What a spreadsheet does well
It's free, everybody knows how to use it, and you can set it up in shelf order in an afternoon. If you have one supplier, a short back bar and one person who counts every week, a good sheet is hard to beat. Start with ours: the free bar inventory count sheet.
6 signs the spreadsheet is costing you
- Nobody types the invoices in. The sheet knows what you counted, not what you paid. Price increases slip by for months.
- The count takes an hour or more. Every bottle starts blank, so you count everything, even the bottles nobody touched.
- Two people, two versions. Someone saved "inventory FINAL 2" on their phone and now nobody trusts either one.
- Orders get built from memory. If the order gets built from memory instead of the sheet, the sheet isn't doing its job.
- You buy from more than one supplier. The same bottle can cost a few dollars more at one of them, and a sheet won't tell you.
- You can't find last month's numbers. When the bookkeeper asks for ending inventory, it's a scramble.
Two or more of these and the sheet is probably costing you more than its price of $0.
What a bar inventory app should do instead
Don't pay for a fancier spreadsheet. Pay for one that does the typing for you. Look for these:
- A count that's already filled in. It should know what should be on the shelf from your invoices and sales, so you only fix what's different.
- Invoices from a photo or an email. If you have to type them in, you won't.
- Price checks. It should tell you when a bottle goes up and, where your state lets you buy from more than one supplier, show when another sells it for less.
- Orders back to par that you approve before anything is sent.
- No register hookup. If your register can send a daily sales report by item, that's enough.
- Pay monthly or yearly, with your data yours to download.
What it's worth at a real bar
At Rotely's first bar, a Texas bar that buys from several suppliers, the invoices showed about $1,860 a year paid above its cheaper supplier and $340 a year in price increases. Rotely estimates the bar can save about 490 hours a year of counting, ordering and invoice work. That's one bar, and every bar is different, so run your own numbers with the liquor cost calculator and the par level calculator.
A quick test before you pay for anything
| Question | Keep the sheet | Time for an app |
|---|---|---|
| How long did last week's count take? | Under 30 min | Over an hour |
| How many suppliers? | One | Two or more |
| Who counts? | Always you | Whoever's on |
| Invoices typed in? | Every week | Never |
Mostly in the Time for an app column? Open the sample bar and do a count. It only takes a few minutes.
Questions
Is a spreadsheet good enough for bar inventory?
For a small back bar with one supplier and one person counting, often yes. It stops working when you buy from several suppliers, more than one person counts, or nobody has time to type invoices in.
How often should a bar do inventory?
Weekly works well for liquor, beer and wine: same day and time each week, before deliveries. Monthly counts hide losses for too long to act on them.
What should bar inventory software do?
Fill in the count from invoices and sales so you only fix what's different, read invoices from a photo, catch price increases, and draft orders back to par for you to approve.
Do I need to connect my register (POS)?
Not with Rotely. It reads your register's daily sales report by item, so there's no login to hand over and no new hardware.