Brewery Delivery Note Bookkeeping for UK Pubs

Brewery delivery note bookkeeping starts with one simple rule: every signed brewery note should become spreadsheet rows that preserve the supplier, delivery date, beer line, keg or cask identifier, container size, ABV, quantity, deposit line, and any empties movement. Those are the fields that let a UK pub turn a draught beer delivery note into spreadsheet rows that are still useful at week end, when the cellar needs checking against purchases, and at month end, when the books need posting without guessing what happened on delivery day.

Pub paperwork carries operational reality the supplier invoice never will: signed-in-pen amendments, keg swaps, empties returned on a separate visit, container deposits, and the cellar-language detail (50-litre keg, 4.1% ABV, fulls vs empties) that drives how the books treat the row. A spreadsheet that preserves those fields at receipt lets the pub reconcile the cellar back to purchases, keep refundable deposits out of beer cost, and sense-check duty-related lines before they disappear into a month-end total.

The keg and cask fields that matter in the cellar

The useful spreadsheet is not a copy of the document header. It is a capture of the fields that explain what the pub can now sell, what it still owes deposits on, and what needs checking when the invoice arrives. For a keg delivery note captured in Excel, the minimum useful row usually includes:

• Supplier and document reference: brewery name, delivery date, note number, and later the supplier invoice reference if it is added during reconciliation.
• Beer line details: product or brand name, pack type, and whether the line is cask or keg.
• Container identity and size: keg barcode or cask ID as the first-class line identifier, plus the declared size such as 30-litre keg, 50-litre keg, or the relevant cask format.
• Movement fields: quantity of fulls delivered and empties collected on the same visit.
• Commercial and duty context: ABV, unit price, deposit line, and any visible relief or discount marker.
• Cellar-life controls: best-before date or shelf-life expiry where the supplier paperwork shows it, so the row is useful for cellar checks as well as bookkeeping.
• Exceptions: short-delivery notes, substitutions, damaged containers, or handwritten amendments.

Keg barcode or cask ID is the line-level identifier that matters most. If a short-delivery dispute arrives weeks later, matching by memory rather than by reference number is how disputes get lost. Container size and ABV belong alongside it: both affect what can be compared across deliveries and whether a later duty-related line looks plausible.

Fulls and empties stay in separate columns because a delivery that drops two full kegs and collects one empty is recording two different movements. Rekeying it later as a single net quantity erases the deposit logic and the cellar control. Where the note carries handwritten amendments, short-delivery marks, swapped brands, or fade-prone thermal-paper shortages, capture them on receipt — once the paper is filed they rarely get reconstructed accurately.

One compact schema is enough for most pubs:

Column	Why it stays in the sheet
Delivery date, supplier, note number, invoice number	Ties the row back to the source document and later invoice
Beer line, keg barcode or cask ID, container size, ABV	Identifies exactly what arrived and preserves the duty-relevant fields
Fulls delivered, empties collected, short-delivery note	Shows stock movement as it actually happened in the cellar
Unit price, deposit, draught or SPR flag	Separates commercial value from refundable charges and pricing context
Best-before or shelf-life expiry, invoice matched, credit expected	Keeps the row useful for cellar review and month-end follow-up

The weekly routine is simple: the delivery goes into the sheet the same day it is received, shortages and substitutions are marked while the signed note is still in hand, empties are logged against the same supplier visit, and the brewery invoice is checked back to the received-goods record rather than posted straight from the invoice total. That is exactly the discipline behind matching supplier invoices to delivery notes, but in a pub the received-goods side needs cellar detail rather than a generic warehouse line count. Snacks, soft drinks, or back-bar items from wholesalers belong in a separate Booker and Bestway bookkeeping workflow; wine lists need a parallel sheet for turning wine merchant invoices into a cost-per-pour spreadsheet, since case packs and vintage detail do not fit cleanly into a keg-and-cask sheet.

Keep keg deposits and empties out of beer cost

This is the accounting point that most pub-bookkeeping content skips. A keg or cask deposit line is not the same thing as the beer you intend to sell. If the brewery paperwork mixes the two on one document and the pub posts the whole total to purchases or COGS, gross margin is immediately distorted. The deposit is refundable when the container comes back. The beer is not.

On the buyer side, the clean treatment is to separate the deposit into its own balance-sheet bucket, usually a recoverable deposit asset or a dedicated clearing account, while the beer lines go to purchases or stock. In prose, the journal logic is straightforward:

• On delivery: post beer value to purchases or inventory, post the deposit line to the separate recoverable deposit balance, and credit the supplier for the full document total.
• On return or credit: when empties go back and the supplier issues a credit, reduce that deposit balance instead of netting the credit against beer cost.

That is the practical answer behind the search for a keg deposit accounting journal entry pub workflow. The exact account names vary by chart of accounts, but the principle does not. Do not expense a refundable container charge as if it were liquid in the keg.

The same logic helps when supplier statements are reviewed later. If deposits have been tracked separately all month, the pub can see which balances relate to containers still on site, which ones should have cleared on an empties return, and which ones need chasing because the credit has not appeared. If everything was posted to beer cost, that visibility disappears.

This is why the spreadsheet needs both a deposit column and an empties or return field. In real pub operations, deliveries and container returns rarely line up neatly on the same day. Deposits can sit on the books for weeks if empties are returned on the next run, on a partial collection, or after a disputed shortage is resolved. If the cellar sheet tracks that movement as it happens, month-end bookkeeping becomes a review of balances already visible in the data rather than an argument over what part of the supplier total was actually beer.

Sense-check draught duty, SPR, and tied-pub invoice lines

The pub is not calculating the brewery's Alcohol Duty return, but it still needs the supplier document to be reviewable. That is why ABV, container size, and any relief marker belong in the spreadsheet. According to HMRC's draught alcohol duty guidance, draught alcoholic products qualify for the reduced Alcohol Duty rate only if they are under 8.5% ABV and in containers of at least 20 litres that connect to a pump system or gas-pressurised drinks tap. For bookkeeping purposes, that makes ABV and container size control fields, not optional notes.

The aim is not to recreate HMRC calculations. It is to preserve enough detail that the reader can ask sensible questions when a supplier line looks odd. If a document shows draught treatment on a product outside those conditions, or if the packaging field is missing entirely, the bookkeeper has a reason to query the paperwork before it disappears into a month-end total. HMRC also updated the draught-duty guidance and rates on 1 February 2026, which is another reason not to hard-code old assumptions into a static template.

In practice, this means flagging the points that explain price or duty treatment without turning the sheet into a tax-return model. A simple yes or no field for draught-rate indicated, an SPR note, and a comments field for tied-house adjustments is usually enough. The value is that the line can be reviewed later by someone who did not physically receive the stock.

Small Producer Relief sits in the same category of useful document context. The pub is not claiming the relief itself, but a qualifying small brewer may reflect that relief in the way pricing or line descriptions appear on the invoice. Keeping an SPR flag or note column helps the bookkeeper explain price differences across suppliers without turning the sheet into a brewery-tax model.

Tied-pub paperwork needs the same caution. A discount or adjustment on a tied-house invoice may be part of the tenancy economics rather than an ordinary product-price cut, especially where SCORFA or related tied terms affect how the document is presented. The bookkeeping job is to preserve the line as shown, flag anything unusual, and check the tenancy paperwork or adviser guidance before recoding it as normal beer margin. If the issue is wholesaler legitimacy rather than line-level invoice interpretation, deal with that separately through AWRS URN verification for alcohol wholesalers.

Turn signed brewery paperwork into finance-usable rows

Brewery paperwork is signed in the yard, corrected at the cellar door, and sometimes printed on paper that fades before the month-end file is opened again. Capture discipline matters more than spreadsheet design: if the pub records the same defined fields on receipt, bookkeeping later becomes checking and posting rather than rekeying and guessing.

Tools that extract supplier paperwork into spreadsheets help with the manual entry. Invoice Data Extraction lets users upload PDF or image documents, describe the columns they want in a prompt, and receive structured output in Excel, CSV, or JSON, with source file and page references so a crossed-out quantity or unclear empties line can still be checked against the original document. The operator still decides which columns define the brewery workflow and how deposits are tracked — the tool's role is to return structured rows consistently from messy paperwork, not to replace the accounting decisions. For the broader mechanics of converting delivery notes to Excel, that article covers the generic document-conversion path; for a pub cellar, the difference is that the output must preserve keg or cask identifiers, ABV, container size, empties movement, and deposit lines well enough to support the books.