Bar and lounge software for drinks stock, tabs and the nightly cash-up

In a bar, stock is cash

The countable half is simple. Crates in, empties out, and the difference should match what was sold. When it doesn't, the shortfall is a number rather than a suspicion.

The uncountable half is spirits. A bottle bought whole and sold by the tot has no natural check. Three heavy pours a night cost more over a month than the breakages everybody argues about.

None of that is fixed by watching people harder, but by having an expected figure to count against each week — so the conversation is about a gap, not about character.

How a bar runs it

1. Sell what you can countBeer, cider, soda and water are products with real stock. Record each sale and the shelf should match the app; where it doesn't, you have a figure, not a feeling.
2. Set the tot up as its own productA 750ml bottle gives about 25 tots at 30ml. Add a separate "Whisky (tot)" product, put 25 into its stock when a bottle is opened, and adjust the bottle down one.
3. Tag every sale to whoever poured itSales history filters by staff and date range, so the night splits by whoever was behind the bar, with no second book under the counter.
4. Cash up against a figureAt close the app holds what was sold and by which method. Count the drawer and the Mobile Money against it; a shortfall found tonight is a conversation.

The bar list you'll set up

Pick "Bar & lounge" at sign-up and this list is already there. Put the fast movers at the top and price by what leaves the fridge.

Whisky appears twice deliberately. The bottle you buy and the tot you sell are two products with two prices — the only way the count and the takings agree.

A week at a lounge

Breakages and written-off tabs came to UGX 480,000 — sixteen per cent of what the week kept, from two lines most bars think too small to write down.

Tabs, shifts and what PesaScope will not do

A tab is a credit sale against a named customer, on the debtors list with its age until it clears. It is not a table tab: no floor plan, no table numbers, no screen to tap a round into.

There is no shift clock either. PesaScope does not track hours worked or tell you who came in late. It tags every sale to whoever recorded it, so takings per person come from the records.

And it cannot measure a pour. A generous hand turning 25 tots into 22 costs three tots a bottle; at UGX 8,000 a tot across forty bottles a week that is UGX 960,000 which never shows as theft, only as spirits costing too much.

Where a bar leaks

1. The tab that never got a nameA group leaves, somebody says they will settle tomorrow, and nobody wrote down who. Recorded as credit it is collectable; recorded nowhere it is a donation.
2. Staff drinks and the owner's roundsBoth are normal and need recording. Left out, they turn every stock count into an argument nobody can win.

Read further

Questions bars ask