Your First Week

Bar inventory, from signup to your first real numbers.

Add your products and your vendors, count your bar and kitchen, close your first week, and Bar Cop is running on your own numbers. Nothing to install, nobody to schedule a call with, no month-long training needed.

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Start To Finish

Your first week, step by step.

This is the whole thing, in the order Bar Cop puts it in front of you on your own screen. Most of it is easy setup, dropping in your product lists that you do once and never touch again, and the only parts that come back are the last two.

1

Sign up and name your bar.

Sign up for your account and then one screen asks the rest: your bar's name, its city, and which service periods you run. That is the entire onboard process, and there is nothing to install.

2

Add your vendors and products.

Your vendors first, then everything you buy from them, then a par on each one. Drop them in from a vendor order guide or a POS item list rather than typing hundreds of lines.

3

Count your bar.

The same walk around the bar you already do, except you slide each bottle to where the liquor level sits instead of guessing at a number. Count the bar accurately and in a fraction of the time.

4

Add your positions and staff.

Want more than inventory? Start by setting up your positions, staff roster and registers. Then you are ready to close a week and get all the numbers Bar Cop was built to show you.

5

Close your first week.

One page lists what the week needs. Drop your POS reports for sales and hours, or type each piece straight in, and confirm. Tips, drawer counts and catering fill in if you have them and the week closes fine without them.

6

Count again, and the real numbers land.

Two counts a week apart are what tell Bar Cop how much you actually used, so pour cost, food cost, usage, variance and your cost of goods all arrive at once, measured against the sales you just confirmed.

Day One

What one count already tells you.

You do not need a year of history and you do not need a perfect list. Save that first count and Bar Cop can already tell you what your stock is worth and what has fallen below par, with an order figure in dollars. That is a shelf you can act on the same afternoon.

Why A Week

Pour cost needs two counts, not one.

What you used is the gap between two inventory counts, so a real pour cost takes a week to exist and no software can shorten that. Bar Cop refuses to price a week off a pair of counts that does not cover it. Each new weekly inventory count builds on the previous one.

What You Can Skip

Everything past inventory can wait.

Your roster only matters once you want labor in the picture, and registers, tips, events, menu costing and the books can all sit untouched for a month with nothing else breaking. Start going further the week you have a reason to, instead of treating setup as one big job.

If You Get Stuck

Directions on the page you are stuck on.

There is an information button in the top bar of every page. It opens the directions for that page: what it is for, what to put in it, and what its numbers mean. The Help Center covers the same ground at length, so nothing waits on a support ticket.

Ready When You Are

See a bar already set up.

Try the Live Demo   → No Signup. Full Access. Starts Fresh Every Time.
Straight Answers

The setup questions.

What operators want to know before they sit down and start.

How long does setup take?
An afternoon for most bars, and the bulk of it is your product list. Most operators drop that in from a vendor order guide or a POS item list instead of typing it, so the real work is your first count. There is nothing to install and no setup call to book.
Do I need to install anything to use Bar Cop?
No. Bar Cop runs in a browser on whatever you already have, a laptop behind the bar or the phone in your pocket. Nothing is downloaded, nothing is updated, and a new device is just a login rather than a setup job.
Do I need my numbers ready before I start?
No, and there is no history to bring over. Your first count is the line everything after it is measured against, so the record starts the day you start. You are not behind for having nothing in there yet.
What do I need for my first inventory count?
Your product list in, a par set on each one, and the same walk around the bar you already do. You slide each bottle to where it sits rather than weighing anything, so there is no scale to buy and nothing new to learn.
What do I get from the very first count?
What your stock is worth, and what has dropped below par with the dollar figure to reorder it. Both read off that one count. It is also your baseline, which is the thing everything else is measured against later.
When do I see my pour cost?
On your second count, about a week later. Pour cost is what you used against what you sold, so it takes two counts with a week between them to have a real one. Bar Cop will not price a week off a count pair that does not cover it, because a made-up number is worse than a blank.
Do I have to add my staff if my POS exports hours?
Yes, and it is the one setup job a good POS export does not save you. An hours row whose name is not on your roster is listed and left out rather than turned into a new person, because auto-creating staff off a file quietly fills a roster with duplicates. Add your positions, then your people, once.
Do I have to set my registers up?
Only if you want to count drawers in Bar Cop each shift. If you drop a cash or drawer report from your POS instead, Bar Cop offers to create each register it finds in the file and then remembers what your POS calls it. Plenty of the first week is like this: skip it, and nothing else stops working.
Can I run an audit before I have much in there?
Yes. There is no minimum to clear and nothing is locked. Bar Cop tells you before you run it whether it has limited, partial or full data, lists what is still missing, and scores the parts it can rather than making you wait.
What if I get stuck?
There is an information button in the top bar of every page, and it opens the directions for the page you are looking at: what it is for, what to put in it, and what the numbers on it mean. The Help Center covers the same ground at length.