Integration with Microsoft Access - We use Access for a lot of different Queries, such as for our bar back to know the specifics of each bar. Caterease allows Access to pull data directly so all we have to do is run the report instead of entering all the information manually. Same with diagramming, having software like Placez that pulls from Caterease allows for such things as table and chair counts to be pulled directly from Caterease instead of having to place each individual table.
If you need to feed more than 5 people on a recurring basis I highly recommend Platterz. If you need to feed 50+ people I have no idea how you aren't already using Platterz. Colleagues at large companies are always complaining that their lunches are bland and repetitive, and Platterz solves that problem at scale. If you need help planning, their staff is friendly and can plan meals to fit your budget and dietary restrictions. We have been working with Platterz since we had only 10 employees and I am confident we will continue to use them well past 100 employees. Our lunches are fresh, hot, and delicious, and they make sure they fit our budget. Everything can be done online, or with the help of your concierge!
It’s a great program, but it’s missing some aspects that would be incredibly useful. It has the ability to store venues and locations that you’ve used in the past, but it doesn’t allow you to associate a tax rate with the saved venue. As our company handles events all throughout Southern California and tax rates are constantly changing, it would be nice to be able to assign certain tax rates to certain zip codes and venues.
It can be a little finicky sometimes with its equipment conflict algorithm. There will be events In the system that have been marked as cancelled, yet it will insist that an event I am working on has an equipment conflict with it (even though that event is not going through). It will not let you save out of your event and, sometimes, will end up deleting all your changes and progress, which is incredibly frustrating.
I wish there was a way to export PDFs of your proposals without re-saving your entire proposal. Sometimes, clients will ask for two versions of the same proposal with just slight changes, and it’s annoying to have to go in and completely re-do and save the proposal and have to adjust it back to the original.
It would be nice if there was a way to see a history of all of the changes that had been made in a proposal, that would be great. Because we often have many hands on each event we do, having a comprehensive list of all the changes made to each proposal and the date and times, and users who made these changes would be an incredible asset.
I have not had to use the support in my over 3 years of using Caterease. This is why I gave it a 9 rating because even though I haven't had to interact with support, the fact that I haven't had to use support speaks volumes to how good the software is and how it is user friendly.
I haven’t used too many other events programs in the past – at a former company, we used the back end of our website in order to create events, but Caterease is a lot more user-friendly. Our website wasn’t particularly fancy – it didn’t allow us to conflict check or see if there was another event at the same time. It was used for the sole purpose of posting the information to our system – not for creating full proposals. Caterease is much more effective for what we need to use it for in this context.
Prior to Platterz we were either ordering lunches directly from restaurants or using consumer-facing apps such as Skipthedishes and there is no comparison. Platterz and the restaurants they offer are tailored for company catering, and it shows. Meals are dependable and it's much faster than trying to use a consumer app or calling a restaurant yourself putting in an order for 30+ people.
