Inventory is where your money sits on shelves. Counting is what turns your sales into a real cost of goods, and everything else in this section either feeds that count or reads what it found.

What it is for

Your POS knows what you sold. It does not know what left the building. The gap between those two is your pour cost, your variance, and most of the money a bar loses without noticing. Counting closes the gap.

One count a week is enough. Bar Cop will never tell you how often to count, because plenty of bars count fortnightly or monthly by choice, but it will refuse to price a week off counts that do not actually span it rather than quietly booking a month of usage onto one week.

The weekly loop

1. Take a count. Walk your locations in your own order and enter what is on the shelf.
2. Order to par. The Order Sheet turns that count into what to buy, by vendor.
3. Receive the delivery. Log what actually turned up against what you ordered and what you were charged.
4. Read what it found. Usage tells you what you burned. Variance tells you what left without being sold.

That is the whole cycle. Everything else in the section is either setup you do once or a log you fill as things happen.

What it feeds

• Cost of goods on Close The Week, worked out from your counts rather than typed.
• Prime cost, which is cost of goods plus labor, and the number that says whether the week paid.
• The Profit Audit, which scores your pour cost and your variance discipline.
• Your Cash Audit, which reads how hard the money on your shelves is working.

Set these up once

Set Locations

The places you keep product: your bars, coolers and storerooms. Set the order you count in so counting follows your real walk around the bar instead of a random list. Do this before your first count and the count is half as long.

Add Products

Your master product list, with cost and pour size. This is what lets Bar Cop work out your pour cost and value your shelf. It is the biggest setup job in the app and the one worth doing at a desk.

List Vendors

Who you buy from, with their order minimums and delivery days, so the Order Sheet can group what to buy and tell you when you are under a minimum.

Prep Batches

The things you make in-house from other products: a margarita mix, simple syrup, a marinara base. Set one up and counting the batch draws down the ingredients behind it.

The weekly screens

Take Inventory

A snapshot of everything on hand right now, priced out, so Bar Cop can tell you what you used, what to reorder and where you are leaking. Built for a phone or a tablet on the cart.

Receive Delivery

Logs what actually showed up against what you ordered and what you got charged. This is where short deliveries and price rises get caught, at the dock, while you can still do something about it.

Spot Check

A fast theft and overpour check on a few high-risk products for one shift. It is a two-sitting job: counts before service, counts and the POS numbers after.

Ordering

Order Sheet

Turns your latest count into orders, by vendor. It reads your position rather than a raw shelf count, so stock that has already landed since your count is credited and you do not order it twice.

Dynamic Pars

A par is the amount you want on hand for a product. Dynamic Pars works out what your pars should be from what you actually use, so your order sheet stops being built on numbers somebody guessed once.

Purchasing

Buying against using, across your recent count periods. Buy more than you use and the difference is cash sitting on your shelf. It reads over a few weeks rather than one, so a slow delivery week does not look like a problem and a habit of buying ahead shows up before it ties up real money.

It also breaks your holding down into weeks on hand by category. Around two to three weeks is healthy for most bars, and the table shows where the cash is parked, the weekly burn, and how far each category sits over target, so you know which order to tighten first.

Vendors

Scorecard

Reads off your deliveries: how often you order from each vendor, what you spend, the average order, the terms you have on file, and what it costs to bring their items to par this week. Use it to consolidate to fewer fuller orders and to get more vendors onto terms. Both keep cash in your account longer.

Price Changes

What your vendors have quietly done to your costs. A price rise that nobody catches at the dock becomes a pour cost problem three weeks later with no obvious cause.

Discrepancies

Short counts, overcharges, substitutions and damaged goods, with the credits you are owed. The point is that they get resolved rather than aging, and the Operations Audit scores you on exactly that.

The reports

Usage Report

What you actually burned through between two counts. This is the raw truth your cost of goods is built on.

Variance Report

The leak detector. What left without being sold, priced. If you read one report in this section, read this one.

Trapped Cash

What is sitting on your shelves that should not be, in dollars. Two kinds, and each product counts once as whichever it is. Dead stock is product that did not move at all between your last two counts, so its full value is cash standing still and a spoilage risk. Overstock is product held above its par, where the cash in the extra is money you spent ahead of needing to.

For dead stock, move it: feature it, put it on a special, work it into a cocktail, or eighty-six it and stop reordering. For overstock, cut the par so you stop buying ahead of your real usage.

One thing worth knowing: a delivery does not move your on-hand until you count it, so a bar that keeps taking trucks in without recounting can be holding stock this page cannot see. Bar Cop folds a delivery in once it has sat a while with no count, and the row shows the working. A truck that came in this week is stock you bought for the weekend, not cash you are stuck with.

Stock Report

What you are holding and what it is worth, taken from one of your counts. Useful for a lender, an insurer or your own read on how much cash is on the shelf.

The logs

Voids / Comps Log and Waste / Spill Log

Product that was rung and cancelled, given away, or lost. Both feed your variance, and both are the difference between a number you can explain and a gap you cannot.

Transfer Log

Every time product moves between your locations, like stockroom to the front bar. Keeps each location's count honest.

Adjustment Log

Stock that left or came back outside a normal sale: damage in storage, confirmed theft, expiry, or stock you found that was never counted. Logging it is what stops it showing up as variance you cannot explain.

Empties Log

Empty containers as you clear them, like spent kegs, bottles and cans. Required by law in some states for deposit redemption.

The records

Count History, Delivery History and Order History are the record of every count you have finalised, every delivery you have received and every order you have created. Nothing is typed in them.

A count is tagged Booked once a confirmed week ends on or after its date. The cost of goods in that week was priced off it, so a booked count loses its Delete button. You can still edit it. Save the change and Bar Cop names every confirmed week whose cost of goods actually moves, with the real before and after, and you choose whether those weeks take the corrected figures.

Every screen in this section has its own step-by-step directions in the app. Open the screen and tap the i in the top bar.