A bar count is only half the job. The count tells you what you have. Put it next to what came in and what you sold, and it tells you what went missing, what to order, and whether your prices work. Here is the whole loop.
1. Set your areas in walking order
List every place a bottle can live: the well, the back bar, the service bar, the cage, the walk-in. Put them in the order you walk, and keep bottles in each area in shelf order, left to right. A count that follows the shelf is twice as fast as one that follows the alphabet.
2. Count at the same time, the same way
Count when nothing is being poured: before open or after close. Weekly is the common rhythm; monthly hides too much, daily is only worth it on your most expensive bottles. The same person counting the same way each week makes the numbers comparable. A different counter every week makes them noise.
3. Full bottles whole, open bottles in tenths
Sealed bottles are whole numbers. Open bottles are tenths, read by eye: 0.7 is a bit over two thirds. Write 2.4 for two sealed and one at four tenths. The tenths chart gives every tenth in ounces and pours for 750 ml, 1 L and 1.75 L. Some bars weigh bottles instead; here is how the two compare.
Use a sheet laid out by area so each bottle has a column for each place it lives, and a total.
4. Record what came in
Every delivery between two counts goes in, from the invoices, by bottle. Missing one delivery makes a bottle look like it grew on the shelf, and the next week it looks like it walked out the door.
5. Pull sales from your POS
Run an item sales report for exactly the dates between the counts. A shot of Tito's is easy: 1.5 oz of Tito's. A Margarita is 2 oz of tequila, 0.75 oz of orange liqueur, and so on, so every cocktail has to be turned back into its pours through your recipes. This is the step most bars skip, and it's the one that makes the rest work.
6. Work out usage and variance
Set what you used against what your sales account for. The gap is variance: over-pours, comps nobody rang, drinks rung as the wrong item, a miscount, now and then theft. The variance calculator does it bottle by bottle, in ounces and dollars. Look for the same bottles coming up short week after week, not one bad week.
7. Set pars and order
Your weekly usage from real counts sets the par: enough to last until the next delivery lands, plus a cushion. The par level calculator gives you the par and today's order. And while you have the costs out, check your prices with the pour cost calculator.
Wine and beer
Wine counts by bottle and tenth like spirits, but it's easier to find by bin number than by name, and glass pours need their own math. Wine by the glass inventory covers it. Bottled beer counts in units; kegs count by weight or by an estimate of how full they are.
How long should it take?
It depends on the size of the bar and the method, but most of the time goes to two things: finding each bottle's row on the sheet, and typing the sheet up afterward. Laying the sheet out in shelf order fixes the first. Counting out loud fixes both.