Counting what is left after the event

How an organiser counts leftover drinks and merchandise after an event, compares it with what the tills sold and explains the gap before stock goes home.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Events businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

The morning after a festival, the back-of-house tent looks like a jumble sale: half-empty crates of cider, cartons of caps in the wrong sizes, a cooler box of melted ice and something sticky on every surface. Everyone wants to load the truck and go home. That is the moment the stock count gets skipped, and it is the one moment you can still find out what happened to the stock.

A count after the event answers a single question: does what is left, plus what the tills sold, add up to what went out? This article walks through doing that count in Achekam, explaining the gap, and getting the value of any loss into the books properly.

Expected stock: what went out, less what the tills sold

Start from what the system already knows. With the Warehousing add-on, the venue can be its own stock location with a quantity on hand for each product. Everything you moved there before the event is in that quantity.

Each till sale then took the sold quantity off stock in the same step, at the till's own location. So, provided every bar and stand at the venue sold from a till opened at that location, the quantity the system shows for the venue now is your expected leftover stock: opening quantity, less everything sold.

Two things can make that expected figure unreliable before you even count:

• Sales rung up at the wrong location. A till opened at your main store instead of the venue takes stock off the store. Check which location each till used.
• Negative stock. A till refuses to sell below what is on hand unless the business allows negative stock. If you switched that on to keep queues moving, some products may now show less than nothing, which means stock arrived at the venue that was never recorded as going there.

The count sets the quantity and records the difference

With the Warehousing add-on, a stock count sets the location's quantity to what was counted and records the difference as an adjustment. That is the right tool, but it overwrites the expected figure, so capture the comparison first. A sound routine for the morning after:

1. Write down the expected quantity for every product at the venue location before anyone starts counting.
2. Count in pairs: one person counts, one writes. Count before anything is loaded onto the truck.
3. Count sealed cases and loose units separately, then convert to units.
4. Recount any line where the difference looks large before you record it.
5. Record the count, so each product's quantity becomes what is physically there and the difference is kept as an adjustment.
6. Only then move the leftovers back to the store, by transfer from the venue location.

AccountingTools sets out a fuller inventory count procedure, from preparing count tags to the checks after counting; for an event, the same discipline applies on a smaller scale and a tighter clock.

The Z reports as the sales side

Each till's Z report, frozen at cash-up and available as a PDF, is the sales record you compare against. When the business day was closed by a supervisor who did not work a till that night, the Z reports, payments, VAT by rate and differences for that day were frozen too, so the sales side of the comparison cannot shift after the fact.

Line up the evidence for each stand:

A stand whose takings look healthy but whose stock difference is large deserves a closer look than one where both are small.

Differences to investigate

Not every missing can is theft. Work through the usual causes before drawing conclusions:

• Breakage and spills. Ask bar managers to keep broken bottles in a crate rather than in the bin, so they can be counted.
• Complimentary stock. Drinks for crew, artists and sponsors' guests are real costs. Use a signed comp sheet at each bar so they are recorded as they are given.
• Sponsor product. Stock a sponsor supplied free may have been mixed with your own. Keep it in a separate location next time.
• Short deliveries. If the transfer to the venue was short, the difference started before the gates opened. With Warehousing, a short delivery on a transfer is recorded as wastage; check whether it was.
• Unrung sales. Cash taken without a sale on the till leaves stock missing and takings low. This is where comparing stands helps.
• Counting errors. Cases miscounted as units, or two products swapped. A recount usually settles these.

Write down the explanation you settle on for each large difference. It is the evidence your accountant will ask for.

Valuing a write-off with your accountant

Here the system stops short, and it is important to know where. Stock counts, wastage, transfers and opening quantities do not post to the general ledger. Only till sales and till returns move the inventory account. After your count, the quantities on hand are right, but the inventory value in your books still includes the missing stock.

Cost of sales on each till sale uses the single cost price typed on the product, so that same cost price is a sensible starting point for valuing the loss. Agree the figure with your accountant and post it as a manual journal, for example moving the value from inventory to a stock losses or comps expense account. A journal must balance and cannot be dated in a closed month, so do it before the event's month is closed.

Before the truck leaves

Count first, explain the large differences, then transfer the leftovers back and hand the write-off figure to your accountant. Next time, plan the counts into the load-out schedule rather than squeezing them in. The steps for moving stock out and back again are in moving stock to the venue and back, and if any till traded offline, read selling when the venue signal drops before you compare figures, because unsent sales have not yet taken stock off.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.