Point of sale systems for breweries and taprooms in Arkansas
Your taproom and your brewhouse are two different problems. Flights, fills, keg depletion and Arkansas beverage tax on a taproom check.
Your point of sale has to ring flights, pour sizes and growler fills off a tap list that turns over every week, and tax beer differently than spirits. SkyTab and Clover both handle the taproom side. Neither one is a brewery management system. No batch tracking, no TTB reporting, no wholesale invoicing in either.
In this article
01How does a flight ring up without turning into a mess?02Will it tell me what's left in the keg?03Why do beer and cocktails tax differently on the same check?04Will any of this help on the distribution side?05What does it take to keep the tap list current?06Questions restaurant owners askHow does a flight ring up without turning into a mess?
A flight rings as one item with a set number of required beer choices hung on it as modifiers. Guest picks four, bartender taps four, ticket shows which four. Each of those beers depletes on its own even though the guest paid one price.
The fiddly part is price tiers. A barrel aged stout sitting in a flight next to a house lager leaves you two choices: one flat flight price where you eat the difference, or upcharge modifiers on the premium beers. We ask which you want before we program, because retrofitting means touching every beer on the list.
Will it tell me what's left in the keg?
The system subtracts what you sell. A keg goes in as inventory with a total volume, and every taster, pour, flight and fill draws that number down. Foam, line loss, a bad pour, the half pint you handed the sales rep: none of it shows up. Depletion is an estimate, and the gap between the estimate and the truth is where your real cost sits.
Neither SkyTab nor Clover talks to keg flow meters out of the box, so nothing reconciles what poured against what got rung. If you need that kind of accuracy, buy a separate system for it. What the point of sale gives you is a decent running estimate and a fast answer on which beers move.
Why do beer and cocktails tax differently on the same check?
Tax groups are the reason, and they have to be built. In Fayetteville, prepared food carries a combined rate of 11.75%, and the city's 5% supplemental beverage tax applies to spirits while excluding wine, beer and malt beverages under 5% ABW. A draft list and a cocktail list on one check do not carry the same rate.
Check the alcohol by weight figure against your own beers instead of assuming, because the threshold is written in ABW and most brewers publish ABV. We build tax groups against your city and your permit, then test them with a mixed check before install day. Arkansas layers local rates on state rates across 75 counties, so a taproom in Fayetteville and one in Little Rock do not share a build.
A real person calls you back within two hours, Monday to Saturday, 8am to 7pm Central.
Will any of this help on the distribution side?
No. Neither platform does wholesale invoicing, distributor pricing, keg deposits tracked by account, or the paperwork that comes with selling outside your own four walls. Self distribute and you'll keep whatever you use for that today.
Upstream is the same story. Batch tracking, fermentation records, raw material inventory and federal reporting live in brewery software or a spreadsheet, and they'll stay there. Any dealer who tells you a restaurant point of sale replaces your brewery system has not looked at your paperwork.
What does it take to keep the tap list current?
Beers get marked available or unavailable in the point of sale, which controls what the bartender sees and what shows on online ordering. Neither platform pushes that to a digital tap board on the wall. Most Arkansas taprooms run a chalkboard or a screen driven by something separate, and a human updates it when a keg blows.
We build the beer items as a reusable list, so adding a new release is a short edit and not a new build. We can make that part painless. Syncing the wall board is a third party job and we'll tell you which ones people use. One more thing while you're gathering quotes: card processing takes more out of a taproom every month than the software does. Get each rep to work out what you paid in fees against what you ran in card volume, then line those figures up side by side. A rate quoted on one qualified swipe tells you nothing.
What these two run in a taproom, and what they leave in the brewhouse
Both run the front of the taproom properly. Neither touches the brewhouse, and no dealer should tell you different.
What works
- Flights ring as one item with the chosen beers attached and each beer depleted on its own.
- Taster, half pour, full pour and growler fills all sit on the same beer item.
- Separate tax groups on a single check, so beer and spirits ring at the correct Arkansas rates.
- Handhelds cover a patio, a beer garden or an event space without a walk back to the bar.
What does not
- No batch tracking, no fermentation records, no raw material inventory, no federal reporting. This is not brewery software and it will not become brewery software.
- No wholesale or distribution invoicing, no distributor pricing, no keg deposits tracked by account.
- Keg depletion is a guess with math on it. Neither platform reads a flow meter, so foam and line loss never show up anywhere.
- Digital tap boards do not sync from either system. Somebody updates the wall by hand, every time.
- Tiered flight pricing takes extra modifier work and it breaks the moment your tap list turns over fast.
Questions restaurant owners ask
Can guests run a tab in the taproom?
Yes. Tabs open by card or by name and stay visible to whoever is behind the bar, with a pre authorization when the card is presented. Those holds expire, so a nightly routine for clearing open tabs matters as much here as it does in a nightclub. We set the routine with your closing staff during install.
Who sets up the tax, you or my accountant?
We build it and your accountant should check it. Give us your city, your permit type and your menu, and we build tax groups so beer, spirits, wine and food each calculate correctly on the same check. Then we ring test checks with mixed items so you see the math before your first guest does.
What happens to my beer list when a keg blows mid shift?
A bartender marks the beer unavailable from the terminal or a handheld and it drops off the ordering screens and off online ordering. The board on your wall does not change. Both platforms leave that step manual, so write it into the closing checklist and nobody has to remember it cold.
We have a kitchen too. Does that complicate anything?
A kitchen adds printer or kitchen display routing and a second set of tax groups, and we build both for you. A taproom kitchen is usually simpler than a full restaurant kitchen, so the work sits in taxing food and beverage separately and routing tickets to the right station, not in menu volume.
Do you cover taprooms outside northwest Arkansas?
Yes, all 75 counties. We install in person from Bentonville and Fayetteville through Little Rock and Hot Springs and out into the Ozarks. Judd Alsup leads the Arkansas team and he's on site on go live night. A real person calls you back within two hours, Monday to Saturday, 8am to 7pm Central.
Rules and rates change. Confirm anything that affects your money with the agency itself or with your accountant. General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.