How do you calculate stock variance?

Expected stock is opening stock plus purchases minus sales. Variance is what you counted minus that expected figure. Dividing the variance by the expected figure gives you a percentage, which is the version worth tracking month to month.

What is the most common cause of a stocktake not matching?

A unit mismatch — someone counting bottles where the sheet expects cartons, or the reverse. It produces large, alarming variances and it is the first thing to check, before deliveries, missed locations and transfers.

Is a variance always theft?

Very rarely, and it should be the last explanation you reach for rather than the first. Counting errors, unrecorded deliveries, missed storage areas, over-pouring, comps and unrecorded breakage account for the large majority of what venues find.

How much variance is acceptable?

There is no universal figure, and it differs a great deal between a bar pouring spirits and a kitchen counting sealed packets. The number to watch is your own trend on individual lines — a line that is short every month matters far more than a total that moves a little.

Stocktake6 min read

Your stocktake does not match — here is where it went

The count says forty-one and the paperwork says forty-seven. Before anyone says the word theft, there are four much more likely explanations, and they are worth ruling out in order.

Last updated 24 August 2026

What variance means here

Variance is the gap between what you should have and what you do have. What you should have is opening stock, plus what you bought, minus what you sold. What you do have is whatever you just counted.

A gap is normal. A gap that is always in the same direction, on the same lines, is a signal — and that is the one worth chasing.

Expected = opening + purchases − sales.
Variance = counted − expected.
As a percentage: variance ÷ expected × 100, which is the version worth tracking over time because it survives changes in volume.

Rule these out first, in this order

Nearly every variance a venue finds is one of these four, and they are ordered here by how likely they are. Working down the list in order will save you an uncomfortable conversation you did not need to have.

Unit mismatch. Someone counted bottles where the sheet expects cartons. This is the single most common cause and it produces enormous, alarming numbers.
Deliveries not entered, or entered twice. A delivery that arrived during the count is the classic — it is on the shelf but not on the paperwork, or on both.
Missed locations. The back store, the second fridge, the crate under the prep bench. If a variance appears once and never again, it was almost certainly this.
Transfers between venues or between bars, recorded at one end only.

Then the real losses

Once the four above are genuinely excluded, what is left is stock that really has gone. It usually has an unglamorous explanation.

Over-pouring. A free-poured spirit runs 15–25% over a measured one in most bars, and that is the largest real loss most venues have.
Comps and staff drinks that were poured but never rung up.
Breakage nobody wrote down, because writing it down feels like confessing.
Waste and spoilage — anything binned at the end of a shift and not recorded.
Theft. Real, and worth taking seriously, but it is the last item on this list rather than the first for a reason.

Count the same way every time

A variance is only meaningful if the two counts are comparable. If the method moves between counts, the number you are reading is the method changing, not the stock.

Same units, same locations, same order, same time relative to service — before open or after close, never during — and deliveries frozen while the count runs. That last one is worth being strict about.

Watch the lines, not the total

A venue-wide variance figure is nearly useless for doing anything about. It bounces around with volume, and it averages a real problem on one line against a counting error on another.

Line by line is where the story is. One spirit that is short every single month is a specific, fixable thing — usually a pour, sometimes a unit, occasionally something worse. The total would never have shown it to you.

Or let Compare Sheets do it

Put any two finished counts side by side and see only what differs — what appeared, what vanished, and how much each quantity moved. Everything that stayed the same stays out of the way.

About Compare Sheets See pricing

Questions

How do you calculate stock variance?: Expected stock is opening stock plus purchases minus sales. Variance is what you counted minus that expected figure. Dividing the variance by the expected figure gives you a percentage, which is the version worth tracking month to month.
What is the most common cause of a stocktake not matching?: A unit mismatch — someone counting bottles where the sheet expects cartons, or the reverse. It produces large, alarming variances and it is the first thing to check, before deliveries, missed locations and transfers.
Is a variance always theft?: Very rarely, and it should be the last explanation you reach for rather than the first. Counting errors, unrecorded deliveries, missed storage areas, over-pouring, comps and unrecorded breakage account for the large majority of what venues find.
How much variance is acceptable?: There is no universal figure, and it differs a great deal between a bar pouring spirits and a kitchen counting sealed packets. The number to watch is your own trend on individual lines — a line that is short every month matters far more than a total that moves a little.