Four controls repeat across the whole app. Once you know these, every screen you have not opened yet is already half familiar.

Tabs

A row of underlined words across the top of a card, with the live one underlined in colour. Tabs split one screen's content into views. They do not filter anything and they do not change your data. Around twenty screens use them.

The one thing worth knowing: when you export a tabbed report, you get the tab you are looking at, and the tab name goes into the filename. Save each one and they do not overwrite each other.

Mode toggles

A pair of buttons where a screen can do the same job two ways. The usual pair is import a file or enter it by hand. Picking one swaps the panel under it and nothing else. Nine screens work this way, and it is always a choice of route, never a filter.

Filter chips

Small rounded buttons in a row. The active one is filled and bolder, the rest are outlined. Chips narrow what a list is showing you, and they are single select: one is always on, and picking another replaces it rather than adding to it. Nearly thirty screens carry them.

There is almost always an All chip. If a list looks short, that is the first thing to check.

Date ranges

Around twenty screens let you set a window. The presets mean exactly this, and it is worth reading once because two of them are not what people assume:

• This Week runs Monday to today. Bar Cop's week is Monday to Sunday everywhere, including your closed weeks.
• Last Week is the whole of the previous Monday to Sunday.
• This Month is the first of the month to today.
• Last 4 Weeks is the last 28 days ending today, not the last four calendar weeks. So it is a rolling window and it usually starts mid week.
• Last 12 Weeks is the same idea, 84 days ending today.
• All Time removes the window entirely.

A rolling window moves every day. Open the same report tomorrow on Last 4 Weeks and it covers a different 28 days, so the total will have shifted even if you changed nothing. That is correct behaviour, not a number that will not sit still. When you need a figure that holds, use a closed week or a month.

Money Out uses months, not weeks

The one exception, and it is deliberate. All Money Out is an accounting page, so its chips are This Month, Last Month, Year to Date, Last 12 Months and All Time. There, Last 12 Months really is twelve months, because a column headed for an accounting period should never be filled by a rolling window of weeks. Everywhere else, a range of weeks means weeks.

Custom dates

Where a screen offers From and To boxes, they win over the presets and take whatever you type. Use them for a specific stretch, like a single event week or the range your accountant asked about.

What filtering never does

Nothing in this guide changes your data. A chip, a tab, a preset and a custom range are all just ways of asking Bar Cop to show you a slice. Nothing is deleted, hidden permanently, or excluded from a calculation somewhere else because you set a chip on one screen.

The one thing that carries is convenience: on a screen with several tabs, the range you set follows you across them, so you do not have to set it again on every tab.