Free pub admin tools for UK licensees

Last updated: 11 April 2026

Most pub landlords I talk to are still managing their business using spreadsheets, notebooks, and whatever’s left in their head at the end of a shift. That’s not lazy—it’s practical. You’re busy running the bar, not hunting for software subscriptions. But here’s what I’ve learned from running Teal Farm Pub in Washington, Tyne & Wear and building pub management software alongside 847 active users: the gap between “free” and “actually useful” is where most landlords get stuck. You can find a thousand templates online, but almost none are built for the specific chaos of a UK pub—wet sales, dry sales, staff shifts, tied pub restrictions, quiz nights, and match day events all happening simultaneously. This guide gives you the free tools that actually solve real problems, along with the ones to skip, and when to consider paid options. You’ll understand which spreadsheets are worth your time and which ones waste it.

Why most pub landlords avoid admin software

I know your objection before you say it: “My current till works fine, why change it?” And you’re right—it probably does work fine at 6pm on a Tuesday. But a till is not the same thing as a pub admin tool. A till rings sales. An admin tool tells you why your profit dropped, who’s calling in sick, how much stock you’ve lost to waste, and whether you can afford to give someone a raise.

The real barrier isn’t cost—it’s time. Most pub software requires staff training, migration of existing data, and at least two weeks of slower service while everyone gets up to speed. For a small pub running with a tight team, that’s impossible. So landlords stay with what works, even though what works is actually costing them money in lost visibility.

The good news: free tools sidestep that entire problem. You don’t need permission from your pubco (if you’re a tied tenant). You don’t need a contract. You don’t need a rep coming to visit. You just need 30 minutes and a spreadsheet.

But there’s a trap: not all free tools are the same. Free pub management templates designed for restaurants or general small business don’t account for the actual flow of a pub. You need tools built for wet-led operations, quiz nights, tied pub restrictions, and the specific way UK pubs calculate profit margins.

Free staffing and scheduling tools

This is where free tools actually shine. Staff scheduling in a pub is not complicated—it’s just repetitive and easy to get wrong. One person miscalculated on the rota, and you’re understaffed on a Saturday night or overstaffed on a Tuesday. Both cost money.

Google Sheets scheduling template

The most practical free staffing tool is a simple Google Sheets rota that lives in the pub and everyone can see. It sounds obvious, but the act of making the schedule visible—printed above the staff toilet or shared on WhatsApp—cuts no-shows and confusion by half. I’ve seen this work at Teal Farm with 17 staff across front-of-house and kitchen.

What to include:

• Name, shift time, role (bar, kitchen, cleaning)
• Phone number (for emergency cover requests)
• Notes column (unavailable dates, requests for time off)
• Week-by-week view, not month-by-month (pubs live in weekly cycles)

Set it to read-only except for yourself, otherwise you’ll get chaos. The £0 cost means you can experiment without risk. If it doesn’t work after two weeks, you’ve lost nothing.

The hidden cost of bad scheduling is staff turnover. Young bar staff will leave if they can’t see their rota more than a week in advance. Paying to replace a trained barista costs more than a year of scheduling software ever would.

When free scheduling stops working

The moment you’re managing more than 25 staff or running multiple sites, free spreadsheets start to fall apart. Swaps, holiday requests, and sickness start to create gaps that are hard to spot. That’s when tools like When I Work or Deputy (freemium versions) start to pay for themselves, but for most pubs—single site, under 20 staff—Google Sheets is actually better because nobody needs training and everyone already knows how to find it.

Stock management without paying for EPOS

Here’s an operator insight that most software comparison sites won’t tell you: cellar management integration matters more than most operators realise until they’re doing a Friday stock count manually. Stock is where most pubs lose money. Not to theft—to waste, spillage, over-pouring, and mistakes in ordering.

The cheapest free stock tool is a paper book. Seriously. A hard-backed A4 notebook, one entry per day, nothing more:

• Date
• Product (e.g., Guinness draught, Thatchers Gold cider)
• Quantity in (delivery or transfer from another cellar)
• Quantity out (sales, waste, gifts)
• Running balance

Do this every single day. Assign one person responsibility. The discipline of writing it down—physically—stops the mental shortcuts that create £100+ weekly losses.

Google Sheets stock tracker

If you want to graduate from paper, a Google Sheets tracker works better than most paid tools for small pubs because it’s transparent and searchable. Create columns for:

• Product name
• Supplier cost per unit
• Opening balance (from last count)
• Daily deliveries
• Sales (from till read)
• Waste/spillage
• Closing balance

Update it once a day, at closing. Takes 10 minutes. On Friday, do a physical count and compare to what the sheet says. The variance tells you where money is disappearing.

Most pubs skip the variance check and lose £50-150 per week as a result. The cost of an EPOS system (£50–150/month) is actually worth it when you realise how much stock is leaking out. But if you’re disciplined with a spreadsheet, you can catch the same leaks for free.

The limitation of free stock tracking: it doesn’t tie to sales until you manually input the till read. So at 11pm when you’re tired, you skip it. That’s why EPOS systems with kitchen display work—they automate the tie-in and force accountability. But for a two-person operation, a spreadsheet and discipline is enough.

Free accounting and profit tracking templates

Profit isn’t an accident. It’s the difference between money in and money out. Most pubs don’t know their actual profit because they conflate turnover with profit, or they make guesses based on till reads without accounting for waste, staff costs, or tied pub pubco fees.

The most important free accounting practice is a simple weekly P&L that tracks sales, costs, and profit—nothing more. You don’t need a spreadsheet that tries to do everything; you need one that answers one question: “Am I making money this week?”

Weekly P&L template

Create a simple Google Sheets tab with these rows:

• Sales: total till read for the week (split wet/dry if helpful)
• Cost of goods sold: stock used (sales value minus waste)
• Gross profit: sales minus COGS
• Staff costs: wages + NI for the week
• Overheads: utilities, rent, pubco fees (weekly average)
• Net profit: gross profit minus staff minus overheads

Do this every Sunday. After 12 weeks, you have a year’s forecast. After 52 weeks, you know which weeks are profitable and which aren’t. This is more valuable than any accounting software because it forces you to understand the numbers, not just delegate them to an accountant.

Use a pub profit margin calculator to benchmark your numbers against industry standards (typically 10–15% net profit for wet-led pubs, 15–20% for food-led). If you’re below that, you have a problem to solve.

Connecting profit to decisions

The real power of this spreadsheet is using it to make decisions. If one week shows 8% net profit instead of 12%, look at that week’s data and ask: was it lower sales, higher waste, unscheduled staff, or special events? Most landlords never ask. They just assume that’s how it is. But tied pub tenants especially need this level of visibility because your pubco controls your pricing and your product cost—so the only lever you have left is waste reduction and staff efficiency.

For more detailed finances, pub staffing cost calculator tools help you understand whether your wage bill is sustainable. Most pubs spend 28–32% of revenue on staff. If you’re above 35%, that’s a structural problem that affects profit regardless of how good your rota is.

Legal and compliance checklists

This is the free tool most landlords ignore until they get inspected. A simple checklist for health and safety, licensing, and till security keeps you compliant and saves solicitor fees when something goes wrong.

Weekly compliance check

Create a Google Sheet with these items and assign responsibility:

• Fire extinguishers accessible and serviced (annually)
• Accident book up to date
• Manual handling checks if you’re lifting kegs
• Till reconciliation (does the float match the read?)
• ID checks on till (under-25s checked consistently)
• Temperature log for cold storage (if you serve food)

Check one item per day, sign it off. If an environmental health officer or trading standards turns up, you can show them 12 months of documented compliance. That simple act protects your licence.

For tied pubs, add a section for tied pub restrictions: price approval from pubco, notification of special events, stock reconciliation (to prove you’re not selling other suppliers’ products). Pub IT solutions guides often include compliance checklists specific to your region.

When free tools stop working

I need to be honest about this because I build paid pub software and I still use free tools myself: there’s a specific moment when a spreadsheet stops being helpful and starts being a bottleneck.

Signs it’s time to move beyond free tools

You’ll recognise this moment when:

• You’re managing more than one till or location. Spreadsheets don’t sync across devices or people in real time.
• You’re spending more than 4 hours per week on admin. That time is worth money, and a £30/month tool will buy you back 2 hours weekly.
• Your staff aren’t using the spreadsheet because it’s not in their workflow. Kitchen staff won’t check a Google Sheet if they need to be in the kitchen.
• You need real-time visibility. Spreadsheets are updated daily; EPOS systems are updated instantly.
• You can’t see patterns because the data’s too messy. A chaotic spreadsheet is worse than no spreadsheet because you trust the wrong numbers.

The real cost of an EPOS system is not the monthly fee but the staff training time and the lost sales during the first two weeks of use. That’s why it only makes sense above a certain turnover threshold. For a wet-led only pub doing £4,000/week, the cost-benefit isn’t there yet. For a wet+dry pub doing £8,000/week, it usually is.

When you do decide to move, EPOS system rent or buy guides help you avoid 12-month contracts that lock you in before you’ve figured out if the system works for your operation.

Free tools checklist for your pub

Here’s what I recommend starting with, in order of impact:

Start here (Week 1)

• Google Sheets staff rota—post it where everyone can see it
• Paper stock book—one person, one entry per day
• Weekly P&L—takes 15 minutes every Sunday

Add next (Week 4)

• Compliance checklist (one item per day)
• Stock variance tracker (physical count vs. spreadsheet)

Only if you have time

• Customer feedback log (for repeat customers, quiz nights, events)
• Supplier comparison sheet (to catch price creep from your pubco)
• Staff training log (especially important for tied pubs with strict service standards)

Don’t implement all of this at once. One new system per week. Most landlords burn out on free tools because they try to go from zero to perfect, realise it’s impossible, and go back to nothing. Incremental change works.

For more information, visit pub profit margin calculator.

For more information, visit pub drink pricing calculator.

For more information, visit pub staffing cost calculator.