Best EPOS system for a pub

Best EPOS system for a pub - key criteria

Frankie Neale • 12 December 2017

This article will look at some of the key features any contender for the best pub EPOS system should have. The best EPOS system for a pub will depend largely on the individual pub. If you’re searching for a new EPOS, some other recent articles you may find useful are Finding the right EPOS for your pub and Pub EPOS systems - cloud vs. onsite.

But back to the topic of this article, there are some key areas we believe any contender for this title should cover.

Speed of service

Speed of service is critical at a busy bar. Make sure any pub EPOS system you are considering is quick and easy for your bar staff to use. In particular, make sure your most popular items can be immediately presented on log in and be added to an order with one key press.

Cash control

Making sure your payments, particularly cash, add up to your sales is vital to protect your profits.

Your cash up module should enable you to enter counts for all of your payment types, as well as any petty cash purchases.

It’s also important that you are alerted to any variances in a convenient way such as via email.

Stock Control

It's an unfortunate truth that most bars will at certain times have unscrupulous staff who might give drinks away free, or worse avoid putting sales through the till. Disciplined and accurate stock tracking ensures these issues will be quickly stamped out.

It’s important that your stock module allows you to specify quantities in both the units you purchase and those that you sell. You don’t want to have to work out how many pints of beer, or milliliters of wine you’ve just taken delivery of.

The use of templates for common products is a good way of ensuring this set up is correct.

Recipe Management

Equally important is the handling of recipes. Without this, you're unable to effectively track stock for food or cocktails. Ideally the cost of a recipe should be calculated for you so you can see the GP you’ll be making. It is not unknown for pubs to sell food dishes at a loss through lack of proper costing.

Staff Scheduling

Getting staff levels right is absolutely key to running a profitable pub, so make sure your pub EPOS system can help with this. Even a small venue should have access to hourly sales reports to plan the staff schedule against, and larger venues would almost certainly benefit from integration with a full staff management system.

Email Reports

Every publican knows they should regularly monitor how their business is performing – whether sales are up or down, which products are selling well or not so well.

Not every publican finds the time to do this consistently though. Scheduled email reports with key performance indicators are a great way for the time-strapped publican to keep an eye on what matters.

Accounts Integration

Whilst still a new idea for many, having an EPOS system linked in with your accounts package is quickly becoming a must-have feature. Not only does it save you hours of painful bookkeeping, but it ensures your books are always up to date so you can spot any issues earlier, and resolve them before they’ve caused too much of a hit to your bottom line.

Pub EPOS with cloud accounting integration shown on phone

Full & Responsive Support

Pubs are not a 9-5 business and your EPOS is essential to your operation. EPOS systems for pubs should have responsive support that is available for all the hours that you open for.

It is also important to have a quick and easy way to raise issues, even while in busy service. We find instant messaging chats are the best way to achieve this. Messages can be received and responded to very quickly, and staff can continue serving customers while waiting for a reply.

With the above in place, you have the foundations of a good pub epos - ensuring efficient service whilst your key costs are controlled and issues are brought to your attention early. Our Pub EPOS is designed by publicans specifically for pubs, so covers all of the above as well as many other features that will save you time, improve your service, and help grow your business.

To find out more about our Pub EPOS System, and to see how it could help your pub, contact one of our team.

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a bartender makes a cocktail while two other barstaff and two guests watch

How to make sure your venue is ready for Christmas

by Matt Hall • 10 September 2025

There’s no such thing as ‘too early to think about Christmas’ when you work in hospitality. And after a bruising year that’s brought major challenges for the industry, December is more important than ever for many businesses. When it comes to crafting the perfect festive atmosphere, you’re the experts there – we’re simply here to show you how getting things like your tech systems, menus, staffing, and gift cards sorted now, means you’ll make the most of Christmas and manage your venue more effectively. Optimise your offerings and boost profit margins No doubt you’ll want to capture the spirit of the season with a festive menu. Roast meats and Christmas puddings are a must, but don’t forget a vegan option too. Whatever you choose, make sure your dishes balance popularity and profitability. Recipe management tools let you input ingredient costs and amounts, so you get precise costs for every item on your menu. It then automatically calculates GP so you can easily set the right prices both for individual items and festive set menus. This works really well for food, but also for cocktails, and festive drinks you might make on-site, such as mulled wine or cider. Using technology to manage bookings When it comes to Christmas bookings, balance is key. You want more bums on seats, but you don’t want to overwhelm your kitchen and Front-of-House staff – especially when bookings around Christmas tend to be larger. A flexible booking system helps you maintain control. Those office Christmas lunches often have ten or twenty guests, so it helps to keep them separate from your usual bookings. Asking for pre-orders and prepayments makes it much easier to manage those big complicated bookings. Email links go out to organisers so everything can be booked and paid for in advance. This guarantees your cash flow ahead of time and means your kitchen can prepare and ensure the right amount of stock. You can also create custom drink packages to upsell during the booking process.