The bar looks busy, the account looks thin
Your clubhouse bar is the club's second income after subs, and on a good Saturday it is busy. Volunteers run it: a rota of members, some experienced, some doing their first shift. The bar steward orders from the brewery and the cash and carry. The treasurer banks the takings and reads the card machine reports.
At the end of the season, the treasurer notices bar profit is well below what the committee expected. Nobody can say why. Was it free drinks for the visiting team's captain that nobody rang through? Kegs that went off after a quiet fortnight? The price of a bitter not updated on the till after the brewery's rise? Stock that went missing? Without regular counts compared with sales, all of these look the same.
Why the figures never reconcile
- Stock is counted rarely, on paper, by whoever is available.
- Deliveries are not checked against invoices line by line.
- Till prices lag behind supplier price changes.
- Wastage, line cleaning and free drinks for match officials or visiting teams are not recorded.
- Many different volunteers work the bar, so habits and accuracy vary.
Your premises licence, your designated premises supervisor and your club rules decide how the bar must be run. We only deal with the numbers.
What the gap costs
Bar profit often pays for things the club cannot otherwise afford: junior kit, pitch maintenance, coaching courses. A gap you cannot explain is money the club does not have. It also creates suspicion among volunteers, which is corrosive in a club where everyone gives their time for free. Being able to explain the numbers protects the people who run the bar honestly.
Most gaps at a club bar turn out to be ordinary: a price not updated after the supplier's increase, a barrel of real ale that did not sell before it turned, the rugby tradition of a jug for the visiting team that nobody rings through the till. They matter because they add up across a season, and because without a record the committee cannot tell which is which. The worst outcome is a vague sense that 'money is going missing', aimed at no one and felt by everyone.
Connecting the till, deliveries and stock counts
We connect the pieces you already have, and add a quick way to count.
- We read sales by product from your till system through its API or export, which most modern EPOS systems for clubs and bars provide.
- Deliveries are recorded from supplier invoices or delivery notes, by upload or email forwarding, with an AI model reading the lines for a person to confirm.
- A stock count on a phone, product by product, is done at the end of each period, such as weekly or after big events, by the bar steward or a volunteer.
- Wastage, line cleaning, free drinks for officials and other allowances are recorded on the phone as they happen, in a few taps.
- For each product and period, the report shows opening stock plus deliveries minus sales minus recorded allowances, compared with the counted stock.
- Price checks compare the till price with the latest supplier cost and your target margin, and flag anything out of line.
| Cause of a gap | How it shows up | What the bar committee does |
|---|---|---|
| Till price not updated | Margin warning on that product | Updates the till price |
| Unrecorded free drinks | Small regular gaps on popular lines | Reminds volunteers to record them |
| Keg wastage | Gap on one draught line after a quiet spell | Adjusts ordering |
| Delivery short | Invoice does not match delivery | Queries the supplier |
| Unexplained loss | Persistent gap on a line | Looks into it under club rules |
A season of bar figures you can read
The bar steward counts stock on a phone after the weekend. The treasurer sees a weekly report: sales, stock used, gaps by product. A price rise from the brewery triggers a till update the same week. Small gaps are explained by recorded allowances. The committee sets the bar's contribution to the club budget from real numbers, and volunteers know the figures protect them.
Are your bar figures a mystery?
- Stock is counted rarely, on paper.
- Till prices lag behind supplier price rises.
- Free drinks and wastage are not recorded.
- Bar profit is lower than expected and nobody knows why.
- Deliveries are not checked against invoices.