Buy the bottle, sell the pour, count the bottle
Fast tabs at the bar, spirits tracked at a unit that is not the unit you sell, and a drawer that reconciles at close with the variance sitting against a shift rather than a month.
Old Fashioned
Cocktails
₦14,000
Negroni
Cocktails
₦15,000
Espresso Martini
Cocktails
₦16,000
Draft IPA
Draft
₦7,000
Coastal Sauvignon
Bottles
₦12,000
Bar snacks
Kitchen
₦6,500
Tab 14 · Rooftop
6 items
What the week actually looks like
None of this is a software problem yet. It is the shape of the trade, and it is what the setup below is built around.
01
Nobody can tell a heavy pour from a theft
Both show up as a bottle that emptied faster than the till says it should have, and neither has a name on it.
02
The count happens on a Sunday
Someone walks the bar with a clipboard, and by the time the number is typed up it is describing a bar that has already changed.
03
The good stuff is where the money leaks
A case of beer going missing is annoying. A bottle from the top shelf going missing is a night's margin, and it moves at the same speed.
How it runs instead
Four steps, in the order this trade meets them. Everything else is a keystroke away, not a module you buy.
- 01
Open a tab
Tabs stay open across the night, split across payments at the end, and keep working when the connection does not.
- 02
Sell in pours, count in bottles
Set the sell unit and how many go to a stock unit (sixteen pours to a bottle), and the shelf figure moves in bottles while the price is per pour.
- 03
Count what is worth counting
Bottle-level counts on high-value stock, on whatever cycle you actually keep to, with variances recorded rather than smoothed away.
- 04
Close the register
Float, drawer count and variance per shift, per bar, with the name of whoever closed it on the record.
The screens you open on
Fast tabs at the bar, tight control over spirits, and a cash drawer that reconciles at close.
- Point of Sale
- Stock
- Reports
Set at signup and changed whenever you like. It decides what you land on, not what you can reach.
- Open tabs and split payments
- Bottle-level counts on high-value stock
- Register close with variance flagged per shift
What bars & lounges usually switch on
Settings, not plans or add-ons. Turn any of them on later, or never.
- Lot numbers and expiry dates
- Received against a batch, watched by the day, and written off with a reason when they turn.
- A sell unit that isn't the stock unit
- Buy the bottle, sell the pour: sixteen to a bottle, priced per pour and counted per bottle.
- A register per site, closed per shift
- Its own float, its own drawer count, and the variance flagged against whoever closed it.
Where you trade
A busy Friday is not the night to be online
Service here does not stop because the line does. The register holds the catalogue, the prices and every open tab on the device, so tabs, splits, discounts and refunds all still work through an outage and queue in the order they were taken. Nothing is re-keyed at midnight, and the takings you read on Saturday are the ones that happened on Friday.
4 hrs → 25 min
weekly stock count
“Counting the bar used to eat my Sunday. Now it's a report I read over coffee, and it matches the shelf.”
Ada Okafor · Owner, Harbor & Vine
Questions from bars & lounges
Can I run more than one bar in a venue?
Yes. Each bar is its own location with its own stock and its own registers, and the venue figure is the sum of them.
Do staff need their own logins?
They should. A till-only role gets the register and nothing else, which is what makes a void or a discount attributable to a person.
How do part-bottles work?
Counting in pours is supported, but most bars count the bottle and accept the partial as variance. Both are honest; only one of them takes all night.
Most of you are two of these at once
A hotel is a bar, a kitchen and a shop. You never pick one and lose the rest.