The year-end inventory count at a hotel: stores, minibars, linen and equipment, step by step

A hotel year-end inventory count is one cut-off and many areas: kitchen and beverage stores, minibars, linen in circulation, amenities and technical spares, each counted by two people on blind sheets. Article 186 of the Tax Procedure Law (No. 213) defines taking inventory as determining assets, receivables and debts on the balance sheet day by counting, measuring, weighing and valuing.

At 23:40 on 31 December the dry store is counted, the bar is still serving, housekeeping has two trolleys of linen on the floors and the laundry has not returned the morning's sheets. The count will not fail because the team cannot count. It will fail because nobody fixed the hour at which counting starts and stock stops moving. This guide gives you the plan for that night: the areas, the teams, the cut-off rule, the count sheet and the order for handling differences, so the file you hand to accounting in January is one that can be checked by someone who was not there.

What does taking inventory mean under the Tax Procedure Law?#

Taking inventory is the year-end act of establishing what the business owns and owes, precisely and in detail, on the balance sheet day. Article 186 of the Tax Procedure Law (No. 213) (opens in a new tab), as published on the Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi (12 November 2026), describes it as determining assets, receivables and debts by counting, measuring, weighing and valuing them.

The article names four verbs, and they are four different jobs. Counting pieces, measuring length or volume, weighing kilos and valuing what was found are separate acts with separate owners. The first three belong to the count team; the fourth belongs to the accountant.

This division matters on the sheet itself. The count produces quantities; valuation turns quantities into money. Mixing the two on the same sheet is the most common way a count file becomes unusable later, because nobody can tell which figure was counted and which was copied from a price list.

The phrase "precisely and in detail" rules out approximations. "About forty bottles" is not a count. Forty bottles by size, with the open ones recorded separately, is. The law describes the act, not the organisation: who counts, in what order and with what paperwork is a decision the hotel makes, and it is the part this guide covers.

The count sheet is the evidence of the act. If a number is later questioned, the sheet with two signatures is what answers, not the memory of the person who counted. This guide covers the physical count only. What a shortage or a surplus does to the accounts is a separate question, answered by the accountant who sees the whole file.

Why is a hotel's year-end count not one warehouse count?#

Because a hotel's stock sits in places that move at different speeds: a dry store that barely changes, a bar that empties nightly, minibars inside sold rooms, linen in laundry circulation and spare parts in a technical room. Each needs its own counting method and its own cut-off.

Each area also has a different owner. The storekeeper owns the dry store, the bar manager owns beverage, housekeeping owns linen, the technical manager owns spares. One central count team cannot know all five, and should not try.

Each area counts in a different unit as well: kilos and litres in stores, bottles and millilitres in bars, pieces and kilos in linen, pieces in spares. A single unit column on one sheet forces conversion errors at two in the morning. And some stock is not in the building at the moment of the count: linen at the laundry, goods paid for and in transit, bottles on a service trolley. The sheet needs a line for each of these.

Operating equipment (demirbaş) is not stock. It is verified against the asset register room by room, and whether it enters the year-end inventory at all is a question for the accountant. Keep the two exercises separate.

The practical consequence is simple: one night, several sheets, several teams, one cut-off hour that all of them respect.

How do you set the date, the teams and the cut-off?#

Fix one hour on one night, stop the movements that change stock, and put two people on every sheet, one of whom does not work in that area. Everything else in the plan follows from those three decisions.

On the date: Article 186 ties the act to the balance sheet day. If the operation counts a day early or late, write down every movement between the count and that day, so the numbers can be brought forward or back. Settle this method with the accountant before the sheets are printed.

On the cut-off hour: choose a quiet hour, for example after the restaurant closes and before the night audit closes the business day, and announce it in writing to every department head. Then freeze the movements that change stock: goods receipts, store to kitchen and store to bar transfers, inter-outlet transfers, minibar postings, linen issues to the laundry, and purchases delivered straight to a department.

Document numbering closes the loop. Record the last goods receipt number and the last issue number before the cut-off. Anything numbered after it belongs to the next period, whatever the delivery note says.

On the teams: two counters per sheet, one from the area and one from outside it, with the area manager present but never counting alone. A second, blind count means the second person does not see the first number. Both counters sign, the area manager signs, and the person who enters the figures into the system signs. Four names on one sheet is not bureaucracy; it is what makes the sheet usable months later.

Hold a fifteen minute briefing the day before, with the sheets in hand, agreeing the rule for part-used bottles, open packs and stock on trolleys. If you also run the receiving side of the operation, the same document numbering logic applies there: one numbered document per delivery, checked against the order before anything reaches the storeroom.

How do you count each area without stopping the hotel?#

Count each area in its own unit, in a fixed order, and mark the stock as counted so nothing is counted twice. The hotel keeps running; only the movement of stock stops.

Kitchen and dry stores#

Count by location code rather than alphabetically, so the counter walks one route and the second counter can repeat it. Weigh or count open packs and record the pack size next to the figure. A shelf counted in the same order twice is a shelf whose two numbers can be compared.

Beverage store and bars#

The store and the bar are two sheets, not one. Count full bottles by size, record open bottles separately with a fill level, and leave the cost calculation to the monthly beverage exercise. The year-end count establishes quantities; valuation follows elsewhere.

Minibars in occupied rooms#

Count against the room's own minibar list. Rooms occupied at the cut-off hour are the hard case, and the rule must be agreed before the night, not discovered at 01:00. Either count at the cut-off hour and post all consumption up to it, or count at departure and roll the room forward; what must not happen is a room counted twice as the guest moves. The detailed mechanics are in our guide to hotel minibar control: stock, charges and late postings.

Housekeeping and linen in circulation#

Count by item type and size, and separate what is on the floors, what is dirty, what is at the laundry and what is condemned. A linen count is a par-level check as much as a stock count: the total across all locations is the number that matters, not only what is in the cupboard. Our guide to hotel linen management: par levels and laundry flow covers the circulation in detail.

Amenities and technical spares#

Count amenities in units of issue, not retail units, and record opened cases. A box of 200 slippers is a quantity, not a box. For spares, count what is on the shelf. Equipment installed in the building is checked against the asset list room by room, which is a different walk with a different sheet.

What belongs on the count sheet?#

A count sheet needs enough columns to be checked by someone who was not there: what was counted, where it was, in what unit, how much, in what condition, and who counted it.

Start with the location code and description, matched to the item code the system already uses. If the sheet and the system use different names, someone will spend January matching them by hand. Print the unit of measure and pack size on the sheet before the night, not written in by the counter; this is where most conversion errors start.

Use two count columns, the second filled blind. The two numbers are compared afterwards, and a difference triggers a third count rather than an average. Add a condition column: full, open, damaged, condemned. A damaged item is still a quantity, and hiding it in a remarks line loses it.

Leave the unit cost column for accounting, or fill it from the system's last price and clearly mark it as such, so nobody mistakes a book price for a counted one. Use one sheet per area and per location, numbered, so a missing sheet is noticed on the night and not at the audit.

What do you do with a difference, and how does it reach the books?#

Recount before you explain, explain before you record, and let accounting decide the treatment. A difference is a question until the cause is found, not an entry.

First, recount the same shelf with both counters present. A large share of differences disappear at this step, because the first count was taken from a different shelf or a different pack size. Second, check the documents: an unposted receipt, a transfer not yet entered, a minibar posting after the cut-off, a complimentary issue, a breakage nobody wrote up. Third, check the conversion: cases against units, kilos against packs, bottles against millilitres. Conversion errors look exactly like shortages on paper.

Report the difference with its paper trail, not only the number. The accountant needs the cause to decide what happens next, and a bare figure gives nothing to work with. Never adjust the system to match the sheet, or the sheet to match the system: the sheet is the evidence of what was found; the system is the record of what was expected.

How a shortage or surplus is treated in the accounts, and whether it can be written off, is the accountant's decision under the rules that apply to your company. The count team's job ends at a signed, explained sheet. Keep the signed sheets, the recount notes and the document references together in one count file, so the same questions are not reopened next December. How the figures then travel into the ledger is covered in our guide to hotel bookkeeping in Türkiye, from the guest folio to the accountant's ledger.

What to do next#

Choose the cut-off hour, write it down and print the sheets with location codes and units already on them. The count itself is one night, but everything that makes it usable, the area map, the two counters, the blind second count, the document numbers and the order for handling differences, is decided in the weeks before it.