Pub EPOS System UK: What to Look For in 2026

A pub EPOS system has to do four things a restaurant till does not: run fast open tabs and rounds at the bar, sell every drink in a legal measure, track wet stock in pints and millilitres, and prompt staff to check age before alcohol is served. Get those right and your gross profit on drink becomes something you can measure rather than guess. This guide covers what to look for, the UK rules that shape your till set-up, and a worked wet-GP example. For the general cost and contract questions that apply to any venue, see our restaurant EPOS guide.

What makes a pub different from a restaurant

A restaurant till is built around tables and courses. A pub till is built around speed at the bar and volume of small transactions. The features that matter most:

• Open tabs that survive a busy Friday, with a card saved against the tab rather than a card held behind the bar.
• Rounds and repeat orders: re-ringing the last round in two taps.
• Fast item buttons for the top 20 drinks, with size variants (pint, half, two-thirds, third).
• Time-based pricing for happy hours and events, switched on and off automatically rather than by staff remembering.
• Split bills by item, seat or equal share.
• Mixed service: bar orders and table orders on the same system, plus food routed to the kitchen.
• Stock depletion by pour size, so the system knows what you have used.

Ask for a demo using your own drinks list and your own busiest hour. A till that is fine at 4pm on a Tuesday can fall over on a Saturday night.

Set up your measures correctly

Draught drinks and spirits must be sold in set quantities. GOV.UK's weights and measures guidance lists the specified quantities for sale by the glass, which come from the Weights and Measures (Intoxicating Liquor) Order 1988:

The Order also requires you to display a written statement of the quantities in which you sell spirits and wine, for example on the bar or in the wine list. Separately, in England and Wales the mandatory conditions on your premises licence require you to make some small measures available and to tell customers about them, for example on menus and price lists. The Home Office's section 182 guidance lists half a pint for beer and cider, 25ml or 35ml for gin, rum, vodka and whisky, and 125ml for still wine by the glass.

What this means for your EPOS:

• Every drink should exist as a set of legal sizes, each linked to the same stock item, so a half-pint button depletes half the volume of a pint.
• A double spirit should be two of your single measure, not an arbitrary quantity.
• Your price list printed or shown on screen should match what the till rings.
• Check cocktails, mixers and any non-standard serves with your local trading standards team, as separate rules apply to mixtures.

Age checks: Challenge 25 and digital proof of age

Under the Licensing Act 2003 mandatory conditions (England and Wales), every licensed premises must have an age verification policy. As a minimum, it must require anyone who appears to be under 18 to prove their age before being served, using a physical document with a photograph, date of birth and a hologram or ultraviolet feature, or an approved digital form of ID. Challenge 21 or Challenge 25 is a policy choice, not a legal minimum, and the guidance says setting a higher age in your policy is acceptable and encouraged.

Two recent points are worth knowing:

• Digital proof of age became an option in England and Wales on 15 September 2026, under new rules announced by the government. It is optional, physical ID remains valid, and the check must go through a certified digital verification service, not a visual look at a phone screen.
• Age estimation technology cannot be used to verify age for alcohol sales under the mandatory conditions, according to the same guidance.

A pub EPOS cannot check ID for you, but it can support your policy: a prompt on the first alcohol item of an order, a note on the ticket when ID was checked, and a refusals log if your licence conditions require one. Check your own licence conditions for what is required.

Wet stock: GP, yield and ullage

Drink is where pubs make most of their margin, and where most of it leaks. The three terms to track:

• Wet GP: gross profit on drink sales, calculated on net sales excluding VAT.
• Yield: the number of saleable pints or measures you get from a keg, cask or bottle.
• Ullage: beer you paid for but cannot sell, from line cleaning, over-pouring, spillage and waste.

Here is a worked example with assumed figures. A pint sells at £5.80 including VAT, so £4.83 net of 20% VAT. A 50-litre keg costs £120 ex VAT. A pint is 568ml, so a 50-litre keg holds about 88 pints.

A 5% loss costs about 1.5 points of GP on every pint. Your real keg price and real loss will differ, so use your invoices and a measured stocktake. The EPOS should deplete stock per pour so you can compare what the till says you sold with what the cellar says you used. The difference is your variance. You can test pricing scenarios with our menu price calculator and read more in the GP calculator guide.

Look for stock features designed for draught: stock in litres, recipes for cocktails and doubles, cellar counts on a tablet, and variance reports by product. TablePort's stock module is priced as a separate add-on at £149 per location per month ex VAT, so confirm whether you need full stock control or only a simple count.

Tabs, table service and pay-at-table

Many pubs now take orders at the table as well as the bar. There are three common set-ups:

1. Bar only: order and pay at the bar. Simple, and the till needs to be fast.
2. Table service with staff handhelds: orders go from the table to the bar and kitchen. Needs reliable Wi-Fi and sensible handheld screens.
3. QR order and pay: guests scan a code, order and pay on their phone. See our QR code ordering guide for how this works with tips, accessibility and age checks.

Alcohol ordered remotely still needs an age check. The section 182 guidance says that where alcohol is sold by phone or online, it is not treated as served until delivered, so the check must happen before the drink is handed over, and it is the responsibility of the person serving to make sure it has taken place.

For tabs, a card saved with a contactless tap or QR scan avoids the risk of walk-offs without handing the card to the bar. TablePort's bars and pubs page describes this set-up. Sunday offers QR pay-at-table and ordering and lists integrations with a range of existing POS systems on its website (checked October 2026); see our Sunday comparison if you want to keep your current POS.

Food, Sunday roast and events

Pubs that serve food need a till that routes tickets to the kitchen by course and station, supports allergen information and holds back mains until starters are cleared. For a Sunday roast or a large event, you will want to take bookings with a deposit or card guarantee. Our deposit policy guide explains how to set amounts and wording, and a till linked to your booking book avoids double-handling.

If your team shares tips, make sure the system records card tips by person or shift. Employers who handle card tips must distribute them fairly, as explained in our tronc and tips guide.

Costs and contract checklist for pubs

Use the same framework as any venue: software fee, hardware, card processing and contract terms. Pubs have two extra points:

• Average payment is small. A round of two drinks may be under £12, so a fixed per-transaction fee on top of a percentage can raise your effective rate noticeably. Divide total fees by total card sales to compare.
• Peak load matters more than average load. Ask how many tills or handhelds the plan includes and what extra registers cost.

Ask also whether stock, rota and bookings are included or extra, what works offline in a cellar bar with poor signal, and what the exit terms are. The full question list is in our EPOS buying checklist.

This guide is general information, not legal advice; check your premises licence conditions and speak to your licensing authority or trading standards team about your own set-up.