It’s happened often enough that it’s surprising when it doesn’t happen.  I’m talking about a new TavernTrak customer’s “ah hah!” moment.

We’ve gotten TavernTrak configured uniquely for your bar.  This was easy because TavernTrak is designed to be flexible and conform to your bar, not the other way around.

• All of the Products you sell from behind your bars have been added to TavernTrak’s database
• Their Registers have been configured to reflect the type of POS system you’re using
• The items (buttons) on your POS system have been added and mapped to Products (both the single-liquor variety as well as the multi-liquor shots)
• Your bar’s stations have been configured to reflect distinct Pools of inventory and the Registers that map to each of those Pools

Yesterday, we “initialized” each Pool to determine the inventory levels of each Product at each of your bar’s stations.

Depending upon the type of POS system you’re using, sales were either auto-imported into TavernTrak in the wee-morning hours or they are manually imported.  So now we have what was sold at each station.

Today, we’re doing our first “comparative” inventory — where we’re comparing what is present in each bottle today against what was present in each bottle yesterday – the difference being what TavernTrak calls “Usage”.

Our “comparative” inventory involves inventorying every bottle – it’ll take a little longer than six seconds per Product to start, because you’re new at this, but it won’t be long until six seconds per Product is typical.  Under the watchful eye of TavernTrak – which ensures that no bottle is skipped, double-counted or not weighed – TavernTrak goes to work and within seconds generates a “Usage vs. Sales” Report that shows, on a Product-by-Product basis, the quantity (and number of servings) that got poured out of each bottle of liquor, compared with the number of servings sold, as reflected in the sales data for the station.

TavernTrak’s Usage vs. Sales Report – comparing the calculated number of servings poured against the the number of servings SOLD.

Now fair warning, the first Usage vs. Sales Report will not usually show so much green or yellow.  There’s going to be a lot of red.  A lot of red.

But here’s where you’re going to have your “ah hah!” moment:  it’s now evident – in black and white (or rather, in red, yellow and green!) – how the investment you’ve just made in TavernTrak is going to pay for itself (over and over and over again).  Because now, you’ve got at your disposal the means by which to objectively determine how accurately your bartenders are pouring.  Your bartenders may not (or they may!) know how much they’re over-pouring – but by sharing this report’s data with them, they will.  And you will too.

TavernTrak can be configured to automatically e-mail this report to the server who worked at the station the previous shift, so letting your bartenders know that you’re watching and that they should pay attention isn’t just automatic, it’s also part of your bar’s process to ensure that your bartenders are pouring what they sell and selling what they pour.

That “ah hah!” moment is a lot of fun for me, because I feel like I’m empowering a bar’s owner – you – to really manage their bar’s financial health.