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House pours, speed rail, open bottles

Well liquor inventory for the bottles that move every night

House vodka, gin, rum, whiskey, and tequila hide more dollars than the dusty call brands. Count the rail like it is the business, because it is.

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Phone camera scanning a spirit bottle barcode on a lit bar shelf during inventory
Barcode scan on the backbar
How do you inventory a liquor well?

How do you inventory a liquor well?

Last updated

Count each house pour as sealed bottles plus an open fill from 0 to 1, then compare that to recipe-aware POS sales. ExactPour is built for that rail. Start a 14-day trial or compare plans on /pricing. The broader liquor pillar is /liquor-inventory-management.

Treat the rail as the whole job

01

Count house pours

Sealed backups plus an open fill from 0 to 1. Same order every close.

02

Marry swapped well UPCs

Interchangeable house bottles share one slot so a new case sticker does not break the week.

03

Map the drinks that leave the rail

Well vodka soda and the rest. Then compare poured versus sold in dollars.

The problem

The rail is the business you cannot see

Highest volume, lowest visibility

Well vodka can outsell every call brand and still get rounded to a shrug at close.

Interchangeable bottles break the sheet

Two well vodka UPCs that pour as one slot need a marriage, not two rows that never match sales.

A heavy pour looks like nothing

A quarter ounce extra on the house pour is the largest leak in most casual rooms.

The solution

Treat the rail as its own system

Fill levels, barcode identity, well-drink mapping, and variance in dollars on the SKUs that actually move.

Count any bottle with your phone camera

Scan once, count everything.

Scan any UPC with a phone or handheld, tap a fill level, and ExactPour aggregates scans per product and auto-computes volume in real time. Undo and inline edits keep counts honest.

Fill-level tracking

Partial bottles, not just whole counts.

Every scan records a fill level from 0 to 1 and computes volume as size times fill, so you track real stock instead of rounding to the nearest bottle.

Bottle marriages

Group interchangeable SKUs.

Group products like "Well Vodka" or "Seltzer Variety" so any member barcode counts as one slot. Per-location, database-enforced, and self-cleaning.

POS integration

Toast, Square, Clover, and GoTab are live.

Connect Toast, Square, Clover, or GoTab to a location. Menus and sales import on a schedule or when you ask. POS credentials are stored encrypted.

See the gaps in dollars, and close them

Surface the gaps. Explain them.

Items that drift beyond tolerance are flagged (>10% warning, >5% info). Close each out with a reason (breakage, theft, over-pour, measurement error) and notes.

Pour cost & margin

Know the cost of every drink.

Cost per serving is computed from live bottle pricing and recipe ounces, so you see pour cost and margin per menu item and can price with confidence.

Integrates with the POS you already run

Sales sync nightly · No rip and replace

House pours as the product records them

Well variance

The SKUs that moved, priced, with a place to reason-code.

app.exactpour.com/reports/variance
Variance dashboard in ExactPour: Products drifting beyond tolerance are flagged and ready to reconcile with reason codes.

Compare

ExactPour vs rounded well guesses

CapabilityExactPourRounded well guesses
Open house poursFill 0 to 1Full / empty
Swapped well UPCsMarried slotBroken rows
House drink mapping
Overpour dollarsPer SKUA feeling

What well-level control changes

Open house pours count as real volume, not rounded bottles

Interchangeable well SKUs can share one slot

House drinks map to the rail that actually poured them

Overpours show up as dollars on the product that leaked

The back bar can wait until the rail is honest

Well liquor is a different inventory job than the back bar

Why the well deserves its own page

liquor inventory management covers the full liquor room. This page is only the rail: house pours that leave in ounces every night. Buyers search well liquor inventory because the generic liquor page still sounds like a storeroom. A well is not a storeroom. It is an open set of bottles that multiple people touch, in the dark, at speed.

Casual bars, pubs, and sports bars live here. Award cocktail bars with measured specs and wine-only rooms do not. If your house pour is the drink, this is the job. pubs and sports bars describe those rooms. Keep the liquor pillar for the broader program.

How to count a well without lying to yourself

Walk the speed rail in the same order every time. Scan or identify each house SKU. Record sealed backups on the rail or in the well ice as whole units. Record the opener as a fill from 0 to 1. Do not round to empty, half, or full unless that is the only training the team will keep, and if you do that, write it down. liquor inventory template is the paper version of those columns. bar inventory counting basics is the method.

Unit cost on well vodka looks small and is not. A dollar move on a house pour hits every well drink. Invoice capture keeps that cost honest. bar invoice management is that job. Pour cost on the well is pour cost control. Shrinkage on the well is how to reduce liquor shrinkage.

Marry the well, then map the drinks

Distributors swap well vodka UPCs. A sheet that treats each bottle as a unique forever SKU will never match sales. ExactPour marriages group interchangeable well products so any member barcode counts as one slot. That is how a house pour stays countable when the case sticker changes.

Then map the POS items that deplete that slot. A well vodka soda, a vodka cranberry, a splash in a pint. Toast rooms should read toast liquor inventory before they interpret a short well as theft. Unmapped house drinks are the most common fake shortage in ExactPour onboarding.

Overpours are a well problem first

Call brands get watched because they are expensive per bottle. Well brands leak because they are cheap per bottle and expensive per night. A heavy house pour across a Saturday will outperform most back-bar theft. Coach the rail first. Jiggers and controlled pourers are tools after you have a week of numbers, not a punishment on day one.

Document comps that come off the well. Pubs especially. Hospitality that never hits a ticket is the other well leak. The playbook stays how to reduce liquor shrinkage. The product page for the same leak is bar shrinkage prevention. This page stays on counting and mapping the rail itself.

When to count the rest of the room

Once the well is honest for two weeks, add the back bar and the liquor room. Doing the whole building first is how closers quit the program. Sports bars can add game-day call brands in week two. Pubs can add the Irish whiskey that actually sells. Dusty bottles can wait. Dead stock is a later report, not a first-week task.

Groups should get one well honest in one room before they roll out. multi location bar inventory is the next page, not the first. The category view remains bar inventory software.

Trial the rail, not the museum

Scan the well. Connect the POS. Map house drinks. Close two nights. Review well SKUs only. If those dollars make sense, you have a system. If they do not, fix mapping before you buy cameras. New accounts get one 14-day Pro trial. Nothing is charged unless you add a payment method. Starter at $59/month adds POS. See pricing.

Still on a sheet? bar inventory spreadsheet alternative. Still deciding the room? bars, pubs, sports bars. This page is the rail.

What we will not pretend

We will not pretend a well count is laboratory precise. Visual fill is an estimate. Shared bias is the goal. Spot-check the house pour that dominates unexplained dollars more strictly if you need to. We will not invent an industry well-shrinkage rate for your rail. Measure your gap.

We will also not turn this into another liquor-inventory synonym. If the search was really for the pillar, liquor inventory management is waiting. If the search was the rail, you are on the right URL.

Speed rail order, backups in the ice, and double counts

A well is a geography. The same vodka can sit in the rail, in the ice well as a backup, and on the liquor room shelf. If three people count those as three mysteries, you will invent product. Write the rule: rail opener is a fill, rail backups are sealed units on that SKU, liquor room is sealed units on the same SKU. ExactPour aggregates scans by product. Scanning the backup as a new mystery bottle is how wells get fictional.

Walk left to right every time. Skipping a hole in the rail because it looks empty is how a dry well vodka becomes a surprise mid-Saturday. Empty is a fill of 0, and it is information. It means you either sold it, moved it, or never restocked. Monday can work with that. Monday cannot work with a hole you pretended was not there. liquor inventory template uses the same sealed-plus-fill columns if you are still on paper.

House pour specs, jiggers, and the recipe you actually pour

A well drink recipe that says one and a half ounces while the team pours a heavy two will look like shrinkage forever. Before you coach theft, pour a water test with the house bottle and the house glass. Write the spec you actually want. Then map that spec. Then count. Then coach. A jigger is a training tool after that sequence, not a substitute for it.

If you change the house spec, change the recipe the same day. Toast and Square will keep selling the item. ExactPour will keep depleting the old ounces until you edit the map. That lag is how well liquor inventory gets a bad reputation. The rail did not lie. The recipe did. toast liquor inventory covers the Toast half. pour cost control covers the price of the new spec.

Example: well vodka across a Friday and a Tuesday

Friday tickets show 160 well vodka drinks at one and a half ounces, or 7.1 liters if the recipe is true. The rail started at 10 liters equivalent and ended at 2.2. Receiving was one liter from the liquor room, logged. Actual usage is 8.8 liters. The gap is 1.7 liters. That is a heavy pour, a bad map, or undocumented comps. Tuesday tickets show 40 drinks, 1.8 liters explained, and a 0.2 liter gap. The Friday gap is the meeting. The Tuesday gap is noise. Weekly blended percentages hide that shape.

A sports bar or pub that only looks at month-end liquor cost will skip Friday in the review. They will order more well vodka and tell themselves volume is up. Well liquor inventory is the discipline of seeing Friday. ExactPour will not publish a recovered dollar figure for this example. It will keep Friday and Tuesday in the same product so the meeting has a SKU, a dollar, and a night. how to reduce liquor shrinkage is the coaching script. pricing is the trial.

A fourteen-day well trial that does not boil the ocean

Scan five to eight house pours. Map the ten tickets that deplete them. Close four nights. Review only those SKUs. If the closer finishes and Monday has a short list, expand to the back bar. If they do not finish, you added too many bottles. The well is allowed to be a small product list. That is the point.

Start free if you only want the count. Start the 14-day paid trial when you want Toast, Square, Clover, or GoTab to explain the rail. See pricing. The liquor pillar remains liquor inventory management. This page remains the rail. If you need a paper start tonight, use liquor inventory template and move the same columns into a scanned session after the first close.

Par levels on the well are not a storeroom par

A liquor room par of two cases is not a well par. The rail needs enough openers and backups to survive Saturday without a mid-service run that breaks the cutoff story. Set a well par in bottles-on-the-rail, not in cases-in-the-cage. After two counted weeks you will know whether house gin needs one backup or three. ExactPour can suggest orders from pars once those numbers exist. Do not invent them on day one from a distributor's pitch.

Sports bars raise well pars before a playoff week and should lower them after. Pubs raise house whiskey before a holiday weekend. Write the change. Count through it. If you raise the par and never count, you only raised the amount of product that can walk. A well par that never comes back down is how cash sits on the rail all season. set par levels is the method. This page is why the well gets its own par, not a copy of the storeroom. After the first counted Saturday, write the rail par on the same card as the count route so the closer restocks the well, not the cage.

FAQ

Well liquor inventory questions

How do you count an open well bottle?

Estimate fill from 0 to 1 and multiply by bottle size. Half full is 0.5. Train the team on the same visual so the bias is shared.

What if our well vodka UPC changes?

Group interchangeable well SKUs as one slot so any member barcode counts as the house pour. Then keep mapping drinks to that slot.

Is this the same as liquor inventory management?

No. liquor inventory management is the full liquor program. This page is the speed rail and house pours.

Which plan do we need to reconcile the well?

POS reconciliation is on Starter at $59/month and up. New accounts get one 14-day Pro trial. Nothing is charged unless you add a payment method. Counting can start on Free. See pricing.

Should we jigger the well?

Measure first. A jigger is a tool after you know which house pour is heavy, not a substitute for a count.

Next step

Count the rail like it is the business

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Well Liquor Inventory | ExactPour