What does 'one in the pump' mean?

A pint paid for in advance, usually for a regular or as a round bought for someone who isn't in, to be poured whenever they next come to the bar. The money goes through the till on the night it's paid; the beer leaves the line days or weeks later.

Do prepaid pints cause a stock surplus or a deficit?

Both, in sequence. In the week the money is taken the beer looks over, a surplus, because the till recorded sales that weren't poured. In the week the pints are claimed the beer looks short, because it left without new money. Any count window that starts or ends with pints owed is distorted.

How do I account for prepaid pints in a stocktake?

One number: pints paid for but not yet poured on count day. Keep it countable with tokens, a dedicated till button pair, or a dated book, then knock that money off the till side or add the liquid to the expected side before calculating variance, and hand the figure to whoever does the count.

When is VAT due on a prepaid pint?

At payment. Under HMRC's time-of-supply rules, taking payment before the goods are supplied creates the tax point, so VAT follows the night the money was taken, not the night the pint is poured. Ask your accountant about anything beyond that.

One in the pump: prepaid pints and your stocktake

"Stick one in the pump for Tommy." Money in the till tonight, beer still in the keg until whenever Tommy next walks in. It's one of the best traditions the trade has, and it quietly breaks the one comparison your stocktake depends on: what the till took against what the lines poured. Here's exactly what it does to your numbers, and three ways to run prepaid pints so everything still adds up.

What a prepaid pint does to your figures

A till is a record of money. A stocktake is a record of liquid. Most weeks the two move together, and any gap between them is your variance, the number everyone from your stocktaker to your area manager cares about. A prepaid pint splits them on purpose: sale tonight, pour next Thursday.

Say twelve pints go in the pump this week at the national average of £5.34. That's £64 through the till without a drop poured. Compare till to stock at the weekend and the beer looks £64 over. A surplus. Next week the twelve get claimed: beer leaves, no money comes in, and now you're £64 short. Nothing was stolen, wasted or mispoured in either week. The record ran ahead of the liquid, then behind it.

Over a quarter it mostly nets out, because pints owed at the start get drunk and new ones take their place. The damage is to short windows. On a £6,000 wet week, twelve unpoured pints are already more than one percent of takings, and one percent is the whole argument in most variance conversations. A pub with a busy prepaid board can get pushed outside its acceptable variance band in either direction by beer that's doing nothing wrong. Those figures are my arithmetic, not a study, but run your own and you'll land in the same place.

Why surpluses get questioned too

A deficit costs money, and in a tied pub it can cost a chargeback. But an unexplained surplus isn't a pat on the back either. Beer over means the till took money for beer that never left the line, and an auditor's first thoughts run to short measures or sales rung through wrong. If your pub runs a prepaid board and nobody tells the stocktaker, you've handed them a mystery in your own building and invited them to solve it unkindly. Everything in the pubco audit guide about preparation applies double here: the prepaid count belongs in the audit pack.

System one: tokens

The oldest fix and still the best for most pubs. Money goes in the till, a token goes in a pot behind the bar. A poker chip, a laminated card, anything you'd never mistake for something else. When the pint's claimed, the token comes out. At any moment the pot is your liability in pints, with no memory or handwriting involved. On count day you count the pot the same way you count the float, and hand the number to whoever does the stocktake.

Two rules keep it honest. Tokens go in and out of one pot only, and the pot gets counted at every stocktake and every audit without fail. A token system nobody counts is just a pot of chips.

System two: till buttons

If your EPOS lets you add products, build two. A "prepaid pint" button at your pint price, rung when the money's taken, so the cash side is right on the night. And a "prepaid claimed" button at zero, rung when it's poured, so the product report shows the pint leaving on the day it actually left. The till then carries both halves of the story itself and the stocktake needs no separate adjustment, which is the tidiest version of this there is.

The catch is discipline at the pour. A claimed pint that never gets rung at zero is invisible again, and you're back where you started. Mismapped or misused buttons are their own well-worn way to wreck a count, which I've covered in the till buttons guide: the cash can be perfectly right while the product report lies.

System three: the book

A dated page behind the bar: who paid, what they're owed, crossed off in front of them when it's claimed. Plenty of pubs have run one for decades and it works exactly as well as the handwriting and the discipline behind it. If you keep the book, treat it like cash. It gets totted up at every count and the open entries handed over as a pints figure, not left as a curiosity next to the charity box.

The one number that fixes all of it

Whatever system you run, the stocktake needs a single number on count day: pints paid for but not yet poured. Knock that money off the till side, or add the liquid to the expected side, before anyone says the word variance. If you compare till to stock daily or weekly, give the prepaid count its own line on the sheet, ten seconds of counting a pot, so the variance line stays clean. Do that and a whole category of phantom loss and phantom surplus disappears from your till-versus-stocktake arguments overnight.

One honest limit. Prepaids explain a float of a dozen pints drifting either way. They do not explain a firkin. If the gap is bigger than the pot, the pot isn't your problem, and the eight causes guide gives you the order to check the rest in.

The VAT point, since someone will ask

Taking payment before you supply the goods creates the tax point under HMRC's time-of-supply rules, so the till is right to ring the sale the night the money's taken, and the VAT follows the payment date, not the pour date. The stocktake adjustment is a stock recording matter, not a tax one. I'm a licensee, not an accountant, so anything cleverer than that, ask yours.

Sources

The Morning Advertiser pint price survey, 21 May 2026 — UK average pint price £5.34.
HMRC, VAT guide (Notice 700), time of supply rules — payment received before supply creates the tax point.
The worked variance figures (twelve pints, £64, the £6,000-week percentage) are the author's own arithmetic, shown so you can rerun them with your prices.

One in the pump: how to run prepaid pints without wrecking your stocktake