How to run Bar Cop.

Step-by-step guides for every part of the app. Keep this open in a second window while you work, so you can follow along on your own screen.

Manage your team and access

Bar Cop is an owner and manager tool, not an employee app. Nobody on the floor logs in. The people you invite are your other management and your bookkeeper, and you decide which parts of the operation each of them can reach.

Two roles

  • Admin. Your GM. Everything operational, plus managing the team. Never billing.
  • Staff. Access to the areas you grant them, and nothing else.

Above both sits the owner, which is not a role you assign from the list. The owner is whoever the bar belongs to, and only the owner sees the subscription, billing and past invoices, adds another bar, or reaches Data and Backup. That last one is deliberate: a restore replaces the whole account, so a restricted admin must never be able to run one.

Ownership can be transferred, and there is a button for it. There is no way to accidentally remove or demote an owner.

Access follows the sections in your sidebar

You grant the parts of the business a person works in, and the list you are granting from is the same list of sections you see on the rail: Inventory, The Week, Run Audit, The Floor, Menus, Events and Books. It is built from the rail itself rather than kept as a separate list, so a section can never appear here that is not in the app, and a live one can never be missing.

You can go finer than a whole section

Tick Full Access to hand over everything in a section, or tick only the menu links that person should have. Anything left unticked is hidden from them, on the Hub and in the menus, rather than shown and refused. Nobody spends their shift clicking things that tell them no.

There is no read-only setting, on purpose. A link somebody can open is a link they can use. A manager who can see your food cost but cannot log a count is not doing a job.

Nothing is pre-ticked

Every section starts at No Access on a new invite. It means a fresh invite needs a minute of setting up, and it means you never accidentally hand somebody your books because a default was helpful.

Your kitchen manager gets Inventory and the parts of The Floor that cover scheduling and hours. Your bar manager gets Inventory, The Week, and the drawer and checklists on The Floor. Your bookkeeper gets Books and nothing else. Trust is per person rather than per job title, so there are no presets to fight.

An admin can only grant what they have

If you let an admin manage the team, they can only give away what they hold themselves. An admin without Books cannot grant Books to anyone. Access cannot be widened by somebody who does not have it.

Inviting someone

Invite by email. They get a link, set their own password, and land in your bar with exactly what you granted. You can change someone's role or their access at any time, and remove them.

More than one bar

Each bar is its own Bar Cop account with its own data and its own audits. Sign in once and a switcher appears in the top bar showing every bar you belong to. Pick one and the whole app swaps to it: the Hub, audits, targets, products, vendors, rosters, all of it.

Nothing is shared between bars by default. Every record is per bar, which is the honest model for two places that really are two businesses.

  • Each bar is its own subscription. Add one from Your Account, under Multiple Locations, and a checkout opens for it.
  • The switcher appears once you have two. The active bar is remembered, so you land where you left off.
  • There is no combined view. Compare bars by reading the same figure on each, or export the Month-End Books for each and line them up in one sheet.

What a member never sees

Billing and the subscription are owner-only, always. Data and Backup is owner-only. And anything set to No Access is hidden rather than shown and refused.

Team Members and Your Account both live in Settings. Tap the i in the top bar on either for the directions.

Still need a hand? Use the app settings / support contact form.