A bar stock checklist for the end of the night

A bar stock checklist for the end of the night should be short. The last person on the bar is tired, the lights are going off around them, and anything that takes more than a quarter of an hour will be skipped, rushed or done from memory. The checks that matter are the ones that protect tomorrow's service and keep the week's figures honest, and there are fewer of them than most closing lists suggest.

This guide sets out eight checks worth doing every night, in the order that makes them quick, and two that belong once a week instead. It also names one habit that many bars keep and should drop: it costs the most time and produces the least reliable number on the list.

The aim is not paperwork for its own sake. A bar that closes the same way every night opens the same way every morning, and its stock figures mean something when the count comes round. Every timing and figure below is an example; adjust them to your own bar.

Closing is usually done by whoever is on last, and that changes from night to night. A routine that lives in one person's head closes the bar well only on the nights that person is working. Written down, the same routine survives holidays, new starters and the night the experienced bartender goes home early.

There is a second reason. Most of what goes wrong with bar stock goes wrong slowly: a bottle that is never put back in its place, a comp that is never recorded, garnish that is binned without anybody noting it. None of these is dramatic on the night. Over a month they become the variance that nobody can explain, because nobody wrote anything down when it happened.

A good closing routine is therefore a record as much as a set of tasks. It tells the next shift what state the bar is in, and it tells whoever runs bar inventory management what happened while they were not there.

The order below follows the way a bar winds down: finish the paperwork while the till is still open, put the stock to bed, prepare for tomorrow, then lock up. Done in this order, the whole list takes an experienced closer about ten to fifteen minutes on a normal night, as a rough example.

Drinks given away, poured wrongly or drunk by the team are stock used and not sold. If they are recorded on the night, they move out of the variance and into their own line, where they can be managed as a policy. If they are not, they become part of the gap that makes the next count look like theft. Do this first, while the till is open and the people who know are still there.

Every bill should be settled or deliberately left open with a reason. An open bill at close is either money not yet taken or a mistake waiting to be found, and both are easier to deal with tonight than next week. Check that nothing was rung to the wrong table and that no bill is sitting at zero because a round was removed rather than voided.

Write down every product that ran out during service, and whether it ran out because sales were high or because the bar started short. The first is a forecasting point for the next order; the second is a par problem. Take the item off sale on the till while you are at it, if that has not been done already, so the morning shift does not start by selling something the bar cannot make.

The bar should open tomorrow with its working stock in place. Move bottles from the store to the bar now, while the store is unlocked, and record each transfer. A count that sees a bottle leave the store without seeing it arrive on the bar shows a loss that never happened.

Stopper and date the open wine by the glass, refrigerate what needs it, and write down any bottle poured away because it was past its best. Do the same with juices, cut fruit, dairy and anything made in house: cover, label and date it, and throw away what will not last another service. Write down what was thrown away. Waste that is recorded can be reduced; waste that disappears into the bin cannot.

Follow your brewery's instructions for the end of the night: taps closed and covered, drip trays emptied and cleaned, and the cellar door shut. Glance at the levels on the kegs in use, so the opening shift knows whether a change is coming early in service.

Weigh or count three to five lines from a list you rotate: the house spirits that pour all night, one expensive bottle, and one chosen at random. Compare them with what the till says was sold of those drinks. It takes a few minutes, and a gap found tonight can still be explained by the people who were working. Our guide to liquor inventory shows how to weigh a bottle quickly and accurately.

Lock the store and any cabinet holding high-value bottles, return keys to wherever they live, and check that fridges and the cellar are where they should be for temperature. Then sign and date the closing sheet. A signature is not about blame. It tells the next person who to ask if something on the sheet does not make sense.

The checklist works best printed on a card or a laminated sheet kept at the till, in the order above, with space for the date, the closer's initials and a few words against each line. A wall poster that nobody reads is not the same thing.

Keep the wording short and specific. "Record comps and voids on the till" is a check; "tidy up" is not. Each line should be something a new starter can do without asking what it means, and something a manager can verify the next morning by looking.

Four details make the card stick:

Some checks matter, but not every night. Doing them nightly makes the closing routine too long to survive, so give them their own slot in the week instead.

A full liquor inventory once a week, at a fixed point such as before opening on the same day each week, gives you usage you can set against sales. Our guide to bar inventory management without closing the bar covers how to fit it around trading, and how to run it in an hour rather than an evening. The nightly spot checks above are what make the weekly count easy to interpret: if the lines you spot checked were fine all week, a large variance on them at the count points first at the count itself.

Once a week, compare what is on the shelf with the par levels you have set, look at the products that ran out (check 3 above), and adjust the order for the coming week. A bar that runs out of its house gin twice in a week does not need a better closing routine. It needs a higher par for that gin.

The habit worth dropping is the nightly full count of every open bottle by the closing bartender.

It looks responsible. In practice it is the least reliable number the bar produces. It is done at the end of a long shift, alone, under time pressure, by the person whose own pouring it is measuring. Open bottles judged in tenths at that hour drift one way or the other with tiredness and habit, and the result is a nightly figure that is too noisy to act on and too long to keep doing properly.

Replace it with two things that work better: the short nightly spot check on a rotating list of lines, and a proper count once a week with two people and enough time. The spot check catches a problem close to when it happens. The weekly count produces a figure that can be trusted. Together they cost less time than the nightly count and tell you more.

The eight checks fit most bars, but the weight of each one changes with what the bar sells. Adjust the card before printing it, rather than leaving the team to guess which lines matter tonight.

A cocktail bar carries most of its value in open spirits, syrups and prepared garnishes. Give more time to checks 5 and 7: everything made in house is labelled and dated every night, and the spot check always includes one or two of the base spirits for the best-selling drinks. Batched cocktails in their own bottles are stock like any other and belong on the sheet.

A pub sells mostly draught and bottled beer. The draught check matters more, and so does the cellar: note keg changes during service, so the weekly count can match kegs used against what the till sold. Spirits still need the spot check, but a shorter list will do.

A restaurant bar often serves drinks to tables through the floor team rather than across the counter. There, the till checks carry the weight. Drinks poured for a table and never rung through, or rung to the wrong table, are the most common gap, so check 2 deserves a careful look at any bill with drinks removed.

A hotel or event bar may open and close several times a day, and different people close it each time. Keep one card per session rather than per day, and make the transfer record in check 4 strict: stock that moves between a function bar and the main bar is where counts go wrong.

Whatever the bar, review the card every few months. A line that nobody has written anything against for weeks is either not needed or not being done, and both are worth knowing.

Time the routine once on a quiet night and once on a busy one, and write the times on the card. As an example, a bar with one closer might find the eight checks take ten minutes on a quiet night and twenty after a busy one, with the transfers and perishables taking most of the time.

If the routine regularly runs over half an hour, it is too long, and something will be skipped. Look for the steps that could be done earlier: restocking the bar from the store during the last quiet hour, for instance, or putting perishables away as each one finishes rather than all at the end.

Whatever the length, pay for it. A closing routine done in unpaid time after the shift has ended is a routine that will be rushed.

Rotate the closing duty among trained people rather than leaving it to one person. Rotation spreads the knowledge, and it means the closing figures are not always produced by the same hands. Where the bar has two people at close, split the work: one handles the till checks (1 to 3) while the other puts stock away (4 to 6), and they do the spot check together.

Train new closers on the card, then close alongside them a few times before they close alone. The first unsupervised close should be on a quiet night, not after a private party.

A closing routine is only useful if a problem found at close goes somewhere. Agree in advance what happens to each kind of finding.

The note on the card is the point. A finding that is written down is a fact the next person can work with. One that is mentioned in passing at two in the morning is forgotten by lunchtime.

Keep the closing cards for at least a few weeks, and longer if your accounts or your licence conditions need them. When the weekly count shows a gap, the cards for that week are the first place to look: they show which nights had unrecorded comps, which nights ran out, which spot checks were off.

The cards also show whether the routine is actually being done. A run of identical ticks in the same pen, with no numbers against them, is a routine that has become a ritual. A short conversation then is better than a large variance later.

If your bar also serves food, the same discipline appears in food safety records. The Food Standards Agency's Safer Food, Better Business pack, used by many UK caterers, includes a diary for recording daily checks. A bar's stock card sits naturally alongside it.

Each of these makes the routine look complete while it quietly stops protecting the stock.

Most of a closing routine happens behind the bar, not on a screen, and the checklist itself stays on your card. servearound helps with the parts that depend on what was sold and given away.

The point of sale is where comps and voids are recorded against the bill, and the payments report in Analytics shows discounts, voids and comps by member of staff, so the manager can see the night's giveaways the next morning without asking. The menu report shows units sold for each drink over any range of dates, which is the sales figure for a spot check or the weekly count. Bills for a date range can be downloaded as a spreadsheet. When the bar runs out of something, 86 the drink on the till and it shows as sold out on every table's menu at once.

servearound does not track stock or count bottles today, so counts and transfers stay on your sheet. Inventory tracking, for the stock behind the menu, is coming. If you would like to see how the till side works, get in touch.

As a rough guide, ten to twenty minutes for one closer, depending on how busy the night was. If it regularly takes longer than half an hour, it is too long, and some checks will be skipped. Move what you can earlier into the last quiet hour.

Not all of it, and not alone. A short spot check on a few lines is useful at close. A full count of every open bottle belongs once a week, with two people and enough time.

The eight checks in this guide cover most bars: comps and voids, bills, what ran out, restocking with transfers recorded, open wine and perishables, draught, a spot check, and securing the stock. Add what your licence or your premises need, and nothing that nobody acts on.

Pick three to five lines from a rotating list, weigh or count them, and set the result against what the till says was sold of those drinks since the last check. Recount anything that looks wrong before drawing conclusions.

Yes. A comp that is not recorded is indistinguishable from a loss. Recorded, it becomes a cost you can see, discuss and limit.

At least a few weeks, so that each weekly count can be read against the nights it covers. Keep them longer if your accounts or licence conditions ask for it.

Restocking the bar from the store without writing down the transfer. It makes the store look short and the bar look over, and it turns a routine evening into a variance at the next count.

Keep the bar stock checklist for the end of the night to eight checks, in the order the work happens: record comps and voids, close the bills, note what ran out, restock with transfers recorded, put open wine and perishables away, shut down the draught, spot check a few lines, then secure the stock and sign the card. Give each check an outcome to write down.

Move the full count to once a week, with two people, and review par levels before the weekly order. Drop the nightly full count of open bottles by one tired closer: it costs the most time and produces the least trustworthy number. A short routine that is done every night beats a long one that is done when someone remembers.