What Is Peg Billing? (And Why Bottle-Level Stock Tracking Isn't Enough)

If you've ever done a bottle count at closing and found the numbers "roughly" match — roughly being the operative word — you already understand the problem peg billing solves.

Bottle-level tracking vs. peg-level tracking

Most billing and inventory software, even good general-purpose POS systems, track liquor the same way they'd track a can of soda: one bottle sold, one bottle deducted from stock. That works fine for a retail shop selling sealed bottles. It does not work for a bar, because a bar isn't selling bottles — it's selling pours.

A standard 750ml bottle yields somewhere between 12 and 25 pegs depending on your pour size (30ml, 60ml, or a custom measure). If your software only deducts stock when a whole bottle is marked "sold" or "opened," you have no real-time visibility into what's actually happening at the counter between the moment a bottle is opened and the moment it's finished. That gap is exactly where over-pouring, under-billing, and straightforward theft hide.

Peg billing closes that gap. Every peg sold is billed individually and deducts the correct fraction of a bottle from stock immediately — not at bottle-close, not at end of day, but at the moment of sale.

Why this matters more than it sounds like

• Variance becomes visible fast — if expected stock (pegs billed) and actual stock (physical count) start drifting, you see it within a shift, not at month-end.
• Staff behaviour changes when they know it's tracked this precisely. Most shrinkage isn't dramatic theft — it's small, repeated under-pours or unbilled pegs that add up over a month.
• It's the only way excise numbers actually reconcile. Bottle-level tracking gives you an approximation; peg-level tracking gives you the real number.

What to check before you trust a "stock management" claim

Ask directly: does this system deduct stock at the peg, or at the bottle? Many products that market themselves as "liquor inventory software" are actually bottle-level tools with a stock report layered on top — useful, but not precise enough to catch the specific problem costing bar owners the most money.

HotelBarDost's Liquor Stock module deducts the correct bottle fraction automatically, every peg, every bill — with store and counter stock split, so you always know what's physically on the floor versus what's still in the store. Peg sizes run 30ml to 2,000ml. It's part of the same offline POS running on your own Windows PC, priced once at ₹17,000, no subscription.

Related: Liquor Stock & Peg Billing