Payments for breweries, from the tap handle to the excise return

By separating the beer from the tap. The tap is a fixed position with its own reporting; the beer on it is an item with a name and a batch. Build it the other way round, with a new menu item every time a keg is swapped, and after one season you have four hundred items and cannot answer how a given beer performed across its releases.

It can estimate it from pours if each tap is tied to a keg size and the pour sizes are real. That estimate drifts because of foam, line loss and the first pour of the day, so treat it as a warning rather than a gauge. Flow meters measure it properly; whether they earn their install depends on how many taps you run and how often a blown keg costs you a table.

As separate items drawing on the same keg. A crowler is packaged volume leaving the building and a pour is consumed on site, and in many jurisdictions those are recorded differently. Keeping them as distinct items on one depletion source is what lets the taproom report and the volume record agree.

Yes. The guest is authorised at check-in and charged for measured volume at the end, so the hold placed at the start has to cover a session nobody can predict, and it has to be raised as the session grows. It behaves like a bar tab with a meter attached, and the same incremental authorisation question applies.

It can produce taproom sales volume by product, which is one input. Your excise reporting is built from production and removal records that live in the brewhouse, not at the register, and the return is your responsibility and your accountant's. What we can do is make sure the taproom side is measured in the units your return actually asks for, rather than in pours you convert by hand.