Bar inventory is managing, counting and tracking liquor stock at your bar or restaurant. Taking inventory counts, and ongoing inventory management, can help you gain insight into the sales trends of different beverages so you can ensure that you always have enough stock on hand.
While bar inventory can be done manually, this can be incredibly time consuming and leaves a lot of room for error. It also means that you’ll have to do a lot of manual calculations to help you draw insights from the data you collect. This includes calculating PAR levels, pricing and cost, turnover and other important inventory metrics.
Bar inventory software is a computer program that helps control alcohol inventories. It not only allows you to track the sale and receipt of different products, but it also provides data and reports that will give you better oversight over your inventory and help you make money-saving decisions.
What Bar Inventory Software Does
Bar inventory software provides features to streamline processes and give you better oversight over your bar or restaurant. Some of the more common features you will find in advanced bar management software includes:
- Database of all liquor, liqueur, beer and wine, as well as mixing ingredients and garnishes, including where the product is stored, brands, flavours, quantity and expiry, etc.
- Barcode scanning technology that integrates with POS systems for quicker counts.
- Information on vendors, including what you order from them, how often and for what price.
- Reports on how much alcohol you have on hand and how much you’ve used in a specified period.
- Insights into how you can increase profits.
- Weekly order guides that use consumption history to optimize ordering.
- Reports on alcohol with high and low turnover.
Benefits of Bar Inventory Software
There are a number of ways your bar or restaurant can benefit from bar inventory software.
- Improved speed
Barcode scanning technology, as well as integrations with accounting and POS systems, help speed up inventory counts. This will save time and help reduce labour costs associated with taking inventory.
- Reduced errors
Accuracy is critical when managing inventory. If just one number is off, it can have a ripple effect across your entire database, which can be detrimental to decision making, and lead to more wasted time trying to find the source of the error.
Maintaining a manual inventory using pen and paper or spreadsheets leaves more room for error. This includes calculation errors, recording errors, and issues with poor penmanship. Because of integrations and preprogrammed formulas, there is little chance for error with bar inventory software.
- Reduced waste
Bar inventory software keeps information about all of your products in one place. This makes it easy to review products and find out how long each bottle has been in stock and when it expires. When something has been sitting on the shelf for a long time, you can have the system flag it so you know to run a promotion and stop ordering that particular product. This reduces spoilage, waste and the amount of capital tied up in inventory.
In addition, software can help keep track of spoilage, breakage and comps so that you can understand why variances exist and find ways to reduce them. This is especially important when determining whether products are being made with too much or too little of an ingredient.
- Easy reporting
With a bar inventory software, you no longer have to calculate key inventory metrics by hand or design spreadsheets to do the formulas for you. Your inventory software will quickly take every input and provide you with reports and analytics to help you make better decisions and better understand how your inventory sells.
- Mitigate the risk of stock shortages
There are few things worse than having to tell a customer that they can’t have what they ordered because you are out of stock on one or more of the ingredients. Not only does this lead to dissatisfaction and poor reviews, it can also end up being a lost sale.
With bar inventory software, you don’t have to worry about running out of products. That’s because the software will monitor and alert you when levels are low and will adjust PAR levels based on historical data.
All of this will make you and your staff’s jobs easier, reduce costs and improve your bottom line. For more information on the benefits of bar inventory software, or how Sculpture Hospitality can help you with our consulting services, contact us today.
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