Bar Cop takes files from your POS, your timeclock, your bank and your vendors. It is the same drop box every time, on every screen that accepts one, and it behaves identically everywhere. Learn it once.

What you can drop

CSV, XLSX and XLS. Export from your POS however it comes out and drop it as is. You do not need a template, a particular column order, or a particular set of columns.

• Semicolon files work. Excel writes semicolon CSVs in most of Europe and Latin America. Bar Cop reads the header line and works out the separator itself.
• A tab file saved as .csv works. Same reason.
• Headers do not have to be on row one. Plenty of exports put a title and a date range above them. Bar Cop finds the header row, and if it gets it wrong you can tell it which row to use.

Three steps, every time

1. Drop the file. Drag it onto the box or click to browse.
2. Check the columns. Bar Cop matches your headers to its own fields and shows you what it matched.
3. Confirm. You get a full list of what the file holds and what will happen to each row, and one button. Nothing is written until you press it.

Checking the columns

The mapper only shows the fields it actually matched, plus anything it must have from you. It deliberately does not show you a wall of dropdowns reading "(skip)", because that reads as "these are handled" and nobody looks twice at them.

This is the line to read. If your file has a column that nothing in Bar Cop is reading, the mapper names that column out loud. That is the one thing worth checking every time, because a column you meant to import and Bar Cop did not recognise is the only way a drop goes quietly wrong. Point the right field at it and carry on.

Anything else can be corrected here too. Every dropdown lists your file's real column names, so if the auto-match put a header on the wrong field, change it.

The confirm screen

This is the step that makes a bad drop harmless. Before anything is saved you see a row per item and what will happen to it:

• what is being added
• what is already there and will be updated
• what is already in your book and will be left alone
• what Bar Cop could not read, named so you can go and look at it

The button counts what will actually land, so the number on it is the number you get. If nothing will land, the button is off.

Dropping the same file twice is safe

Re-dropping is a normal thing to do, not a mistake. A row that is already in your book is recognised and left where it is, and each existing record can only be matched once, so a file that genuinely lists the same day twice still comes in correctly. If you fix a cell in your export and re-drop it, the corrected value updates the record rather than creating a second one.

It remembers the mapping

Once you have mapped a file format, Bar Cop keeps it against that format's header signature. Drop next week's export from the same report and the columns are already set. The saved mappings live on your account, not the machine, so they follow you to a different computer or the tablet behind the bar.

Where you will meet it

The same box handles sales, hours, tips, drawer counts, voids and comps, products, vendors, staff, menu items, bank and expense files, and more. Closing your week is mostly this box, four times.

One thing a file cannot do. An hours file only lands for people already on your roster, and a name Bar Cop does not recognise is reported rather than invented. Adding a person from a timeclock export once meant duplicate staff that fixed nothing, so the roster stays something you control. A drawer report is the exception: it can offer to create the registers it names.