Stopping the leak: how one hotel bar traced $180K in vanishing margin

Recorded sales looked normal. Margins kept falling anyway. Here’s how point-of-sale exception reporting found the leak — and what changed after.

Partner Contribution

$180K

Estimated annual margin recovered after controls went live.

90 Days

From engagement start to fully operating exception reporting.

2 Controls

Price-override flags and prepaid-check reconciliation, both automated.

The situation

F&B margins were eroding steadily even though recorded sales volume looked normal, and management couldn’t pinpoint the cause. Monthly P&Ls showed the trend clearly; nothing in the standard reporting explained it.

What we found

Premium items were being rung up at lower prices, and misapplied prepaid checks were quietly draining margin at the point of sale — small enough per transaction to stay under the radar of standard monthly reporting, but consistent enough to add up.

What we did

We implemented point-of-sale exception reporting and reconciliation controls that flag price overrides and prepaid-check misuse in real time, closing the leakage and giving management a way to catch it going forward instead of after the fact.

We knew something was off in the numbers. We just couldn’t see it until someone knew where to look.

— General Manager, client property

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