I have been in the trade long enough to know roughly what I should be paying for a cellar service, a beer line clean, an EPOS licence and a window cleaner. Ask me eighteen months ago what a stocktake should cost and I would have told you what mine costs, and nothing else, because that is the only figure I had ever seen.
That is not a scandal. It is just how this corner of the trade works. Most stocktaking firms quote privately, quite reasonably, because the job varies enormously site to site. The effect, though, is that a lot of licensees have no way of telling whether their rate is normal, generous or daft, and I include myself in that for most of my career.
So here is what is actually published, in one place. All of it is from the firms’ own material.
What pub stocktakers charge in 2026: the published rates
Roslyns Stocktaking publish £190 plus VAT for a half day and £320 plus VAT for a full day. They split the two at around £7,000 weekly gross.
OSN Stocktakers publish £190 for a half day and £295 for a full day, ex VAT.
InnStock publish from £125 a visit on a monthly cycle, £180 six-weekly and £250 quarterly. Food stock is an add-on at £50 to £200 depending on the site. A valuation is from £200 plus VAT.
Dales Stocktaking Services publish £265 a month including VAT, covering both bar and food.
RW Book-Keeping publish food from £95 and liquor from £95.
Doing my own sums on those, a monthly wet stocktake comes out somewhere between about £1,500 and £3,840 a year depending on whose van pulls up and whether you need a half day or a full one. InnStock’s six-weekly rate works out at roughly £1,560 a year on my arithmetic. Dales at £265 a month is £3,180 a year for wet and dry together, VAT included.
That is the range. If you are paying inside it, you are being charged normally.
The firms that don’t publish a rate
Venners, Stocktake UK, Stockcheck, Sterling and Countability all quote rather than publish. That is their prerogative and it does not mean anything sinister, but it does mean you have to ask, and it means you should ask more than one of them.
Venners is the largest stocktaking firm in the country, owned by Christie Group plc. Their 2025 numbers were £11.0m of revenue from 35,024 stocktakes with around 200 staff. Divide one by the other and you get about £314 a stocktake, which is a crude sum because that revenue may well include work that isn’t stocktaking, but it is the only sense of a market average I have been able to get near, and it sits comfortably alongside the published full-day rates above.
One other fact, offered as a fact. Christie Group’s other arm, Christie & Co, acts for pub companies. Make of that what you will.
What actually drives the price of a stocktake
Weekly gross. This is the big one. More turnover means more stock movement, more delivery paperwork and a longer count. Roslyns’ £7,000 weekly gross split is the clearest published example of how firms decide which side of the line you fall.
Half day against full day. Directly tied to the above, and to how many lines you carry. A pub with sixteen draught taps, a big spirits back-bar and three fridges of packaged takes longer than one with six taps, whatever the takings say.
Wet only against wet and dry. Food stock is a separate discipline and a separate count, and it is priced separately almost everywhere. InnStock’s £50 to £200 food add-on and RW’s food-from-£95 are the published version of this.
Frequency. Every published price list rewards commitment. InnStock at £125 monthly against £250 quarterly is exactly double the rate per visit for a quarter of the visits.
Timing. Everybody wants month-end and period-end, because that is when the figures need to line up with the accounts, and there are only so many stocktakers and so many month-ends. If you are flexible on the date you have something to negotiate with. If you must have the last Sunday of the month, expect to pay for the privilege or wait for a slot.
Extras. Valuations, ingoing and outgoing counts on a change of tenancy, and travel to sites out on their own all sit outside the standard rate. InnStock publish valuations from £200 plus VAT.
What you actually get for the money
I want to be fair here, because it is easy to look at £320 for a day and think that is a lot for someone counting bottles.
It is not counting bottles. A decent stocktaker prices your stock correctly against your buying terms, reconciles it against your tills and your delivery notes, applies sensible allowances, catches supplier invoicing errors and duplicate deliveries, and knows the difference between a yield problem, a pricing problem and a till problem because they have walked into four hundred cellars and you have walked into one.
The good ones will also tell you things you did not ask about. Mine spotted an equipment fault at my place that I had, to my discredit, assumed was a people problem. That is worth the fee on its own.
The skill is real and a good stocktaker is worth having. My argument is not that the price is wrong. It is that you should know what the price is.
How often the trade says you should stocktake
Roslyns recommend monthly and describe quarterly as the minimum. That is the standard position across the trade and it matches what most tenancy agreements assume.
Venners’ own commentary in 2025 noted that clients were extending their stocktaking cycles to manage costs, and that the firm’s growth had come from fee increases. Both halves of that are worth sitting with. Prices are going up, and licensees are responding by having it done less often, which saves the fee and costs you the visibility, usually in that order and usually more than you saved.
What pubco stocktaking packages cost by comparison
Star Pubs & Bars publish their “Innside Track” package from £453.11 a month, which is £5,437 a year, and it is a condition of new Star substantive agreements. Twelve wet stocktakes a year are included.
I am not on a Star agreement, so I cannot tell you first hand what else sits inside that package beyond the twelve stocktakes, and it plainly does include other things. But taking the stocktakes alone and pricing them at the published independent rates, twelve wet visits would run roughly £1,500 to £3,840 a year. The gap between that and £5,437 is what you are paying for everything else in the bundle, and it is worth knowing the size of that gap even if you conclude the rest of the package earns it.
For a historical marker, Charles Wells’ letting particulars in 2019 showed £1,560 a year for six stocktakes, which is £260 a visit on my sums, and sits about where the published full-day rates are today.
Stocktaking software compared with a stocktaker
Different product, worth knowing the numbers.
Growyze is £948 a year. Nory is from £2,148 a year. StockTake Online is £1,530 a year plus a £699 setup fee. Access Procure Wizard starts at £10,800 a year on a 36-month minimum term, which is a system for a group rather than for a single pub.
The difference is not really price, it is who does the work and who carries the judgement. With software, you and your team do the counting and the system does the arithmetic, continuously, so you are not waiting five weeks to find out something went wrong in week one. With a stocktaker, someone independent does the counting and brings an opinion with them, which matters for your accounts, for your pubco and for any conversation that ever has to be had about a discrepancy.
Plenty of us end up doing both, and I do not think that is waste. Weekly counts of the fast-moving lines yourself, a proper independent stocktake monthly or six-weekly, and the two should agree. When they do not, that is information as well.
What to ask before you agree a rate
Take this list to two or three firms and you will know more than most licensees in your town.
- The rate per visit, and whether it is half day or full day
- Whether that is inclusive or exclusive of VAT, because the published figures go both ways
- Whether it covers wet only, and what wet and dry together costs
- What frequency the rate assumes, and what the rate is if you change frequency
- Travel and mileage, if you are anywhere awkward
- Month-end and period-end availability, and whether it costs more
- What is actually in the report, and whether you get category detail or just a headline
- What a valuation or an ingoing costs, so it is not a surprise later
- The notice period
The honest conclusion
Most licensees should know what a stocktake costs in their area, and most of us do not. The published figures land somewhere around £125 to £320 a visit for wet stock, wet and dry together runs to about £265 a month, and a bundled pubco package can be several times an independent rate for reasons that may or may not be good ones depending on what else is in the bundle.
None of that means your stocktaker is overcharging you. Mine is not, and I am glad to be paying for the skill. It means that if you have never once tested the number, you are the only party to that arrangement who does not know whether it is fair, and that is a strange position to be in over something you pay for twelve times a year.
Common questions
How much does a pub stocktaker cost in 2026?
Published rates run from about £125 a visit at InnStock on a monthly contract to £320 plus VAT for a full day at Roslyns. OSN publish £190 half day and £295 full day, ex VAT. Most of the larger firms quote privately rather than publishing a rate card.
What is the difference between a half day and a full day stocktake?
Mostly your turnover and the number of lines you carry. Roslyns split theirs at around £7,000 weekly gross, below that a half day, above it a full day. Wet and dry stock counted together will usually push you to a full day whatever your takings are.
How often should a pub have a stocktake done?
Roslyns recommend monthly and call quarterly the minimum. Star’s Innside Track package includes twelve wet stocktakes a year. Venners noted in 2025 that clients were stretching cycles out to manage costs, which saves you the fee and costs you the visibility.
Is stocktaking software cheaper than a stocktaker?
Sometimes, but you are buying a different thing. Growyze is £948 a year, StockTake Online £1,530 plus £699 setup, Nory from £2,148, Access Procure Wizard from £10,800 on a 36-month minimum. With software you do the counting yourself. With a stocktaker, someone independent does.