| Bottle | Size | Start | + In | End | Sold oz | $ / bottle | Used oz | Variance |
|---|
Used0.0oz off the shelf
Sold0.0oz your sales account for
Variance0.0oz, 0% of what you used
At cost$0missing liquor, at what you pay
How bar variance works
Used = Start + Delivered − End
Variance = Sold − Used
Counts are in bottles and tenths, the way you count the shelf. The calculator turns them into ounces with the bottle size, so it can set them against what your sales rang, which is always in pours.
Sold oz is what your sales should have taken: every shot, every cocktail's pours of that bottle, added up. Most POS item reports give you drinks, not ounces, so you multiply by the recipe yourself. A negative variance means more left the shelf than you sold.
What a variance usually is
- A delivery that wasn't entered. Shows as a big positive: the shelf went up and nothing explains it.
- A miscount. One wrong tenth on a handle is almost 6 oz. Check the bottle before the bartender.
- Heavy pours and comps. Small, steady negatives on the popular bottles, week after week.
- A drink rung as the wrong item. Well vodka rung, call vodka poured: one bottle is negative, its neighbor positive by the same amount.
- Theft. Possible, but it's the last explanation to reach for, not the first.
Industry rules of thumb put a healthy bar within a few percent. What matters more is your own trend: a bottle that is always −8% is a pour problem; one that jumps once is a count problem.