The sixty-second answer
Walk the bar with your phone or one earbud and say each bottle as full bottles plus tenths: "3 Tito's, 1.4 Baileys." Maple-AI turns the speech into a count sheet, and MapleInventory compares it with what sales and recipes say should remain, then posts the variance. Keep the purchase, sales and disposal records your licence requires [1].
Why does a bar need to count liquor at all?
Because the count is the only number that tells you what actually left the bottles. Your point of sale knows what was rung in. Your invoices know what was delivered. Neither knows about the heavy pour, the drink that was never rung in, the bottle that broke in the walk-in, or the one that went home in a backpack.
Liquor is usually a bar's most valuable stock per square foot, and it is easy to lose a little at a time. A quarter ounce over on every pour does not look like much on one drink, but across a busy weekend it is several bottles. BDC's advice to any business with stock applies squarely here: physically count on a regular basis to make sure what is on the shelf matches what the system says, whether by counting a small sample often or everything less often [5].
The difficulty is that a proper liquor count is tedious. Somebody stands behind the bar with a clipboard, squints at each open bottle, writes a number, and later types it into a spreadsheet. That is the part voice removes.
What does counting in tenths mean?
Counting in tenths means you say full bottles as a whole number and estimate an open bottle by how many tenths of it are left. "3 Tito's" is three full bottles. "1.4 Baileys" is one full bottle plus one open bottle about four tenths full. "0.8 Jameson" is a single open bottle a little over three quarters full.
Counts for the same bottle add up. If you count the speed rail first and say "0.6 Tito's", then reach the back bar and say "2 Tito's", the sheet shows 2.6. That lets you walk the room in whatever order is natural rather than hunting down every bottle of one product before moving on.
Be honest about what tenths are: an eye estimate, usually good to about a tenth either way. That is plenty to spot a trend if the same person counts the same way each time. If a handful of expensive bottles matter more than the rest, weigh those and record the weight instead. Most bars find tenths good enough for the rail and well, and save the scale for the top shelf.
What does a 20-minute voice count sound like?
Here is a realistic weekly count at a 60-seat restaurant with a small bar, done after close on a Sunday.
- Before you start (2 minutes). Make sure this week's deliveries are entered as received. A count taken before Thursday's delivery is entered will look like a surplus. Ring through any comps or waste that are still on paper.
- Speed rail (4 minutes). One earbud in, phone in your apron. Left to right: "0.5 Tito's, 0.7 house rye, 0.3 house rum, 0.9 house gin, 0.4 triple sec." You pick up each bottle, look, say it, put it back.
- Back bar (7 minutes). Shelf by shelf: "1.6 Jameson, 2.2 Baileys, 0.8 Kahlua, 1 Grey Goose, 0.3 Grand Marnier." Say the name the way it is on your menu or product list, and say the number clearly before or after it, the same way every time.
- Storage (4 minutes). Sealed stock is whole numbers and goes fast: "12 Tito's, 6 house rye, 4 Baileys." Cases can be spoken as bottles, not cases, so nobody has to remember what a case holds.
- Review (3 minutes). Look at the count sheet on the phone. Check that each spoken name landed on the right product, and fix anything that did not match, such as a new bottle that is not in your list yet. Then post.
Posting is the moment the count becomes a record. MapleInventory compares each counted quantity with the balance it expected, and posts the difference as a count adjustment, so the variance is visible bottle by bottle rather than as one lump at year end.
How does a depleting recipe turn sales into expected usage?
A depleting recipe attaches ingredients to each drink so that every sale takes the right amounts off the right bottles. If your Caesar uses one ounce of vodka, ten Caesars sold should mean ten ounces of vodka gone. Build recipes for your cocktails, set straight pours for spirits served neat or with a mix, and let each sale draw them down.
With recipes in place, the arithmetic for any bottle is simple:
- Actual usage = opening count + bottles received - closing count.
- Expected usage = the sum of recipe amounts for everything rung in between the two counts.
- Variance = actual usage - expected usage.
Suppose the opening count showed 2.4 bottles of house vodka, you received 6, and tonight's count shows 3.1. Actual usage is 5.3 bottles. If recipes say you should have poured 4.9 bottles' worth, you are 0.4 of a bottle over. One week that might be a spill nobody recorded. Four weeks in a row on the same bottle is a pattern worth looking at: pour technique, a missing button on the point of sale, or something worse.
What is pour cost, and why does the count drive it?
Pour cost is the cost of the liquor you used divided by the liquor sales it produced. It is the bar's version of gross margin, which BDC describes as the portion of revenue left over after direct costs are subtracted, and which it suggests every business check regularly against its own targets [6].
The catch is the word "used". You cannot know what you used without counting. Without a count, pour cost is really purchase cost, and that swings with delivery timing: a big order in the last week of the month makes the month look terrible and the next one look great. With a count at both ends, usage is real and pour cost becomes a steady number you can track.
Compare pour cost with your own history before you compare it with anyone else's. Menu, price point and drink mix change what is normal, and a sudden move in your own number is more useful than an industry rule of thumb.
What records does a liquor licence expect you to keep?
Every province sets its own rules, so check yours. British Columbia is a clear example of what a regulator can require. Its Liquor Control and Licensing Regulation requires licensees to keep liquor purchase records, liquor sales records including the quantity sold and the prices charged, and liquor disposal records, all for at least six years, and to maintain a register of liquor purchased and received [1].
Notice what that list does and does not say. Section 80 sets out records, not a count schedule [1]. The count is your own control. But the records the regulator does require are exactly the other half of your variance calculation: purchases and receipts are the "received" in the formula, sales are what the recipes deplete, and disposal records are where spills and breakage belong. Keeping them well makes the count mean something.
How does the count affect year-end and tax?
At year end, the count becomes the closing inventory on your financial statements. Under the Income Tax Act, inventory is valued at the end of the year at the lower of its cost and its fair market value [3]. The CRA's archived interpretation bulletin on inventory valuation says that in the usual case a physical stocktaking should be carried out at year end, and that a year-end count is unnecessary only where a reliable perpetual system has been periodically verified against actual quantities on hand [2].
Regular bar counts are that periodic verification. A bar that counts weekly all year has a running record that the numbers were checked, not just a single count on the last night of the fiscal year. Under IAS 2, losses of inventory are recognised as an expense in the period they occur [4], which is another reason to find them weekly rather than discover them all in one year-end surprise. Keep count sheets with your other records, generally for six years from the end of the tax year they relate to [7].
What goes wrong with bar counts, voice or not?
- Receiving not entered first. The single most common cause of a false surplus.
- Forgotten locations. The bottle in the kitchen for sauces, the service bar, the event cooler. Walk the same route every time.
- Different counters, different eyes. One manager's 0.3 is another's 0.5. Keep the same person on the weekly count when you can.
- Kitchen transfers not recorded. Wine and spirits used in cooking are usage too. Record them as transfers or waste.
- Sound-alike names. Two products with similar names will be confused by anyone listening, human or machine. Give them distinct spoken names in your list and check the review screen.
- A noisy room. Count after service. A kitchen fan is fine; a Saturday crowd is not.
Where do MapleInventory and MapleServe fit?
MapleInventory holds stock in decimal quantities, so 1.4 bottles is a real number rather than a rounding problem, and it posts count variances to its stock ledger as adjustments you can trace. Voice count is in preview: you speak the count, Maple-AI turns it into a count sheet, and you review it before anything posts.
MapleServe is our upcoming bar and restaurant product, built on MapleInventory. It adds recipe depletion from point-of-sale sales, end-of-night usage, and pour variance by the ounce. It is not available yet; it is coming soon, and we are taking early access requests from bars and restaurants that want to try it first.