The short version: a staffer scans the room from the phone already in their pocket, and RollCall reads how full each room is. Nothing to install, it runs in a browser, and current pricing is on the pricing page.
Most occupancy tracking sold to venues arrives with an installer. Sensors over the doorway, counters in the ceiling, a wiring job, a contract. That gear works, and this page says so plainly. It also says what it costs you, and what you get instead if you would rather not put anything on your walls.
Included with every plan · Nothing to install · Runs in your browser
Free, and it genuinely works on a quiet night. It falls apart in a rush, when the door gets three deep and nobody is subtracting the people leaving through the patio gate.
Fast, free, and often close. It is still a judgement call, and the call changes with whoever is working the door that night.
Accurate at a threshold and always on. Nobody has to remember anything, which is the real product. You pay to install them, roughly a unit per door, on a vendor contract.
Same strengths as sensors, and they can watch a whole room rather than a single doorway. They also mean cameras aimed at your guests, plus the disclosure questions that come with that.
Free and asks nothing of you. It describes what a normal Friday looks like, which is not the same question as how full you are right now.
Somebody picks a status from a menu and that becomes the number. Easy to publish, hard to trust, and impossible to check later.
If your occupancy number has to hold up in front of somebody official, buy the equipment. We are not going to talk you out of it.
Here is the short version. If a fire marshal enforces a hard number at your door, that is a compliance problem and compliance problems want hardware. If what you actually need is to know whether the patio is quiet while the main floor is packed, so you can move two people behind the bar, that is an operating problem and you can solve it with a phone.
Plenty of venues have both problems. Those are not the same purchase.
RollCall is software. Someone on shift opens their scan link, takes a photo or a short clip of the room, and posts it. The crowd level, the estimated headcount, and how full the room is are all derived from that scan. Nobody types in a status.
Walk your venue once and RollCall learns your layout. From then on each scan is attributed to the room it saw, so the floor, the bar, the patio and upstairs each carry their own occupancy.
Set what a room holds once. RollCall refines that number from your own scans over time, so the percentage means something specific to your room instead of a figure off a permit.
Every reading shows what was observed versus estimated, and how much of the venue the scan actually saw. You can tell a sure number from a rough one, which a bare percentage never lets you do.
If a read is slightly off, move it by one before you post. Your correction goes into future estimates rather than into a support ticket.
A scan reading does not live forever. When it lapses the number falls back to check-in presence instead of showing a stale full room all week.
Check-ins are written on our servers only. No client can write that count, your own venue dashboard included, so nobody can inflate or deflate it.
Once you are past tonight, the same scans build history: your full crowd history, your typical night, a busy heatmap by night and hour, your best nights, and scheduled capacity-hours against how much of them you used. Pro
If you want the definitions and the formulas behind capacity utilization and sales per capacity-hour, they are written out on the operator metrics page →
That is the whole tradeoff, and you should hear it from us rather than discover it in week three.
A sensor over your door does not need anyone to remember it. A scan does. If the night gets away from your crew and nobody posts for a couple of hours, the reading lapses and the number falls back to check-in presence. It does not sit there claiming you are packed.
We designed it that way on purpose, because a confidently wrong number is worse than a thin one. It still means the quality of what you see tracks how often somebody scans.
What we do about it: each staffer gets a fresh scan link every shift, camera only, with no account and no dashboard access. Posting a scan is taking a photo, not working through a checklist, so it can fall to whoever is standing closest to the room rather than to a spare person you do not have.
Written for the decision you are actually making, which is usually whether this is worth an install.
| Fixed sensors or camera counters | Manual counts at the door | RollCall scans | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you install | Units at each door or zone, mounted and powered | Nothing, plus a clicker | Nothing. It runs in a browser |
| What it takes to start | A quote, a site visit, an install date | Whoever is on the door tonight | A signup and one walkthrough of your venue |
| Runs without anyone remembering | Yes. That is the point of it | No | No. It needs a staffer to scan |
| Occupancy per room | Only where you put a unit | Only where you post a person | Yes, every room your walkthrough covered |
| Fit for a hard legal capacity limit | Yes. This is what it is built for | Only as good as the person clicking | No. Use hardware for that |
| Cameras aimed at guests | Yes for camera counters, no for beam sensors | No | No. A staffer takes a photo, there is no fixed camera |
| Who can change the number | The vendor system that owns the count | Whoever holds the clicker | The reading comes from a scan of the room, and check-in counts are server-side only |
| What happens when it stops | A unit goes offline and you call the vendor | The count is simply gone | The reading expires and falls back to check-in presence |
This compares categories of approach, not specific products. Vendors differ, and you should ask any of them the same questions in the left column.
A camera counter has to watch your guests to count them. That is simply how the technology works, and it is a reasonable thing to buy. It is still a device on your ceiling pointed at people who came out for a drink, and in some places it is something you have to disclose.
We publish a biometric policy that states this in writing, including the line that the venue crowd features are outside its scope precisely because they never produce a biometric identifier. It is a public legal document, not a marketing sentence, and you can hold us to it.
Including the ones with answers you might not want.
No. RollCall runs in your browser, and the reading comes from a photo or a short clip a staffer takes on their own phone. There is nothing to mount, nothing to wire, no unit per door, and no vendor visit. If you already have sensors or camera counters, keep them. This is a different tool, not a replacement for a certified count.
A fixed sensor counts every person crossing a threshold, so for a running total at one controlled door it will beat a photo. A scan reads the room instead of the doorway, so it picks up who is actually in each space rather than who walked past a beam. Every reading carries a coverage and confidence read, so you can see how much of the venue that scan actually saw instead of trusting a bare number. We have not published an accuracy benchmark for the scan, and we are not going to quote one until we have.
The reading lapses. A scan reading expires rather than sitting there claiming you are packed all week, and when it expires the number falls back to check-in presence, which is a thinner signal but an honest one. This is the real tradeoff of doing occupancy tracking in software: it depends on somebody scanning, and a fixed sensor does not.
Yes. Occupancy is tracked room by room, not as one venue-level number. After a one-time walkthrough, every scan is attributed to the room it saw, so the main floor can read full while the patio reads empty and you can see both at once.
The crowd reading comes from a scan taken inside the room, so it is tied to a photo of your floor rather than a status somebody typed in. The check-in count is separate and is written on our servers only. No client can write it, including your own venue dashboard, so nobody can push check-ins up or down.
No, and we would rather tell you here than after you sign up. If you have a hard occupancy limit that a fire marshal enforces, use fixed counting hardware. That equipment runs whether or not anyone remembers it, which is exactly what a compliance number needs. Use RollCall for running the room, not for standing behind a citation.
No. Room scans and walkthrough videos count people and never identify anyone: no facial recognition, no face matching, no biometric identifiers of any kind. That is written into our published biometric policy, not just into this page.
RollCall Pro is $199 per venue per month for one venue, or $159 per venue per month billed annually, and covers live crowd visibility, estimated occupancy and headcount, room-by-room occupancy, capacity that learns, coverage and confidence, staff scan links, your own crowd history, your typical night, the busy heatmap, best nights, and capacity and utilization. Groups is $799 per month plus $179 per venue per month for up to 20 venues, billed monthly, and adds comparison across your locations.
RollCall Pro covers one venue. Nothing to install, nothing to wire, no contract. If you decide six months from now that you need sensors, nothing here gets in the way.
Contact
Goes straight to the team — we read everything and reply by email.
prefer email? support@rollcall.bar
Sent — we'll get back to you ✓