Stock audit vs stocktake: the difference, whose number it is, and when a pub needs each

A stocktake and a stock audit are the same count with a different customer. A stocktake is your number, done for you, so you can run the pub. A stock audit is someone else's number about your pub, checked against your tills, your deliveries and your cash, written up in a report you don't control. I've been on the receiving end of five audits in eight months, so this is not theory. Here is what each one actually involves, who asks for which, and why you never want the audit to be the only count that ever happens.

The words get used loosely, even by the people selling the service. The biggest audit firms define a stocktake as a count and check of goods on hand, then describe a report full of things that are nothing to do with counting. So before anything else, the vocabulary.

The four things people mean, in one table

The same word covers four different jobs. Who asks for it is the real difference.

What it's called	Who asks for it	What actually happens
Stocktake	You	A count of what's physically there, priced up, compared with what should be there. Weekly, fortnightly or monthly, done by you or your team.
Stock audit (or liquor audit)	Your pubco, a business partner, a committee, a lender, sometimes you	An independent count plus reconciliation: deliveries and counts against till sales, price checks, allowances, often a cash check. Ends in a surplus or deficit figure someone else reads.
Compliance audit	An operator or pubco head office	Checks procedures rather than stock levels: line cleaning records, wastage logs, till discipline, licensing paperwork. Stock may barely feature.
Year-end valuation	Your accountant	A count priced at cost on your financial year-end date, for the accounts. Not a variance exercise at all. I've written that one up separately.

What an audit checks that your count doesn't

The counting part of an audit looks like any decent stocktake. The difference is everything wrapped around it.

An auditor works out what your stock should have earned. They take your opening stock, add every delivery since, subtract the closing count, and price the difference at your till prices. That expected revenue gets set against what the till actually recorded. The gap, after allowances for line cleaning and logged wastage, is your surplus or deficit, usually expressed in pounds and as a percentage of sales. If you want to know what a normal gap looks like, that's the acceptable variance question, and it has a proper answer.

Around that core, a full audit typically adds price checks (is the till charging the tariff you think it is), delivery verification against invoices, spot checks on random dates, and sometimes a cash count reconciled to banking. The big firms recommend having it done monthly or quarterly. None of that is sinister. It's the same arithmetic you'd want, done by someone with no reason to flatter you.

Whose number is it? That decides everything

When you commission an audit yourself, the report is a tool. Fresh eyes find things you've stopped seeing: a till button priced wrong since the last price rise, a delivery signed for short, a keg yield that's been fantasy for months.

When someone else commissions it, the report is a judgement. If you're tied, your agreement almost certainly gives the pubco the right to send an auditor in, and the visit has a rhythm and a set of expectations worth knowing before the knock on the door. I've written up what a pubco stock audit actually looks like from the tenant's side of the bar. And when a bad result turns into an invoice, that's the chargeback conversation, which is its own miserable subject.

The audit itself is rarely the problem. The problem is walking into one blind.

The trap: letting the audit be your only number

Plenty of pubs only ever get counted when the auditor turns up. Every six or twelve weeks, a stranger produces a number, and that number is the first anyone has seen since the last visit.

Think about what that means. If something started going wrong the week after the last audit, it has been running for six weeks or more by the time anyone notices, and the notice arrives in a report someone else is also reading. You get the problem and the judgement in the same envelope. A deficit you'd have caught in week one at the cost of a quiet word has compounded into a number that needs explaining to head office.

Your own regular count changes the whole shape of the visit. If you count weekly, the audit becomes a confirmation of numbers you already know, and when it doesn't confirm them, you have dated records to put on the table instead of a shrug. How often is often enough depends on your volume and your worry level, and I've set out the honest answer in how often a pub should stocktake. The short version: more often than the auditor comes.

What each costs, roughly

An independent stocktaker charges per visit, and prices vary more than you'd expect by region and by what's included in the report. I've broken down real quoted prices in what a pub stocktaker costs. A pubco audit costs you nothing directly, which is precisely why it isn't yours. Doing your own counts costs your time plus whatever tool you count with, and the arithmetic on that trade-off is in the cost guide too.

The combination most pubs land on, and the one I'd defend: your own count weekly or fortnightly, and an independent audit occasionally, either because your agreement requires one or because fresh eyes are worth a visit fee once or twice a year.

Before any audit: sit the exam you set yourself

If a visit is coming, the preparation is mostly paperwork you should have anyway. Delivery notes filed and matched to invoices. A wastage log that's actually been written in, because unlogged waste reads as deficit. Line cleaning dates recorded, since cleaning waste is real stock leaving the building and an auditor will allow for it only if it's documented. Till prices matching your current tariff. And a count of your own, close to the visit date, so nothing in the report is news.

An audit you've prepared for is boring. That's the goal. The pubs that dread audits are almost never the ones with something to hide. They're the ones with nothing written down.