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Last Updated:
April 10, 2024

The beginner’s guide to using a bar inventory app

Optimize your restaurant inventory management with our beginner's guide to using a bar inventory app. Say goodbye to manual tracking and hello to efficiency!
The beginner’s guide to using a bar inventory app
By
Angelo Esposito
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Table of Contents

Taking inventory is not only stressful but makes the job of any bar or restaurant manager much more difficult. Thankfully, there are solutions to this issue, and downloading a bar inventory app is one of them.

If you’re only just starting as a bar manager, you may ask yourself, how do I do a bar inventory? There are ways to use a bar inventory spreadsheet manually. However, this will take too much time from your day and most likely lead to human error. Odds are, you’ve already tried to do this several times from following misleading online guides, unlike this one.

With a reliable and advanced bar inventory app, you can save yourself a ton of time to juggle multiple responsibilities as a bar manager. Keep reading to understand why using an application to manage your bar is always a win-win.

Reasons why you may need a bar inventory app

  • You've just started your own bar or restaurant and don’t know how useful a bar inventory app can truly be
  • If you are a restaurant or bar owner for years and are fed up with years of wasted profits
  • You are either of the above and desire an easy way of minimizing business costs, reducing dead stock, and identifying loses

How will bar inventory software make your restaurant more profitable?

If you want to increase bar sales, the best thing to do would be to start using our bar inventory app to manage your supply. One of the major ways that the platform can make your bar or restaurant more profitable is by saving time in doing inventory by approximately 80%. Without having to spend all of your time and energy on doing this, you’ll be given the opportunity to find other ways to improve sales.

For example, with our beverage analytics platform, you can forecast restaurant or bar future sales based on events, weather, holidays, and more. With this data, you can increase profit margins by only ordering products that will sell best on certain days.

You’ll also be able to calculate pour costs with WISK. This is a necessary process and could mean the difference between a successful bar and one that’s going to fail. Having the ability to observe historical data and control your inventory whenever you wish can help you keep a beverage’s pour costs inexpensive and thus, profitable for you. For instance, even a dollar difference in the price of a drink could suggest thousands lost every month.

Another way that WISK makes your bar financially successful is by reducing waste and unused stock. With our intelligent bar inventory app, you’ll no longer be estimating the amount of liquor you need to purchase. In other words, you’ll be able to measure the exact amount of alcohol you have in stock to determine your next order. This is very useful especially if you run a large establishment.

Imagine the following scenario:

You own a whiskey bar with over 40 types of brands on the menu. You’re one of the only true whiskey bars in the city and you want to impress by providing as many options as possible. This can get very confusing and remembering details is more difficult. With our application, you can measure and store different types of whiskey brands from Jack Daniels to more obscure beverages like Heaven Hill. WISK has it all and you’ll be able to accurately monitor your supply with fewer headaches and mistakes.

Top Benefits of Bar Inventory Management

Reduce Waste

The main problem with ordering too much of what you need is the waste that comes with it. However, with an application for keeping track of your liquor, you can avoid dead stock on your bar shelves at all costs. In addition, if your staff is prone to spilling, giving away freebies, or destroying bottles, a system for managing inventory can help you prevent lost profits.

Avoid Errors

Using advanced technology doesn’t have to be scary. After all, this isn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey and WISK isn’t Hal 9000. Jokes aside, with an app for managing beverages, you don’t have to worry about making mistakes. Most importantly, if inventory is organized properly, you can minimize the chances of serving customers something other than what they ordered. Bartenders will be more efficient by using the right liquors and the right amount of them to fulfill customer orders.

Always have what you need in stock

There’s nothing worse than not having all of the ingredients for a certain mixed drink or recipe. That’s why it is crucial to have effective bar inventory management that enables you to have the right quantity of stocks all the time. With the help of a bar inventory app, you can always make sure you have what you need to satisfy your customers. Picture a large group of coworkers coming to your bar or restaurant after work. They all decide to match each other’s orders and get the same cocktails. Whether it's a martini or a Negroni, you need to make sure you have the right gin brand to fulfill that many orders. It wouldn’t look impressive if you had to deny the drink to part of the group because you didn’t get enough gin the previous week.

Save on Labor Costs

You normally have to pay one or more personnel to take inventory for you when using a manual inventory. This can result in significant labor costs over time. Additionally, manual inventory causes longer order processing, more expensive labor, and higher inventory write-offs that may be avoided at the end of the year. Failure to do so could lead to what would appear to be a minor error here and there, but those minor errors in inventory count can add up to a significant profit or loss.

Bar inventory management software like Wisk can help you save money on labor costs and increase efficiency by more automated inventory process. All you have to do now is properly educate your team so that they are more knowledgeable about this inventory app.

Analyze Data

Effective inventory management will improve your bar's efficiency greatly.

Bar inventory apps are more than essentially a useful tool to improve your inventory management process compared to using spreadsheets. The majority of bar inventory apps like Wisk include customized reports that keep track of important inventory data, such as the stock usage and quantity of spillage occurring at your bar. The system also helps you analyze your financial performance by providing access to variance reports that outline your daily and weekly bar costs, profits, and losses when linked with your POS system.

Save Valuable Time

Manual inventorying involves counting each item and then entering the data into a spreadsheet, which consumes valuable time that you don't have.

You may automatically track your inventory counts by using inventory management software like Wisk which can be used to manage inventory across multiple devices and locations.

Inventory Tracking in Real-Time

With an online inventory management system, your business will receive real-time analytics and financial reporting that reveal precisely where you are losing inventory, why you are losing it, and how you can prevent it from happening in the future.

This implies that you may easily access data and check your liquor usage and sales on your device. You can tell right away if something is wrong, like when a specific bottle of alcohol is due to expire and one of your popular cocktails might be missing a key ingredient.

By doing so, you can ensure that you have an accurate inventory. This saves your bar or restaurant huge amounts of money that can then be added to your bottom line.

What makes a good bar inventory app?

Bluetooth scale

Using the Bluetooth scale system, you can measure the alcohol content of your liquor bottles. It also enables you to monitor liquor usage by generating reports on variations and checking to see if the quantity poured by your staff is equal. This helps you save money on overpouring spillage and theft.

Barcode scanner

Inputting the necessary inventory data manually is slower and less trustworthy than scanning a barcode. Scanning each barcode just requires a few seconds. Just imagine how long you would wait in line at the grocery if the cashier had to manually input and record each item that you bought. Barcodes increase the productivity of both your staff and your procedures. When a barcode is scanned and added to a specific database, you will gain valuable insight into the status of your inventory, including shipping, receiving, and inventory quantities.

Direct POS integration

A POS system offers a variety of inventory management features, including data forecasting, purchase orders report, integrated accounting software, and much more. However, a POS can't give you as much information about your inventory as a bar inventory management system. The two systems must be integrated instead. You will be able to easily import sales data into your inventory management system as a result, which will provide you with more insight into inventory losses. Ultimately, you must analyze business costs in order for you to develop effective sales and marking plans.

Access to bar database

You may speed up your job as a bar manager considerably if you have an online database of 200,000 bottles that is powerful. This allows you to access, manage, arrange, and update information about your liquor products as needed when taking inventory quickly. 

Offline accessibility and device compatibility

With most software becoming increasingly crucial to digital transformation, having robust offline assistance built into the application is increasingly vital.

This is, without a doubt, the most important reason for offline support in many applications. When bar employee is taking inventory using inventory software, they must be able to complete their tasks without being reliant on a connection. Signal problems are indeed genuine and occur all the time.

Easy to Use Dashboard

Most bar inventory software has dashboards that can give you instant insight into trends and patterns in data, allowing for quick analysis and understanding without the need to go through lengthy or complex Excel spreadsheets and reports. This saves a lot of time that would have been spent analyzing the bar data and allows for informed decisions on how to improve future sales to be made quickly and efficiently. In today's competitive market, this can make an impact on any bar business. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Bar Inventory Software

Making a bar inventory is not easy. There may still be something you want to know before you start taking an inventory. Here are some examples of the types of questions that you might be asked:

When Should I Start Using the Liquor Inventory App?

When you’re ready to take your bar inventory process to the next level, it’s time to get set up with the liquor inventory app. This software will help you efficiently manage your bar inventory, so you can quickly see what needs to be restocked and what is selling well. Not only that, but it can also help you track your liquor expenses and automatically generate reports. As a result, bar software may help you save time and money. So if you’re ready to streamline your inventory process, there’s no better time than now to get set up with bar management software.

How Often Do You Need To Take an Inventory?

For most bar managers, taking inventory is a tedious but necessary task. While it's important to stay on top of stock levels, counting every bottle in the bar can be time-consuming. So how often should you take inventory? The answer may vary depending on the size of the bar and the liquor inventory system in place. For example, smaller bars may only need to count inventory once a month, while larger bars might need to do it once a week. Additionally, some liquor inventory systems allow bar managers to track stock levels in real-time, which means that taking an inventory count may not be necessary at all. Ultimately, the frequency of inventory counts will depend on the individual needs of the bar.

What Is The Best Way To Manage A Bar Inventory?

Inventory should be handled promptly and accurately. A stock count should be performed at least once a week, but more frequently if feasible. This will assist to guarantee that the inventory is accurate and up to date in this way. It's also critical to use a bar inventory program. This will aid in monitoring what's available and what needs what needs to be ordered.

It is critical to have a system in place for tracking inventory. Weekly inventory inspections, monthly inventory reports, and annual inventory audits are all examples of this. You may use these strategies to guarantee that your bar's stock has been well-controlled and up-to-date

10 Steps to using WISK’s liquor inventory software

1. Download the app in the app store

2. Open the app and click on the “Inventory” icon

3. View a list of all of your locations within your venue

4. Start scanning bottles using your iPhone camera (which acts as a barcode scanner)

5. Weigh the open bottles using the Bluetooth liquor inventory scale

6. Count the closed bottles using the + and - signs or calculator on the app

7. Find the bottles without barcodes using the search feature

8. Save the location and move on to the next one when finished

9. Submit your inventory once all the locations are saved

10. Receive your generated report straight to your emails

Why choose WISK?

Finally, how does WISK stand out from other bar inventory apps? It’s simple. Besides being highly intelligent, organized, and efficient, WISK allows you to do more.

The Unique Capabilities of WISK

  • Allows you to scan the barcodes of beverages
  • Offers a scale to weigh bottles for precise measurements
  • Gives you the option of ordering and receiving
  • Includes integration with TouchBistro, Lightspeed, Silverware, and 30+ more POS software
  • Incorporates Bluetooth scale integration
  • Comes with full phone support from our team
  • Gives you the option of month-to-month contracts
  • Includes a database of over 50k bottles to choose from

To recap, our software offers the most useful features for any bar or restaurant supervisor. From having the largest selection of brands to full POS system integration, we’ve got you covered. We are leaders in the hospitality industry and are passionate about helping restaurant managers make their day-to-day tasks stress-free. Please call us at +1 

Improve Your Bar Inventory Management

The hospitality business is a competitive market. The key to success in running a bar or restaurant is to manage your costs effectively, minimize expenses and losses, and maximize profits. Do some research on the other liquor inventory software out there and find what works best to begin streamlining your inventory management, making profits and customer satisfaction easier for your bar or restaurant.

See your ROI thrive as you master the beginner's guide to using a bar inventory app. Your commitment to streamlining operations guarantees enhanced profitability and success in the world of hospitality.

With Wisk.ai, our user-friendly platform empowers you to optimize stock levels, reduce waste, and enhance profitability. From real-time insights to customizable reports, Wisk provides the tools you need to elevate your bar operations. Revolutionize your bar management today with Wisk's comprehensive software.

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