To get the most out of your Smartbar system, maintaining your inventory and using the product management widget is key. If the product management widget is properly used, you will be set to receive accurate reports, can monitor brand performance and get insights that can help optimize your business. While the product management widget is important, it is just as essential to be able to confidently review and understand your yield data. Knowing what each variance represents and setting up alerts to automatically get a variance report will greatly help optimize your system.
Alerts
It is recommended to set up an automatic alert for a variance report in order to conveniently access your insights and develop a consistent regime of reviewing your data.
To set up this subscription, go to the alert tab at the top of your dashboard.
In the email reports widget, go to the location tab. Select report type, the report level, format and the time the data should be exported. One done click add. If you need to unsubscribe or change the time, do so then click update.
Read & React
There are two types of variances, positive and negative (refer to this article for more info). A positive variance is a gain in the amount of beer sold vs the amount that was poured while a negative variance reflects a loss in the amount sold vs poured.
The most common reason for a variance to be positive is due to staff underpouring or incorrect PLU’s.
In this report, there are a few locations that are showing zero poured but a large sold margin. This is an indicator that we want to take a closer look using the yield tracker, and drill down by brand to see what may be the root cause. At first glance, my immediate thought is that the wrong PLU was used but there are some other possibilities as well. A flow meter not reporting properly or connection issues with the bev box are both viable options to our positive variance.
In the yield tracker, we can click on a day with a positive variance to clarify that there are a range of brands that were sold but no pour data was captured. Check the product PLU’s on Smartbar compared to the POS, consult with the staff member(s) during the timeframe in question to find out, or feel free to reach out to support@beerboard.com for assistance.
Negative variances, as mentioned before, are when there is a higher pour amount when compared to the amount sold. A common reason for this is improper pouring or not completing the transaction. Notice in the report locations with large pour-to-sold variances.
Let’s refer to the yield tracker for a closer look.
Friday has the largest variance and is what we saw on the report. Around 4pm we see over 600 ounces were poured but never rang up which makes me believe at that time, it wasn’t necessarily a improper pour but there was a line cleaning that day and the line cleaning function was never turned on. Alternative reasons for a negative variance range from missing PLU’s or the POS gateway was down.
Conduct your own due diligence to find the root cause and as always, if you need assistance getting to the bottom of a variance, reach out to support.