Backbar Pricing and Backbar Cost per Location in 2026

Backbar pricing in 2026 has three tiers: Basic at $0 for one location, Essential at $79 a month per location on a yearly plan ($99 billed monthly), and Professional at $129 a month per location yearly ($149 monthly), according to Backbar's own pricing page. Automatic invoice entry, the feature most bar owners ask about, is only in Professional. That works out to $1,548 a year for one bar on the yearly plan. If the job you need done is getting distributor invoice lines into Excel or QuickBooks, a page-priced invoice tool covers that from $49 a month for all your locations combined.

Backbar plans and prices in 2026

Backbar is one of the few bar inventory apps that publishes its prices. The figures below come from its pricing page and its plan comparison help article in October 2026. Paid plans are charged per location, and yearly plans are paid up front.

Every plan includes unlimited users. Backbar offers a one month free trial of Essential or Professional, and it connects to select POS systems for real-time depletions, with partner pages for Toast, Square and Shift4 SkyTab. Prices change, so confirm the numbers on a demo call before you commit to a year.

How much does Backbar cost per year?

For one bar, Backbar costs $948 a year on Essential and $1,548 a year on Professional when you pay yearly. Month to month, the same plans run $1,188 and $1,788 a year. Because paid plans are billed per location, a group pays that amount again for each bar or restaurant on the account.

The jump from Essential to Professional is $600 a year per location on the yearly plan. For most bars, that $600 buys one thing they care about, automatic invoice entry, plus the par and variance tools that depend on it.

Which Backbar plan includes invoice scanning?

Only Professional. Backbar's plan comparison lists automatic invoice entry under Professional: you upload or photograph an invoice and costs and quantities are entered into your inventory for you. Essential and Basic let you keep item costs, but you enter invoice changes yourself.

That matters because invoice entry is the chore that drives the upgrade. A bar that takes deliveries from two or three distributors a week has a pile of invoices with cases, bottles, sizes and deposits on every line. Typing those into an inventory app, or into a spreadsheet, is the work nobody wants. The pricing page does not list a monthly cap on invoices for Professional, and it does not list a QuickBooks integration either, so ask about both if your bookkeeper needs bills in QuickBooks.

Is Backbar free?

Backbar Basic is $0 with no time limit, but it is limited to one location, six months of history, 10 recipes and email support, and it does not include automatic invoice entry. It works for a single bar that only wants to count bottles. Anything beyond that, including multiple locations or invoice scanning, moves you to a paid plan billed per location.

Backbar Professional vs a page priced invoice tool

If you are looking at Professional mainly for invoice entry, it is worth comparing it with a tool that does only that job. InvoiceExtraction reads distributor invoices line by line and exports Excel, CSV or QuickBooks files. It is priced by pages processed, not by location.

The honest trade: Backbar wins if your staff will count weekly in the app and you want par levels, cost variance alerts and POS depletions. We win if the real problem is that Southern Glazer's, Breakthru and local beer invoices never get typed in, or your bookkeeper wants them in QuickBooks, and you would rather not pay the Professional upgrade at every location. A common setup is Backbar Basic or Essential for counts, plus invoice lines from our restaurant invoice scanner pasted into the count sheet so pour cost uses this month's prices.

What the invoice export looks like for a bar

Liquor and wine invoices are harder than food invoices because one line can mix cases and loose bottles, sizes are printed in milliliters, and deposits and delivery fees sit between products. Each converter page shows the exact columns for a distributor. The Southern Glazer's invoice to Excel converter splits cases and bottles and calculates cost per bottle, the Breakthru Beverage invoice converter does the same for Breakthru's PDFs, and the Johnson Brothers invoice converter handles JB Hub downloads in the Midwest and Florida.

Bookkeepers who take over a bar's books often inherit more than invoices. If the previous owner ran the bar on Quicken, you can convert the old QIF files for QuickBooks Online and start the new file with clean history, then post each distributor invoice as a bill with every line coded to liquor, wine, beer or supplies.

Backbar alternatives by price

These are the published prices we verified for other bar and restaurant back office tools. Each one has its own breakdown on this blog.

See Partender pricing for the per-bar math and trial terms, BevSpot pricing for its annual plans, and WISK pricing for the setup fees and invoice allowance.

How to decide in ten minutes

• If you only count one bar and never scan invoices, Backbar Basic at $0 is hard to beat.
• If you want pour cost and profit reports but your invoice volume is low, Essential at $79 per location yearly is the sweet spot.
• If staff will count weekly and you want pars and variance alerts driven by invoices, Professional at $129 per location yearly earns its price.
• If the invoices are the bottleneck and your counts already live in a sheet, start with a $49 invoice plan and keep Backbar on a lower tier or skip it.

Whichever way you go, run last month's distributor invoices through the tool you are considering before you pay for a year. The restaurant invoice scanner takes a PDF or a phone photo and shows the line output for your own invoices.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Backbar cost?

Backbar costs $0 for Basic, $79 a month per location for Essential and $129 a month per location for Professional on a yearly plan, or $99 and $149 billed monthly. For one bar on Professional yearly, that is $1,548 a year, and each extra location adds the same amount.

Does Backbar have a free plan?

Yes. Backbar Basic is $0 for one location, with inventory counts, six months of history, up to 10 recipes and email support. It does not include automatic invoice entry or multi-location use. Backbar also offers a one month free trial of Essential or Professional before billing starts.

Does Backbar integrate with QuickBooks?

Backbar's pricing page does not list a QuickBooks integration, so ask on a demo call before you buy. Its listed integrations are POS systems for real-time depletions. If your bookkeeper needs distributor invoices in QuickBooks, an invoice extraction tool can export bills with every line coded.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Backbar for invoice scanning?

Yes. If invoice entry is the reason you would upgrade to Professional, a page-priced tool such as InvoiceExtraction exports every invoice line to Excel, CSV or QuickBooks from $49 a month, or $24 billed yearly, for all locations. It does not count inventory, so many bars pair it with Backbar Basic.