as crisps, nuts etc are counted as wet stock and should be included in your liquor stock count as should tobacco products and other items such as dart flights and the like.
Allowances are the downfall of almost every stock take and landlords own consumption is the main one, when a doctor asks a drinker how much they drink, they almost always double the response given. Now is estimate your consumption through out the count period are you really going to be honest? Then there's always going to be the temptation on receiving a bad stock report to say that your estimate was too low and to increase it, mainly to make the stock report look better.
Far better to know exactly what you drink during the stock period and to keep an accurate record of it, paying for own drinks is often the best way of achieving this, my pub buying guide has a better way of recording it in it! Keeping an accurate record of what you drink or give away has another benefit it will help stop staff from helping themselves to your favorite tipple.
I have now written a gross profit margin finding and break-even finding peace of software to help you achieve better profit margins it comes with loads of calculation sheets and a budget setting sheet and is full of money saving ideas. It also contains a barrelage calculator and tips on how to increase sales and profit margins, it really is a financial health check for you bar or pub or club please go to the gross profit and break-even page
to buy this software at only £3.99.