Guides
Which brewery and taproom software deserves the subscription
Brewery and taproom software judged by what it exports, with named systems, the four records that must reconcile, and the questions that decide a subscription.
What to take away
- Start with the point of sale. Arryved fits a bar that sets the pace; Toast covers sales, hours and payroll in one login.
- Add QuickBooks Online in every case, and add Ekos near 500 barrels a year.
- Judge a system by its exports, not its dashboard, and get the answer in writing before you sign.
- Expect two or three subscriptions, typically $200 to $500 a month across the stack before card processing.
What the stack has to join, and in what order
Four records carry every question worth asking: the point of sale, the time clock, the payroll register and the production log. A useful question crosses at least two of them.
How much did that Tuesday cost to open? Point of sale plus payroll. Where did the beer go? Production log plus point of sale.
A system earns its subscription only when it joins those records without anyone retyping a total. Most products fail that test.
The named systems and what each one is for
The verdict first: Arryved or Toast plus QuickBooks Online covers most taprooms, and Ekos joins near 500 barrels. A longer field, with twelve systems reviewed, covers the rest.
Six products come up repeatedly in taprooms doing 500 to 5,000 barrels a year.
Six systems and what each is for
Ekos
- Core job
- Brewery management
- Best fit
- 500+ barrels
- Pricing
- Barrel tiered
Ollie
- Core job
- Ops and routing
- Best fit
- Self distributing
- Pricing
- Delivery volume
Arryved
- Core job
- Taproom POS
- Best fit
- Fast bar service
- Pricing
- Subscription plus processing
Toast
- Core job
- Restaurant POS
- Best fit
- One vendor POS
- Pricing
- Per terminal tier
The named systems
What it is
- Ekos
- Batch, inventory, production and excise reporting
- Arryved
- Taproom point of sale with open tabs and comp tracking
- Toast
- Restaurant point of sale with payroll and scheduling add-ons
- QuickBooks Online
- Bookkeeping with payroll and point of sale import paths
- 7shifts
- Scheduling, time clock and tip pooling
Who it suits
- Ekos
- Breweries past about 500 barrels, or selling wholesale
- Arryved
- Taprooms where speed at the bar decides revenue
- Toast
- Taprooms wanting one login for sales, hours and payroll
- QuickBooks Online
- Every size
- 7shifts
- Taprooms above about eight hourly staff
Typical pricing
- Ekos
- Tiered by barrel volume; operators report a low-hundreds monthly band
- Arryved
- Subscription plus processing, historically month to month
- Toast
- Per terminal per month by tier, plus processing and hardware
- QuickBooks Online
- Monthly by tier
- 7shifts
- Per location per month plus per user, often $30 to $60
Pricing on brewery tools moves, so ask for a current quote. The point of sale is the piece you will regret choosing badly.
Ollie adds delivery routing for self-distributing breweries. Untappd for Business publishes the taplist outside the building. Arryved and Toast export transactions cleanly enough to feed bookkeeping and the production records.
Card processing and the monthly total
Card processing usually costs more than the software above it. Square publishes in-person rates near 2.6 percent plus 10 cents, with Toast and Arryved in the same territory.
At $60,000 of monthly card volume, 2.6 percent is about $1,560 before per-transaction cents. A cheap subscription with expensive processing is an expensive subscription.
The two measures to define before you buy anything
Write the definition and the source data for each term before you evaluate a vendor. A system that cannot produce the inputs cannot answer the question.
Two measures to define
- Contribution per staffed hour
- Hour revenue minus beer cost sold minus labor cost on shift · Point of sale, production log, payroll
- Realized keg yield
- Pours sold from a keg over theoretical pours in it · Point of sale, keg log
Those two change more decisions in a year than the other five combined. Depletion rate and comps by authorizer can sit in an appendix until someone acts on them.
Contribution per staffed hour feeds any brewery pricing and profit decision.
Example: the order to add systems
Run a point of sale and QuickBooks for a quarter before adding anything else. Add scheduling when the team passes eight hourly people. Add Ekos when barrel counts or distributor orders outgrow the spreadsheet, usually near 500 barrels a year.
The monthly reconciliation, in five steps
Set aside an hour a month and work through it in order. The audit is what makes the numbers real.
The monthly reconciliation in five steps
- Hours worked against hours paid
- Sales against deposits
- Kegs tapped against pours sold
- Beer produced against beer removed
- Purchases against usage
- Hours worked against hours paid. Pull both exports for the same period. Every edit should carry a reason and a name.
- Sales against deposits. Point of sale totals against what reached the bank, with card fees allowed for.
- Kegs tapped against pours sold. Theoretical pours against sales plus recorded comps. The remainder is draft loss.
- Beer produced against beer removed. This is the federal reconciliation, described on the TTB brewery page.
- Purchases against usage. What you bought against what recipes should have consumed. Large gaps point at counting first.
Write the unexplained remainder from each step into the same file every month. Twelve months of the same variance tells you where to look.
Step five overlaps the brewery inventory and sourcing counts that feed a quarterly stock review.
The same principle appears in IRS guidance on records: you choose the system, it must show income and expenses. DOL Fact Sheet #21 lists the hours and pay records that step one depends on.
The export questions that decide a subscription
Ask about exports, not dashboards, and ask in writing.
The export questions
- Can I export every transaction, with timestamps, as a plain file, without asking support?
- Can I export hours at the shift level, by person and role?
- Can the point of sale record a comp against a named authorizer in under three seconds?
- Does product naming in the point of sale match the production log?
- If I stop paying, what happens to my history?
- Who can edit a past record, and is the edit visible afterward?
The last two decide more than the feature list. A system that holds your history hostage, or lets anyone quietly edit yesterday, is a liability at any price.
