Free. No card, no plan.
A bar POS system that keeps every round together
Open the order with the first round, add to it all night, and split it at the end by the drinks each person is actually paying for. Platevio is a bar point of sale system that runs in a browser on the phones and tablets already behind your bar — no terminal to buy, and no card processor to sign with.
No card needed. Nothing to install.
What a bar POS has to do that a restaurant POS does not
A bar sells to a transaction that refuses to happen once. One person opens a check, three of them add to it over four hours, food goes to the kitchen while drinks come off the bar, somebody leaves at eleven having drunk two of the nine things on it, and what is left gets split at last call. A restaurant check does grow through a service, but it grows around a seated party that arrived together and leaves together. A bar check grows around a group whose membership changes, in rounds nobody wrote down, at prices that may have changed at eight o’clock. That is the thing the software has to survive: not the speed of the first drink, but the accuracy of the ninth, two hours after anyone could still remember who ordered it. Most of these rooms are a bar and a restaurant at once, a kitchen sending plates to a group whose drinks come off the bar, so the point of sale has to hold both halves of that on one order rather than run a ticket for each.
Opening the check is easy. Closing it is the problem.
Nothing goes wrong at 21:40. It goes wrong at closing, when the check is one number and no bartender can say what is inside it — which of the three gin and tonics was a double, whether the second round was before or after happy hour ended, and what the person who left at eleven still owes. Platevio never lets it become one number. Every drink is its own record, with the price it was sold at, the extras chosen on it and the note attached to it, and paying is a mark on that record rather than a subtraction from a total. So the check can always answer the question a bar actually asks at the end of a night: which of these has not been paid for, and what was each of them sold for?
What Platevio gives a bar or pub
Six things, all of them about a check that stays open.
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The next round joins the check that is already open
The order stays open while the table is still being served. Any bartender on shift goes back to it, adds what they asked for and sends it — the drinks already on it are not rebuilt, re-timed or re-priced, and nobody starts a second check for the same group.
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Doubles, mixers and the note, on the drink itself
Set up the extras a drink can take — the double, the mixer, the call brand — and choose them on the individual glass as you take the order. A priced one adds itself to that glass, and "no ice" sits on the one drink it is about rather than on the whole round.
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The price it was sold at, not tonight’s price
The name and price of an item, and of every extra on it, are copied onto the check at the moment it is ordered. Put the menu back up when happy hour ends and the drinks already on open checks keep what they were sold for. The next round takes the new price.
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Split the check by what each guest drank
Tick the exact drinks and plates one person is covering and record those as paid. The rest of the check stays open and unpaid, so what is still owed is the sum of what is actually left rather than four people doing arithmetic over a total.
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Cash from one of them, a card from another
Each part of the check is settled under its own method — cash, card, cheque, meal voucher, or a method you named yourself. Platevio records how it was paid; the card itself goes through the reader you already have, so no percentage of it comes to us.
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The check knows its table, or has none at all
Put the check on a table from your floor plan, or run it on no table at all for people standing at the bar. A table is a reference, not a copy, so correcting the floor plan renames it on the check already sitting there.
One check, from the first round to last call
A Friday that starts at twenty to ten and finishes after midnight, on one open order.
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21:40
The first round opens the check
Two IPAs, a gin with tonic as an extra on it, and a burger with a note, on the table by the window. Sent, and it is on the board the bar and the kitchen are both reading.
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22:15
The second round joins the same check
A different bartender opens the order that is already there, adds three more drinks and sends them. Nothing about the first round moves, and there is still one check for the table.
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23:00
Happy hour ends and you put the prices back
You change the menu prices by hand at the changeover. The drinks bought before eleven keep what they were sold for, and what is poured after eleven is charged at the new price.
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23:20
One of them leaves early and pays for their own
Tick the two drinks they had, take the cash, and record it. Those two lines move to paid and the rest of the check stays open, unpaid and unchanged.
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00:55
Last call, and the rest goes on one card
Everything still unpaid is settled together on a card, run on your own reader. Nothing is left owing, and hiding the finished check is one more tap when the table has gone.
Happy-hour pricing: the honest answer
Platevio does not schedule prices. There is no happy hour that starts itself at five and stops itself at seven, no two-for-one, no percentage off a category on a Tuesday, and no promotion engine of any kind — and for a bar, where the price of the same drink changes twice a night, that is the feature most worth being straight about. What Platevio does instead is make the manual version safe: change the price on the menu at the changeover, and every drink already on an open check keeps the price it was sold at, because the price was copied onto the drink when it was ordered rather than read from the menu at the end. If someone puts the prices back up at eleven, that works, and it goes on working for checks that have been open since nine. If your promotions overlap, or you need the price to change without anyone touching a tablet, buy the system that schedules them today rather than the one that might.
Where Platevio fits, and where it runs out
It fits an independent bar, pub or taproom that wants one open check per group, split payment by the item, a floor plan of the actual room, staff who each have their own login, and the freedom to keep the card reader it already has. It is not an all-in-one bar suite, and these are the things it does not do today. None of them are on a promised date, so weigh them as they are.
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A tab here is not a card on file
The check stays open, but no card is held against it. Platevio does not preauthorize, does not store card details, and does nothing to protect you from a walkout. If a secured tab is how your bar runs, that has to come from your payment terminal or from another system.
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Card processing is not built in
Platevio is not a payment processor and has no integrated processing to switch on. Take the card on the reader or terminal you already have, then record here how the check was settled. That is why no percentage of your bar sales comes to us, and also why settling is two devices rather than one.
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Liquor inventory and pour tracking
Platevio counts nothing. It will not tell you the keg is nearly out, it does not deduct a measure from a bottle, and it cannot show you variance between what was poured and what was sold.
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Tips
There is nowhere to add a tip to a payment, and nothing that pools or distributes them at the end of a shift. What Platevio records is what the drinks cost.
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Printed receipts and bar tickets
Thermal printing is being built and is not usable yet. Today the order lives on screens, and a guest who wants a printed receipt is asking for something Platevio cannot hand them.
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Payroll and scheduling
Staff have their own logins and their own roles, which is where it stops. Hours, wages and who is behind the bar on Saturday live somewhere else.
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A connection is required
Orders move through a server, so the service needs the internet. There is no offline mode, and a busy bar in a basement should weigh that before anything else on this page.
How to choose a POS for a bar
Do not judge one of these on a single drink. Ask each vendor to run your Friday: open a check, add a round, add a second one twenty minutes later, send food with a note, change a menu price in between, have one guest pay cash for two drinks, and put the rest on a card. Watch what happens to the price of the drinks that were already on the check. The best point of sale system for a bar is the one that survives that Friday, not the one with the longest feature list. Then ask the questions that decide what it really costs.
- Does opening a tab put a hold on the guest’s card, and who carries the loss when somebody walks?
- Do drinks already on an open check keep their price when happy hour ends?
- Can staff split a check by the item, and take two different payment methods against it?
- Is the free plan free because you have to take their card processing?
- Which of inventory, tips, reporting and extra devices cost more than the headline?
- What happens to an open check when the internet drops?
- Can you export your menu and your sales history on the day you leave?
Bar POS questions
- What is a bar POS system?
- A bar POS system, or bar point of sale system, is the software your bar takes orders on, plus whatever you run it on. What separates it from a restaurant system is the shape of the check: it opens early, takes round after round from a group whose membership changes, mixes food from the kitchen with drinks from the bar, and gets split at the end. Some bar systems also carry card preauthorization, liquor inventory, tips and shift management.
- Is a pub POS system different from a bar POS system?
- Not in any way that changes the software. Pub, bar and taproom describe the same job — open checks, repeated rounds, food alongside drinks, and a split at the end — and this page is written for all of them. The genuine fork is volume: a high-volume nightclub buys for card tabs and pour control before anything else, which is a different product from this one.
- Can one point of sale system run a bar and restaurant together?
- Yes, and it is the ordinary case here: the burger and the round it arrived with sit on the same open order, each line carrying its own extras and its own note. What Platevio does not do is route them. There is one board holding every open check, so the kitchen and the bar read the same list and take what is theirs — no bar screen showing only drinks, and no printed ticket at either end, because printing is still being built. A room that needs its kitchen on a queue of its own should buy for that.
- What does a bartender need from a bar POS system?
- Speed on the round in front of them, and safety on the round from two hours ago. In practice that is four things: an order they can reopen and add to without rebuilding it, the double and the mixer chosen on the individual glass, a price copied onto the drink when it was sold rather than read off tonight’s menu, and a way to settle two drinks for the person leaving early without disturbing the rest of the check. Platevio is built around those four. Pour tracking, tips and shift management are not in it.
- Can Platevio keep a bar tab open?
- It can keep the order open for as long as the group is being served, and every new round joins the check that is already there. What it is not is a card-secured tab: Platevio never sees or stores a card, so nothing is preauthorized and nothing is held against a walkout. If that protection is what you mean by a tab, it has to come from your payment terminal.
- Can guests split a bar check?
- Yes, by the item. Tick the exact drinks one guest is covering, choose how they are paying, and those lines are settled — the rest of the check stays open at what is still genuinely owed. Repeat it as many times as the group needs, with a different payment method each time.
- Does Platevio manage happy-hour prices?
- Only by hand. You change the menu price at the changeover, and Platevio makes that safe: drinks already ordered keep the price they were sold at, and the next ones take the new price. What it does not do is schedule the change for you, or run two-for-ones and time-based promotions, and there is no date on which it will.
- Does Platevio process cards or take a percentage of bar sales?
- No. Take the payment on the card reader or terminal you already have, then record in Platevio how the check was settled. Because Platevio is not your processor, it takes no percentage of your sales and there is no processing contract attached to the free plan.
- Does this bar POS work offline?
- No. Platevio needs a connection to move an order from the floor to the screen the bar is reading. The pages are built small so they still load on the signal at the back of a stone-walled room, but that is not the same as working without one. If your connection genuinely drops during service, choose a system with a true offline mode.
- Is there a free bar POS system?
- Platevio is one. No card is taken to sign up, there is no plan to choose and no trial that expires, it runs on the phones and tablets already behind your bar, and no percentage of your sales comes here. We are building it with the venues using it, and when we do charge it will be for the software rather than as a cut of the bar. Most bar point of sale software advertised as free is free because the vendor processes your cards, which is where the price actually lives — Platevio does not process cards, so there is nothing behind the zero. What free does not buy is the list above: no preauthorized tabs, no liquor inventory, no printing and no offline mode.
- How much does a bar POS system cost?
- Add up four numbers, not one: the software, the hardware, the card processing and whatever is charged as an add-on. A zero-dollar plan that requires the vendor’s processing is not the cheapest of the four, because the percentage is the price. Platevio is free to use, runs on devices you already own, and takes nothing from your sales.
Open your restaurant tonight
It takes a minute: your restaurant, your first menu, and you are taking orders.