Partender Alternative

Partender is a tap-to-count bar inventory app. Bar Cop counts inventory just as fully and just a fast too, then includes everything else your bar needs to run the back office if you want to use it.

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Side By Side

What each one actually covers.

	Partender	Bar Cop
Beverage inventory and pour cost	Yes	Yes
How you count	Tap the level, no scale	Fill sliders, no scale
Recipe and drink costing	Yes	Yes
Purchasing and ordering	Yes	Yes
Value on hand and variance	Yes	Yes
Labor, scheduling, tips, overtime	—	Yes
Shift cash, over and short, voids, comps	—	Yes
Weekly close: sales, labor and cost of goods together	—	Yes
Audits that score you and price what they find	—	Four, on demand
Menu engineering and pricing	—	Full
13-week cash flow forecast	—	Yes
Events and catering	—	Yes
Weekly and month-end books, P&L	Stock value only	Full books
Where it runs	Mobile app and web	Any browser, nothing to install
Works with your POS	POS integrations	Any POS, drop the export
Built for	Bar inventory and ordering	The whole independent back office

Partender's plans and features change over time. This compares the two on what each is built to do, based on Partender's publicly listed information. Check their site for their current details.

The Real Comparison

It's not really accounting.

Partender counts by tapping the level on a picture of the bottle, a clean visual count, no scale, the same idea as Bar Cop's slider. Where it gets loose is the word accounting. What Partender calls accounting is the value of the liquor sitting on your shelves. It tells you what your stock is worth. It does not close a month, reconcile a drawer, or run a P&L. That is Bar Cop.

That other kind of accounting, the books of the business, is a different job. Labor, shift cash, the weekly close, the audits, cash flow, events, and month-end books all sit on top of the same inventory count inside Bar Cop, for one price. Partender counts your bottles. Bar Cop counts them and runs the office around them.

Count One Yourself

Count more than the bar.

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Straight Answers

Bar Cop vs Partender questions.

What operators ask when they are deciding between the two.

Does Partender do the books?

It gives you the value of the stock on your shelf, which is not the same thing. Your books are what the business made and spent. Bar Cop closes the week and produces the P&L, with the stock value inside it.

How does Partender count inventory?

You tap where the level sits on the bottle, no scale needed. Bar Cop uses a fill slider to the hundredth of a bottle or keg, which is the same idea. Neither one asks you to buy hardware.

Does Partender do labor or shift cash?

No. Partender is bar inventory and ordering. Labor and scheduling, shift cash, voids and comps, the weekly close, the audits, the cash flow forecast, events and the books are all Bar Cop.

Can Partender price my menu?

It costs your drinks, which tells you what one costs to pour. Bar Cop takes it the rest of the way, ranking items by what they actually make you and showing the price that hits your target.

What is stock value versus a P&L?

Stock value is what is sitting on your shelf right now. A P&L is what the business earned and spent over the period. You need the first to get the second right, but the first on its own is not accounting.

Is Partender enough to run a bar?

For counting liquor, it does its job. Running a bar also means labor, the drawer, what your pour cost is doing, the cash coming in, the events on the calendar and the books at month end, and that is the rest of Bar Cop.

Is Bar Cop as good as Partender at inventory itself?

Judge it on that alone. Bar Cop counts a bar as a complete program and not a lite version: fill sliders, par levels, order sheets, deliveries, usage, variance, vendor price changes and waste, with the reports included rather than sold as a tier.

Can I move off Partender without losing my history?

Your product list comes across as a file: export it and drop it in rather than typing hundreds of lines. Counts start fresh, because your first count in Bar Cop is the baseline everything after it is measured against.

Does Partender forecast my cash?

No. It counts and values what is on the shelf today. A 13-week forecast is money in against money out across a quarter, so you can see which week runs thin while there is still time to do something about it.

Bar Cop or Partender for one independent bar?

Bar Cop, because one bar is exactly who it is built for. No per-seat charge for your managers, no tier that unlocks the reports, and no part of it aimed at a group with a back-office team you do not have.