For pub operators

From 2.45pm to 5.15pm on a Saturday no live football can go out on UK TV, foreign leagues included, and pubs are no exception. Radio commentary is fine. Foreign feeds, home subscriptions and customers' phones cast to the pub telly have cost licensees £5,500 to £10,000 apiece. What's legal, what isn't, and how to use the gap.

A Pubs Code arbitration costs a tied tenant £200 to start. Notify the pubco in writing, wait 21 days, refer within four months. The pubco pays the arbitrator, your exposure to its legal costs is usually capped at £2,000, and there's no cap the other way. Only 10 tenants referred in 2024/25. The clock with real dates, the costs line by line, and why evidence wins these.

Closing a quiet night only saves what opening adds, not a seventh of the rent. A 6pm to 11pm bar shift costs about £86 to £96 in 2026 with holiday pay, NI and energy, so it needs 39 to 43 pints to pay. The sum, the cask and line losses closed days cause, what half the trade is doing, and how to find your own answer in four weeks.

The BBPA puts a pub fruit machine at £103 a week for an old analogue one and £309 for a digital one. The tenant pays 20% Machine Games Duty on net takings, two machines need only a £50 notice, and regulation 47 of the Pubs Code bans the big pubcos tying machines in any agreement since July 2016. Plus a worked week and the Budget question.

A J2O costs £1.12 before VAT and needs £3.85 to make 65%. A glass Coke needs £3.98, the same Coke in a can £2.28. Eleven common softs and mixers costed from a trade list this week, why glass bottles and energy drinks drag GP down, the 54p pint of lemonade, and the tonic that never comes off stock.

Poker in a pub is capped at £5 a player per game, £100 of stakes a day and a £100 prize, and you can't charge entry, not even through a meal. Bingo stops at £2,000 a week, raffles must be for charity, and a real knowledge quiz is the one night you can charge for. Why the money is always the bar, and how to stop prizes showing as stock loss.

The Pubs Code makes the big six pubcos give you the tied price list, a Schedule of Condition, the dilapidations rules and a RICS-backed forecast P&L before you sign, then agree your business plan. What you're owed, in plain English, and the sums I'd run on the forecast before putting my name to anything.

The government says UK CO2 supply has now failed in 2018, 2021 and 2026. A 6.35kg cylinder should pour about 1,200 pints, so the first job is checking what yours really does. How to find a leak, what to move onto handpull, cider boxes and packaged, this autumn's gas prices, and what it all does to your stocktake.

Casual bar staff build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours they work, which is £1.53 an hour on the £12.71 National Living Wage. Accrue or rolled-up, the Christmas temp who leaves owed £190, whether you can block Christmas leave, bank holiday pay, and the six-year records rule that started in April.

Admiral is putting £38.4m into its pubs this year and wants 200 more done. If your BDM offers investment, regulation 56 of the Pubs Code can close the renewal and rent-assessment routes to going free of tie for up to seven years. The conditions, the twice-the-rent test, and what I'd check before signing.

A 50-litre keg of Guinness is £194 before VAT from a free-trade wholesaler. At the £5.27 average pint, 88p goes in VAT, 45p in duty, and the pub keeps £2.19, a GP under 50%. The full anatomy, six other stout kegs priced the same way, and why I wouldn't just put it up to £7.56.

A 10-litre box of Glühwein is £61.39 before VAT, about £1.07 a glass, so £5 makes 74% GP. Mulling your own red costs more because full-strength wine pays more than double the duty. The price table, what the urn really loses, measures, and how to count it at stocktake.

Scotland lost 64, the North East 11, and the BBPA says the average pub hands HMRC £200,000 a year. The table region by region, why the pace has slowed since spring, the gross-versus-net trap in the 360 forecast, and the one number in it a licensee controls.

Regulation 41 says your BDM must send you notes of every rent, repair and business plan conversation within 14 days, and ask you to object within 7 if they're wrong. The PCA found only one of six pubcos could show it was doing that for new tenants. What counts, the reply to send, and your own records.

Seven premium lagers priced as a 50-litre keg and as 24 x 330ml bottles from the same wholesaler. Bottles cost 6p to 36p more per pint of liquid, mostly duty, but one brand is cheaper in bottles, and on a line selling under 20 pints a week the cleaning waste flips the rest.

One pubco's published April 2026 list against a free-trade wholesaler: 18 kegs 10% to 48% dearer tied, 17p to £1.01 a pint and none of it duty, cask per sellable pint, the 15-point GP hit, the yearly sum, and the not-worse-off principle in the law.

Halloween's standard TEN is due 16 October, New Year's Eve 14 December. £21 a notice, 15 a year in 2026, why a late TEN is a gamble, why a New Year's Eve TEN counts against two years, the 2027 rise to 20, and counting the busy lines either side.

£364.62 a year for radio in a pub up to 400m², £616.24 for a jukebox, £14.64 a live night: about three pints of GP a week. PPL's 2026 area bands, the beer garden, the small-premises concession, Spotify's terms and the 50% unlicensed surcharge.

Regulation 51 says a meter reading alone isn't enough, one pubco's published charges (£190 a barrel, £10 a case, £300 admin), the 1.75% keg tolerance that can hide 17 pints a week, nine innocent reasons meters and deliveries disagree, and the records to keep.

Shots per bottle, the duty in every measure (34p in a 25ml at 40%, £8.92 in a 70cl of vodka), cost per shot from £12 to £45 bottles, a worked list where the single malt makes the worst GP% and the most cash, pricing the double, and Wales's new 65p minimum unit price.

The sum behind a surplus, nine causes with the check for each (missing invoices, high closing counts, old price lists, food in the wet takings), the see-saw where a £470 surplus becomes a £470 deficit, and CTSI's finding that 86% of beers tested were short.

The two ways a rent assessment starts, every clock from the 14-day request to the six-month end, what the proposal and its RICS-confirmed 12-month forecast must contain, and the 2019 waste rules that turn your own stocktakes into rent evidence (only 12% of tenants use a surveyor).

Hold the cash or hold the GP% (5p on cost is 6p or 17p on the bar), HMRC's on-trade elasticities (beer -0.34, spirits -1.25), a break-even table showing a 20p rise pays unless you lose 5.4% of volume, the surcharge trap, Scotland's 72-hour rule and an eight-step routine.

Cost per millilitre, the duty in every measure (70p in a 175ml of 13% wine, half that at 7%), a worked list from a £6 bottle showing the 250ml is 79p under pro rata, the 125ml you must offer, and why how fast the bottle sells matters more than the GP% (on-trade wine down 8% in 2025).

The four MRO events, every Pubs Code clock from the 21-day notice to the independent assessor, what an MRO-compliant offer can contain, the PCA figures (88 accepted notices from 472 events), and the barrelage sums to do before a trigger lands.

Best-before vs use-by behind a bar, the labelling rule that exempts wine and anything 10% ABV or over from dating, what council guidance says about selling past the date, the 2020 keg-date row, and a ten-minute rotation routine.

Tenanted, managed or volunteer-run: who owns the stock in each, the Licensing Act section 19 rule every volunteer rota sits under, why volunteer bars drift without anyone doing wrong, and the monthly board pack (217 community-owned pubs, 19 volunteers each on average).

What dilaps are and aren't, the Pubs Code six-month survey, the section 18 cap most tenants have never heard of, the 56-day schedule, and the folder of paperwork that decides how the argument ends.

Where the PCA's investigation is up to, each suspected breach and the document that would settle it, what the regulator can do, the Star Pubs £2m precedent, and the paperwork a Stonegate tenant should be keeping now. Updated as the PCA publishes.

Who owns the empties (never you), what three published sets of trade terms say about deposits and replacement charges, the delivery-note habits that stop charges, and how counting kegs used turns the empties pile into a weekly draught check.

88 pints in an 11-gallon keg, 52.8 in a 30-litre, 72 in a firkin. The full UK size table, why American pages say 124, what you'll actually sell from each, the duty inside every keg, and the cost per pint on 85 rather than 88.

About 3p in every pound in 2026, down from 7p two years ago. Where the pound goes, what that leaves on a £5,000 week, why Wetherspoon does no better at 2.6p, and the costs that can eat the whole profit on their own.

Which cold things in a pub are law and which are money, what Safer Food, Better Business actually asks you to write down, the probe test, what to do when a reading is out, and why a dated log is your only evidence when a fridge dies.

Every line puts about 3 pints down the drain each clean, whether it sells 400 pints a week or 30. The share-of-line table, the 60-pint keg rule of thumb, the cask three-day test, and how to price a slow line you keep on purpose.

A cocktail button the stock can't read turns every espresso martini into missing vodka and liqueur. The translation sheet, why the measures law doesn't cover cocktails, how to count a batch, and the liqueur bottles that sit for seven months.

ICRTouch stock control is a TouchOffice Web+ upgrade with a TouchStock handheld, sold through dealers with no public price. What it does from their own pages, the draught button links to check, and the open bottles a scanner can't measure.

Free stock tracking, a Sold Out label that will happily appear on a keg with twenty pints left, and a margin report that needs a £39 a month, 12-month plan. SumUp's stock side from their own help pages, plus the fee plan most pubs on 1.69% have never looked at.

A 30-litre keg set up as a 50 is 35 pints of loss that never happened. A new line is four facts, container, serve, cost and price, and each one has a classic way of going wrong. The fortnight of checks that catches them before the stocktake does.

Every stocktaking app says it works offline, and most mean something narrower than you'd hope: count yes, but start, finish or move to the next area only with signal. What the vendors' own help pages say, the five-minute airplane-mode test, and why a paper sheet still belongs in the cellar.

A £19 reader, 1.75% a payment, free stock tracking, and an adjustment menu with a Theft button I'd rather you didn't press. Square's inventory from their own pages, the half-one-in-the-morning alert email, and the weekly count no unit tracker replaces.

You make the margin on the first two glasses and pour it away with the last third. The honest arithmetic on preservation kit: a £14 pump, Coravin at 58p of argon a pour off their own figures, the quote-led machines to walk away from, and the two-week test.

Hospitality loses 52% of staff a year on the CIPD's reading of the official numbers, the highest of any sector. What a changeover does to variance, the signed count that protects the leaver and the starter both, and the 10% legal cap on wage deductions.

Published this morning: £891m of tax, 39.8% of everything taken, £1.13m per pub, and an operating margin down to 5.37%. The audited version of the sums we all do on delivery notes, the £46m wage line per pub, and the one number in the whole story a licensee controls.

A £29 reader, 1.75% a transaction, and a stock side that's honest about being a unit counter. What Zettle's inventory does, the import and export plumbing, the raw-data Excel export worth knowing about, and the half bottle of vodka the till can never see.

There's no published UK benchmark for pub stock loss, so most business plans leave the line out and blame the GP% later. Building it from sourced parts instead: line cleaning, cask yield, the 2% till gap, a worked example near 5% of wet stock at cost.

Epos Now's stock side is better than most ever use: stock levels with margins, non-sellers, everything exportable to CSV. But a till records transactions, not liquid. Getting your product list out, the weekly count to run alongside it, and the eight pints the till would never have found.

Drinks get counted line by line because a bottle is a unit; the kitchen runs as a trading account because a tub of mayo isn't. What sits on each side, why wet variance chases to the pint while food variance is a soup, the VAT trap when you compare the two GPs, and where the crisps go.

A refurb closure is an unplanned year-end. The run-down plan, the signed closing count that serves your accountant, your insurer and any audit later, what to do with full kegs during the works, Cask Marque's cellar shutdown steps, and why the reopening count is the baseline everything after is measured from.

Hand the count to somebody new and the number comes back different. It's not carelessness, it's method drift: weigh versus tenths, 700ml versus 750, 'about half' a keg. The one-method-per-product rule, the noise check to run before you chase any loss, and a training plan that fits in one quiet shift.

Friday's till looks healthy, then the brewery direct debit lands. A one-page weekly money in, money out habit for licensees: why the bank balance lies, the VAT set-aside that stops quarter-end panic, the direct debit calendar, and where your GP% plugs into the money picture.

Your stocktake file is your P&L in miniature, and in a tied pub that's the raw material of a rent conversation. Who owns the data, who can see it, where it lives, and the six questions to ask any vendor before your numbers go into their cloud.

A £1 off pint feels like 19% off. It's 29% off your margin, and you need 40% more volume just to stand still. The discount table, what promotions do to your GP% report, the six mandatory conditions in England and Wales, and why the classic 5 till 7 happy hour is effectively impossible in Scotland.

A weekly count gives you one number for fourteen shifts, so 'when did it go' is a coin toss. A one-page handover fixes that: the last till read, five fast lines counted in ten minutes, wastage and prepaid pints written down at the boundary. Most shift discrepancies turn out to be timing, not people, which is exactly why the sheet is worth keeping.

More beer is selling in sealed containers: SIBA says 51% of independent breweries now run a shop and 30% of sales go direct. For a pure off-licence the honest answer is your EPOS stock module, and I sell stocktaking software. It changes the moment one stock serves two counters: takeaway fridges, growler fills, and the £1.14 of tax inside a £3.50 can.

The legal serving sizes, the small measures you have to offer, the notices you need on show, and why the scale you weigh bottles on doesn't need to be trade approved.

Most bad results are bad counts: wines imported at 700ml, kegs judged at 88 pints, a VAT mix-up worth six points, the £160 delivery booked into the wrong week. Twelve mistakes in four piles, what each one does to the number, and a printable table for the cellar door.

SIBA says 46% of independent breweries run a taproom and 30% of beer now sells direct, while closures ran at nearly three a week. The transfer sheet from cold store to bar, a defendable cost price for your own beer, duty at roughly 50p a pint, and the flights and growlers that vanish unrecorded.

The bar took a fortune and the count came back short. Cash bar, tab or per-head package each lose stock their own way; zero-priced buttons make pre-sold prosecco visible, the transfer sheet closes the second-bar gap, and 80 guests need 240 to 320 drinks by the trade's own arithmetic.

A pint on the house costs about £1.56; unrecorded, it sits in your variance at £5.34. One comp a night is £568 a year recorded and £1,944 unexplained if it isn't, so this is the zero-priced till button, the ten-second log, the £50 VAT gift rule, and why the fault is a missing button, not the person pouring.

Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions. Selling price versus cost, VAT in or out, a count eleven days before year end, scope nobody agreed, estimated prices and the dray that beat its own invoice: six checkable gaps, a worked reconciliation, and why £1,000 of stock error is about £190 of tax.

Week one everyone's keen; week three the novelty's gone and the spreadsheet creeps back. One person owns the count, everyone else gets one two-minute job, the first variance gets blamed on buttons not people, and no money rides on the number until the number is proved. A month-one plan included.

The count says £600 gone and the usual suspects check out. Prove the loss exists first, then five daily line checks to shrink the haystack, the exits that never ring a till, the 31-day CCTV clock, and why docking wages is probably unlawful as well as wrong.

Holidays, illness, or a site between tenants: a relief holds your bar for weeks and the next stocktake covers both your watches. The day-one count you both sign, the one-page handover sheet, the daily five-minute check while you're away, and the comeback count that keeps it factual.

Signing up takes minutes; a count you'd trust takes hours spread over two weeks, and nobody puts a number on it. The four jobs of setup, where the hours went in a real 270-line import, the vendors' setup offers compared with dates, and why you should count before the library is finished.

Cask Marque gives a tapped cask three days, and the drain takes what your customers didn't. What the £47 valve actually does, CAMRA's neutral-since-2018 position, the days-to-empty table, and why a breather on every line is an ordering problem wearing a gadget.

A keg you were billed for that never left the dray looks exactly like theft by count day: 88 pints booked in, none sold. Section 30 rights, two real supplier claim windows (one of them is the doorstep), and the five-minute routine before you sign anything.

1,735 clubs, 730,000 members, and most clubhouse bars measured once a year. The halfway house as a stock location, society-day vouchers the till never sees, the November dead stock trap, and the monthly one-pager that protects the steward as much as the committee.

A void before the pour is bookkeeping. A void after the pour is a pint that left the cellar with no record it ever existed. The four buttons, what each one does to your count, and the weekly report that explains variance you thought was theft.

Insurance covers events, not leakage, and it pays cost price, not what you’d have sold it for. What a flooded cellar or a break-in claim actually needs from your paperwork, and why a pub that counts monthly settles in weeks while one that doesn’t negotiates from memory.

Christmas Day falls on a Friday this year, with a substitute bank holiday on the Monday and New Year’s Day another Friday. Long unbroken runs like this drove pubs to +4.8% last Christmas week. The stock job is covering a week of thin deliveries twice in a fortnight without owning half of it in February.

Same count, different customer. What an audit reconciles that your own count doesn't, who commissions each, and why the auditor's number should never be the first one you see.

Lower of cost or net realisable value, ex VAT if you’re registered. The counting method, part bottles and kegs, and what a guessed round number costs in tax both ways.

Export first, one overlap count, cancel last. The exit terms on six vendors' own pages, the import errors to catch, and why the next tool should be bought on its exits.

Divide any price by six and that's HMRC's share. The food rules, the tax-on-duty wind-up, why flat rate rarely suits a pub, and the weekly habit that kills quarter-end shocks.

Two points of weekly wobble usually isn't theft. Count timing, straddling deliveries, mix shift and quiet weeks all move the number. The four-week rule that tells wobble from slide.

Low & no beer overtook tap water in pubs this year, and it carries no alcohol duty. KAM's 2026 numbers, the margin sum, and how to stock it without breeding dead stock.

Heineken's February rise moved line by line while most GP reports never noticed. The two 30-second checks at the cellar door, and what scanning actually updates.

The first Saturday Halloween since 2020, and CGA says vodka sells 71% faster on the night. The ordering timetable, what to lift, what to leave alone, and the Sunday count.

Free pouring gin, rum, vodka or whisky is illegal outside cocktails. The 25ml and 35ml rules, why speed pourers don't count, and the £10.80-a-bottle over-pour sum.

Ten lines a day tells you when stock went missing, not just that it did. How to run checks on your own numbers, the £21-a-week lager example, and why a dated log is what wins a chargeback argument.

A record 10,000 pubs are in Cask Ale Week. A firkin says 72 pints and sells you the mid-60s: how many to order, pins for the gambles, ABV band pricing, and the morning-after count.

Three plans, no prices, and a demo instead of a trial. Where StockTake Online's recipes and multi-site tools beat us fair and square, and where a wet-led pub is better off at £19 a month.

Same count, different stakes: the tie can put your GP eleven points below a free house before a drop is spilled. The September 2026 review kept the Code, so here's how to live with it.

Too much stock is cash asleep on a shelf, too little is a dry tap on a Friday. The par formula, why cask is a timetable not a number, and a worked par sheet you can copy.

Wine leaks a third of a bottle at a time and nobody logs it. The open-bottle clock by style, six glasses or four per bottle, the 125ml rule, and why 'corked' usually means cooked.

Certified digital proof of age is now legal at the bar in England and Wales. Nothing is compulsory, Challenge 25 stands, and a glance at a phone screen still counts for nothing.

Twelve pints in the pump is £64 through the till with nothing poured: a surplus one week, a shortage the next. Tokens, till buttons or the book, and the one number your stocktaker needs.

Sabbatical officers leave every June and the numbers walk out with them. Term-indexed par levels, the charity trading bands, and stock software a new committee picks up in a week.

Vianet's data says 61% of pubs miss their target yield. A week-by-week plan: baseline count, cellar week, pricing week, second count.

12% of what a pub buys gets wasted, most of it unlogged. What belongs in the log, line by line, and how it turns a mystery into a manageable cost.

Cash sitting on a shelf isn't a loss on paper, but it is one in your bank account. Three ways to clear it, and the habit that stops it building up again.

The same pint comes out at 64.9%, 70.8%, 185% or 63.4% depending who’s doing the sum. Ex-VAT, markup and achieved GP untangled, with the worked pint.

11-13C, tap within two days, empty in three, lines every seven. The cellar card routine with prices on the shortcuts, and why it all lands in your stocktake.

$49-$69 a month in dollars, a $129 scale, and no free trial at all. Where Bar Patrol fits, where ounces don’t, and the UK way to do weighed stocktakes.

Download the Excel or CSV, no email gate. Ex-VAT GP formulas, 88-pint kegs that sell 84, spirits in 25ml measures, and the five ways a spreadsheet lies to you.

Heineken’s 2.7% February rise, duty’s 3.66% on top, and the sum nobody does: a 5p cost rise needs 17p on the pint to hold 65% GP. A fifteen-minute weekly habit catches it.

The model conditions word for word: 24 hours to write an entry up, refusals on demand, CCTV gone in 31 days. What a good entry looks like, and why torn pages read like guilt.

$249 to $449 a month, in dollars, on a demo call. What MarketMan does brilliantly for food-led groups, what it doesn’t do for a cellar, and the 20-pints-a-week sum.

6p to 9p off every £5.34 pint, 2.4p of it paid on the taxman’s share. SumUp, Zettle, Square and Dojo compared, and the £1,750-a-week crossover sum.

A fair target off real benchmarks, the 20%-of-the-prize rule, £330 a quarter on a worked example, and the design faults that pay chefs to shrink portions.

Real 2026 kWh figures turned into pence per pint: 13p to 43p on a typical wet-led pub, the cellar cooler's 4p to 6p share, and the £7,000 deemed-rates trap.

What the auditor counts, how the deficit number gets built, the prep that made four of my five audits non-events, and what to do when you dispute the result.

The honest arithmetic: 84 to 86 sellable pints from an 88-pint keg, mid-60s from a firkin, 2 to 3 pints per line clean, and why 4 to 6% is the number for a tidy pub.

Around 100 managed Stonegate pubs are becoming tenancies, on top of 200 last year, while the PCA investigates the company over unrealistic rent projections. What to check before you believe the information pack.

A 70cl bottle is £100 of revenue and most bars count the open ones by squinting. What an eyeballed tenth costs, the grams-to-measures sum, and which bottles deserve the scales.

No public price list, just quotes off your rateable value. The real bills in print, £754 a month to £30,000 a year, TNT's £871.92 rate card and what the 2026 revaluation does, and the extra-pints-per-week sum to run before you renew. Updated 17 October 2026.

A big enough rise opens a 21-day MRO window, and almost nobody runs the formula that decides it. The thresholds, both deadlines, the Stonegate investigation, and the invoice habit that does the arguing for you.

The till counts money, the count counts liquid. Prepaid pints nobody logged, buttons mapped wrong, line cleaning, and five more ordinary causes, in the order to check them before anyone says a word about staff.

Takings can hold steady while the surplus leaks underneath. The five-number monthly page, a counting routine that protects the steward, the VAT slip that flatters GP, and where a professional audit still fits.

A 6.35kg CO2 refill is £39.38 and pushes about 1,200 pints, call it 3p each. The 2026 gas prices, the pints-per-cylinder arithmetic, and how a gas fault eats an acceptable variance band at £4.89 a pint.

The app off Bar Rescue counts an open bottle by you tapping the level on a picture. It publishes no price at all, and the Android app was last updated in April 2024. What we could verify today, and the alternatives that publish prices in pounds.

UK pubs bin 40 million pints a year cleaning lines, about 20 a week each, £5,500 a year at 2026 prices. Where the beer goes, the per-tap arithmetic, and how to log it so it stops wrecking your variance.

The only serious free plan in bar inventory, and it's real. It's also priced in dollars and counts open bottles by eye. What free covers, what $99 adds, and the alternatives in pounds.

The only big rival that weighs bottles properly, and it shows. It's also $249 a month plus a $750 onboarding fee, priced in dollars, with no trial. What that adds up to for a UK venue, and the alternatives from £0 to £129.

You can't claim beer duty back from HMRC, your brewery can. What gets credited, what never will, the process that keeps a claim alive, and the £43.76 of duty sat in every 50-litre keg.

Kitchen stock and bar stock are two different jobs wearing one name, and most software only does one well. Published prices from £79 to $449, who covers which side, and the one-month test before you pay anyone.

The cheapest published till-integrated option and the longest trial in the market. Where £79 earns its keep, the open-bottle question a barcode can't answer, and the alternatives from £0 to £129 flat.

£12.71 is the contract. The hour costs nearer £16.08 with NI, pension and holiday, which is 7.2 pints of GP. The new rates, the build-up line by line, and why April cost a typical wet-led pub about two points of GP.

The counting is the same sum as a pub. The leak is movement: outlet transfers, kitchen bottles, function bars, minibars. The four doors stock walks through, the room-posted sales catch, and who handles what at what price.

Invoice scanning, live GP and four till links for £129 flat: a fair offer for food-led sites. The question their pages don't answer, the pints arithmetic, and where a wet-led pub gets the job done for a lot less.

The HMRC rates side by side with 2025, then the sums nobody publishes: 49.7p on a 4.5% pint, £43.76 on a 50-litre keg, £9.52 on a 70cl spirit. Why the 3.4% cliff matters, and why every pint you waste carried duty you already paid.

Integration moves one number: what the till says sold. It counts nothing and launders bad button mapping. Who links to which UK tills and at what price, the tied-tenant export check, and a one-hour test before you pay for a link.

Monthly full count, weekly spot check on the top 20 lines, fortnightly past about £10k a week wet. A table of what a 1% variance costs between counts, a cadence by pub type, and the five days you count whether it's due or not.

A stocktake tells you how much is missing, not why. The three causes leave different fingerprints across two counts: smeared and steady, lumpy and remembered, or flip-flopping. A diagnosis table, and why theft is the last thing to consider.

Forty to eighty lines needs two numbers a week, cask yield and true open-spirit levels, not a £79-a-venue suite. Costs as a share of a £3,000-a-week bar, and when the spreadsheet is still right.

Four kinds of “free”, a table of who takes a card and who doesn't, and a two-count method so the trial actually tells you something before the money starts.

You buy the stock at a price set by a count you didn't do. How SAV is priced, the six places the number goes wrong (breached casks, eyeballed tenths, dead lines, free glassware), and how to make it an opening stock you can trust.

Nearly every vendor prices per venue, so three pubs can mean £2,800 to £6,000 a year. The real multiplication table, what breaks when you stop counting yourself, and what to demand before you sign for a group.

I ran my count on a spreadsheet I built myself, for years. The four jobs it couldn't do, the setup afternoon nobody prices in, and the honest cases where the sheet should stay.

Weighing or tenths, froth or phantom losses, ex-VAT or flattery, monthly or a 36-month regret. The 12 questions to take into every demo, with the walk-away answers on one screen.

£8k a week over the bar at a 1% variance is £289 a month walking out the door. The full payback table by takings, your own time costed in, and when the honest answer is don't bother.

Take the VAT off first or your GP is seven points kinder than reality. The formula done right, with worked sums for keg, cask, spirits and bottles.

Two to four hours on paper, half that with an app, triple for your first ever count. Real timings from my own bar, and how to get a full count under the hour.

Spreadsheets, $0 tiers, trials wearing a free badge and the "free demo" that's a sales call. What each gets you, and when free is genuinely the right call.

Six apps compared, only three publish a price. What's really in the stores, the cellar test that matters, and the honest case for a PWA.

161 closures in Q1, nearly two a day, up 26% on last year. The running ledger, gross vs net explained, and the cost stack driving it. Updated quarterly.

£5.34 average, £6.55 in London, £4.90 in the North East. Prices by style and region, then a licensee breaks the pint apart penny by penny.

About 44,500, and no two sources agree. Every count, why they differ, how fast pubs are closing, and what the headline number hides. All figures sourced.

Weekly counts, weighing spirits instead of guessing tenths, free pour drift, and real software prices in pounds. Plus where the tools stop helping.

No single winner, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Ranked by who each tool actually fits, single site to group, with where each one falls down.

Plain guide from a working licensee: what the tools actually count, why cheap ones lie about draught froth, the real price tiers, and six things to check before you buy.

I run a pub in Washington. Here are the two grounds that got a chargeback reversed, and what my area manager actually accepted.

Draught Lager up £3,697 while Ale is negative every single time. That's not theft, it's the wrong till button. How to check yours.

Five Venners audits at my pub show why the net result on a stocktake report hides more than it tells you, and what to read instead.

Published UK stocktaking rates for 2026, what drives the price, and how pubco packages compare. Written by a licensee who had to go and find out.

The ‘1-2% of sales’ rule is American and doesn’t hold in a UK cellar. Five real audit results, plus the 5% of every pint that’s legally froth.

Damm UK admits Old Speckled Hen deliveries are running late nationwide. Here is what a delayed delivery does to your next stocktake report.

A stock valuation mixing VAT-inclusive and VAT-exclusive prices misstates your GP% by up to 20 points. How to check which basis your figures use.

A UK licensee compares pub stocktaking software: StockTap, BevSpot, BarBrain, StockLens AI, Growyze.

Real sourced prices for StockTap, BevSpot, BarBrain, StockLens AI, Growyze and MarketMan — what a UK pub actually pays for stock control software.

BevSpot alternative for UK pubs: what BevSpot really costs in 2026, where it fits, and why a UK-built tool tracks stock differently.

What bad pours actually cost a pub, why nobody tells new staff, and the maths every induction should cover on day one.

BarBrain alternative for UK pubs: BarBrain’s real euro pricing in 2026, what’s missing for a UK licensee, and where StockTap fits instead.

Nory alternative for UK pubs: why Nory hides its pricing, what a single pub should expect to pay for stock software instead, and where StockTap fits.

MarginEdge alternative for UK pubs: MarginEdge’s real dollar pricing in 2026, the FX and Toast surcharge risk, and where StockTap fits instead.

Access Procure Wizard alternative for UK pubs: the 36-month minimum contract, what that costs over the full term, and how StockTap compares with no lock-in.

The last real category benchmark data, sourced and dated — plus why draught trails spirits structurally, and what’s actually known vs made up for 2026.

The real average pint price by brand, falling volumes, and what it means for how you price and manage your cellar — including why cask variance eats price rises before you see them.

Growing market, fewer pubs, more rates relief on the way — what Lumina Intelligence’s 2026 figures actually mean if you’re the one behind the bar.

The 35% relief figure explained, who qualifies, what’s still unconfirmed, and how to actually use the money rather than let it disappear into general cash flow.

161 pubs closed in Q1 2026, up 26% on last year — and the BBPA says it’s not because trade is down. Here’s the margin lesson for pubs still trading.

Step-by-step: the count method, the legal measures, the yield maths, and the discipline that separates a proper DIY stocktake from one that’s kidding itself.

Most keg and cask calibration in UK pub cellars isn’t real calibration — it’s a guess. The common mistakes behind bad variance figures, and how to fix them.