Top 5 Features Every Catering Software User Can't Live Without

Nick Morpus profile picture
By Nick Morpus

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5 min read

While I was in college, I used to spend my breaks working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico as a night cook and supervisor for a specialized catering company.

I worked from six at night till six in the morning, cooking for the rig night shift and supervising the rest of my company’s night crew. I was responsible for feeding roughly eighty people every night, taking inventory of stocks, and ordering new stocks based on what the crew liked to eat most.

Top_5_Features_Every_Catering_Software_User_Can’t_Live_Without

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any special catering software to help me while I logged down orders and sent them to the main office in Excel format. I can only imagine how much easier my job would’ve been had I had some sort of catering software full of management features.

Some caterers need more features than others, however there are certain features that every caterer or event manager need from their catering software. These are the top five features every catering software user can’t live without.

5. Facility Management

This feature made number five since not all event managers and catering businesses own their own venues. For those who fall under such a description, facility management is a highly desirable function for catering software.

Mapping out your venue and figuring out the best areas and times to provide catering services are important to any event manager or caterer. Facility management is also a useful tool for event scheduling, so you know exactly who is using your venue, when, and how.

4. Order Management

Order management is a must-have feature for catering software. When you are managing staff, a kitchen, and upcoming events, you can’t be stressing over whether or not you have all of the right order details due to a manual system fraught with human error. Order management will organize all incoming catering orders and prioritize your outgoing supply orders without mixing the two.

Ditch the Excel spreadsheets and go for a designed system.

3. Cloud/Mobile Accessibility

Imagine you are catering an event far from your office and you realize that the printouts with all of the catering details doesn’t cover everything it needed to. Mobile and cloud accessibility provides a stopgap measure against human error in planning.

Most new catering software options, as well as popular established options, have made moves to include cloud and mobile accessibility, providing you with access to all features and data wherever you have internet capabilities.

Cloud computing also provides the benefits of disaster recovery in cases of hardware malfunction, easy software updates, and less spending on hardware for data storage.

It’s time to move your software into the 21st century.

2. Billing and Invoicing

Unless you are running a charity catering service, getting paid is one of the most important aspects of your business (after providing exceptional service, of course). In order to keep your catering service afloat, make sure that your software has a solid billing and invoicing system.

Some catering software options, such as EventPro, BetterCater, and Gather, even include templates which instruct you on how to properly log invoices and other payments on their systems.

Your billing and invoicing features should also include data exporting capabilities in order to ensure seamless data transition. The only thing worse than losing data in transition is losing data that dictates how much money will be made by your catering service.

1. Booking Management

Booking management is the number-one feature that your catering software cannot function without. If it is so important to manage and schedule out all invitations with clients, then it is just as important for your catering software to include these features.

Here at Capterra, we have made recent moves to streamline our entire blogging system from topic pitching to final publication onto as few programs and websites as possible. It is hard to manage every aspect of a complicated process over several different programs.

Catering is no different. If your catering software can process billing, log your inventory, and provide quotes to clients, there is no excuse for your scheduling to be on Google Calendars. Without a streamlined system, you run the risk of overbooking your venue or your resources simply because your operation has been spread thin over many different programs.

The Top Five Catering Software Options With All Five Features

(based on Capterra Ratings)

  1. Caterease

Regarded as the “world’s most popular” catering software.

  1. Total Party Planner

Fulfills our entire feature checklist, including the ones listed above.

  1. Pxier Event

A reasonably priced catering and event software with a solid list of features.

  1. Revel iPad POS

A completely mobile catering and point-of-service software solution.

  1. Caterman

Very inexpensive catering software with all of Capterra’s feature requirements except “contract management.”

Conclusion

Luckily, my time cooking on oil rigs in the Gulf was a success, but it was not without its challenges that catering software could have easily fixed. I only hope that this catering company takes the initiative to implement catering software and make the lives of cooks and managers easier.

Do you agree with our list? Are there any features you felt should be included? Let us know in the comments below!


Looking for Event Management software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Event Management software solutions.

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About the Author

Nick Morpus profile picture

Nick Morpus is a former Capterra analyst.

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