Let members run a tab, and settle it when it suits

Who owes what, oldest first

Point of Sale, Tabs opens on the list your desk actually wants: every member with something outstanding, the oldest at the top, with the total your club is owed above it and 30-day buckets beside it, so a tab that has been sitting for six weeks does not look like one from last night.

Tick the ones you want and the button tells you what you are about to charge before you charge it: Settle 2 tabs, $94.00. A batch is partial by design, so afterwards it says how many settled and how many are still owing, rather than reporting only the successes.

Every line, with the time it was rung

Open one person's tab and you get the itemized view: each item, the quantity, what it cost each, the line total, and the date and time it went on, in your club's own clock. Settled tabs sit underneath, itemized the same way, so a member asking about a charge from three weeks ago is a ten-second answer instead of a hunt.

• Add an item from your catalogue, priced by the catalogue, with member pricing applied
• Settle on the card on file, in cash, or by check
• Send a payment link when the member has already left
• Void a line that should never have been rung, and say what happened to the stock
• Forgive a line when the club is eating the cost

A payment link for the member who has gone home

Press Send a payment link and you get a URL to text or email. It charges exactly what the tab was worth when you sent it, so a drink rung afterwards is not on it, and it opens without the member signing in to anything.

Two things worth knowing before you send one, because they are on the screen rather than in a footnote: it cannot be withdrawn once it has gone, and it is good for two weeks.

An unpaid tab is money you are owed, not money you have taken

This is the part that keeps your books straight. While a tab is open it sits in your outstanding figure and appears in no revenue report and in no sales tax you owe, because nothing has been collected. The moment it is settled it enters both, dated the day it was paid.

So a tab rung in September and paid in October lands in October, and a month you have already filed is never rewritten behind you.

What it gave away, and what membership saved

The write-off report splits the two kinds, because they are different: items voided because they should never have been rung, and items forgiven because the guest kept them and the club absorbed it. Each one names the amount, the reason, and the staffer who authorised it. Beside them sits what your membership pricing took off tab prices, which is the number worth quoting when somebody asks what a membership is for.

The report names the window it is showing, so a figure at month end is never read as this month when it is really ninety days.

Turning it on

Settings, Point of Sale, Tabs. You choose it per audience, so a club can offer tabs to members and not to guests, or to both, with an optional ceiling on each. Nothing can go on a tab until you switch it on.

Taking money for a tab needs the same permission as taking money at the desk, so a staffer who can ring items cannot necessarily clear a balance, and sending a payment link sits at that same level rather than a lower one.