TrustRadius Insights
Users have praised Caterease for its effectiveness in creating and managing events and processes. The software allows for easy tracking of …
Starting at $85 per month
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Pricing
Express
$85
Cloud
per month
Standard
$125
Cloud
per month
Professional
$165
Cloud
per month
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.caterease.com/pricing
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $85 per month
Product Details
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- Tech Details
What is Caterease?
Caterease Video
Caterease Product Demo by Simplifilm
Caterease Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
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(9)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Users have praised Caterease for its effectiveness in creating and managing events and processes. The software allows for easy tracking of events throughout the year, from prospective and tentative events to repeat ones. This has proven useful in streamlining event management and ensuring efficient communication within organizations. With Caterease, users can create detailed proposals and kitchen details for clients, providing accurate quantities and necessary information for food preparation. Additionally, the software offers custom event prints and generates comprehensive client reports, facilitating smoother event execution.
One notable advantage of Caterease is its integration with various external operations such as credit card processing, event staff scheduling, and online ordering. This feature has significantly reduced time-consuming tasks and improved overall business operations. Additionally, Caterease has been instrumental in helping businesses report on financial metrics accurately and make precise forecasts. The software's user-friendly interface simplifies the process of creating proposals and invoices once the initial settings are in place. Users have also found that Caterease saves time by eliminating manual order input and consolidating all event information in one location. By doubling their operations without needing extra support staff, businesses have experienced substantial growth with Caterease.
Furthermore, Caterease enables clear communication by standardizing information distribution among different departments within an organization. This not only enhances collaboration but also ensures that clients receive quick and accurate quotes, estimates, and calculations for their events. The ability to manage clients and access data on previous orders has become essential for businesses utilizing Caterease. It allows for easy projections while conversing with clients and provides quick access to past events when needed.
Caterease offers a range of features that cater to various needs including sales invoices, menu planning, and creating event sheets for staff and clients. Its ease of use, quick entry tools, good customer service, menu options, and advanced platform stand out among other systems available in the market. Customers appreciate the ability to update their event details on their own through Caterease, reducing the need for constant communication with the company. The software also facilitates information sharing and communication among departments and staff members, resulting in quicker response times and improved customer service.
Users have found that Caterease helps them better organize their businesses, prevent double bookings, and provide access to all relevant users to view bookings. The software's clear overview of upcoming events and its color coding system for different event statuses make it easy to stay on top of event schedules. Caterease is particularly well-suited for businesses specializing in special events, including planners, hotels, and event venues. Its versatility and advanced platform have been praised by users who have experienced a smooth transition to Caterease with the help of the company's supportive customer service team.
One of the key benefits of Caterease is its real-time data gathering capabilities, which enable efficient reporting and empower sales and operations teams to perform at their best. The software is continually evolving to meet the changing needs of the industry, demonstrating a commitment to ongoing development. Users have also highlighted how Caterease centralizes event information, reducing confusion across departments and providing robust reporting and tracking features.
While the majority of users have had positive experiences with Caterease, some have encountered connectivity issues in areas with limited internet options, impacting the software's performance. Additionally, there have been instances where the software has been slow; however, users appreciate the highly responsive technical support provided by Caterease, which promptly resolves any issues or questions that arise.
Overall, Caterease has proven to be an invaluable tool for organizing and tracking events, streamlining communication, and integrating with other software like Microsoft Access. By preventing double bookings, ensuring accurate proposals for clients, and offering a centralized platform for event information, Caterease saves time, reduces errors, and improves customer service for businesses in the catering industry.
Excellent data retrieval: Users have consistently praised Caterease for its excellent data retrieval capabilities, with multiple reviewers stating that they are able to run reports efficiently. This feature has been especially helpful for users in managing their organization's operations and making informed decisions.
Easy to use and customizable: Many users appreciate how Caterease is easy to use and can be customized to individual needs. The software simplifies tasks such as entering prospects, creating proposals, and managing clients, which has been highly beneficial for reviewers in streamlining their workflow and increasing productivity.
Efficient payment tracking and multi-user functionality: Reviewers have commended Caterease for its ease of checking and tracking payments, as well as its ability to handle multiple users simultaneously. This functionality has proven valuable for businesses in effectively managing financial transactions and ensuring smooth collaboration among team members.
Reporting Tools Lacking: Many users have expressed frustration with the lack of reporting tools in Caterease, finding it difficult to generate comprehensive reports for their business needs. Some reviewers mentioned that they switched to other software providers like Gather because they offered more options for producing documents, digital client signatures, and payment integration, which Caterease lacked.
Intuitiveness Issues: Several reviewers have mentioned that Caterease is not intuitive and requires multiple steps to complete tasks, resulting in a steep learning curve for less tech-savvy staff. Users found the software unintuitive with confusing and messy interfaces, small buttons, and multiple windows that made even simple tasks complicated. They also noted that saving progress was necessary as closing out of a window would result in lost work.
Unreliable Performance: Users have reported frequent glitches, slow performance, and occasional freezing of the software during use. This has led to frustrations and delays in completing tasks efficiently. Some users also experienced issues with data loss due to overwriting changes by other users and being kicked out of events that were not properly closed out.
Users highly recommend Caterease for adding catering to their services and describe it as the best program they have ever used. They believe it offers great options, including attaching photos to files and convenient integrations with floor planning software and email marketing sites. Users also mention that Caterease is considered the industry standard and express satisfaction with the product, stating they have no intention of switching to other catering systems. They advise taking the time to explore the hidden features before sending proposals to clients and suggest that while Caterease may not be compatible with certain event spaces and guestrooms, it is still worth every penny. However, some users had a negative experience with customer support and did not receive a refund. Despite this, users recommend giving Caterease a try as a stand-alone software.
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Reviews
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November 20, 2019
Easy to Use
Caterease is used across our whole organization. We are a banquet facility and we use it to organize all of our events. Our sales team uses it to track all contacts made with the client. They also use it to make comments about the event for our operations team. Our operations team uses it for all the details of our events. It helps us to easily track, adjust, and communicate across all departments. It also allows us to integrate Microsoft Access, which we use a lot as well.
- Saves in real time. This allows us to see updates to events in real time. This allows us to work seamlessly across departments if, for example, someone goes on vacation, we can easily see the comments and adjustments that were made.
- Integration - we use Microsoft Access a lot. Caterease allows us to pull data directly from Caterease to be uses in our Access Queries.
- Diagramming - Caterease now works with a preferred diagramming company called Placez. Currently, we use different software however are in the process of transitioning to Placez. This will allow us to have almost all facets of the business within or with access to Caterease data.
- Designing queries can be tedious and time consuming. After they are created, they are useful to see specific details, but the process in creating them seems as if though it could be streamlined.
- Payments - While it's easy to track payments, it would be nice if Caterease added software to take payments as well. This would help in streamlining the business to just using Caterease instead of having to use other software.
- Interface - while easy to use and navigate, there are too many windows that can be opened and adjusted. I don't know how they could fix this, but it just seems to be a cluttered interface.
- With the integration with software such as Access and Placez, it has required less "man hours" to do each task. This saves on labor.
- Streamlining - in having to use less programs, more specifically, paying for less programs, it has given us a ROI by allowing us to have a centralized software (Caterease) to manage our events.
- Payments - it would be nice if Caterease offered a way to take payments that was included in the price, instead we use a different software that charges per transaction.
We haven't used any alternatives to Caterease. So far, Caterease has been more than adequate for what we need it for, even though there are things we would like to see improved or added to the software.
November 05, 2019
Cater-Easy
Our event sales team uses Caterease in order to manage our events. We have a team of 6, so organizing all of our events and our calendar can sometimes be a bit complicated. We have dozens of events every month, and we need to make sure that we’re not double booking our venues equipment/staff/etc. Caterease makes it incredibly easy to check to see if there’s an equipment or venue conflict. In fact, it will actually make it incredibly difficult to move forward if it senses that there is a conflict, which allows us to adjust our proposals before we send them to our clients and potentially run into trouble with our clients. This saves us a lot of time and human error, as we don’t have to go into each individual event and double check our equipment against what has already been sold for any given day. It also allows us access to any event on the calendar, so if someone is out of the office and their client calls in, we can often assist them without having to wait, which makes us look efficient and client-friendly.
- As mentioned before, Caterease is great at helping identify conflicts with equipment, staff, and venues without the user having to go in and manually check. This is a great resource and saves us a lot of potential trouble with clients if we were to double book a piece of equipment.
- Caterease is also user-friendly. There’s a slight learning curve with some aspects of the program, but once you have been in the program for a while, it’s pretty accessible and makes it easy to search, edit proposals, and add new contacts.
- It’s really effective for multiple users. I like the accessibility and the fact that, even though many of us are often working in it at the same time, it doesn’t seem to stall or slow down, even with multiple users on the same license using it at the same time.
- 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.
- As mentioned earlier, it makes us look really good. Because a lot of the employees in the company have flexible schedules, not all of us are in at the same time, but clients will still call in asking for adjustments to be made. We can all be of assistance, and the transparency makes us all look incredibly helpful and competent when clients call in.
- This program has allowed us to eliminate human error with equipment conflicts, and allows us to be transparent with all our clients about what and what is not available if they are calling and requesting a certain date or piece of equipment.
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.
September 05, 2018
A Bite of the Best
At my company, everyone used Caterease - it is a great tool that allows everyone to have a centralized place to store all info for an event, which is very important to ensure we give the client exactly what they want! It also reduces confusion across departments and has great reporting and tracking features.
- Quick updates to contracts/files
- Great integrations available
- Report generation
- Offering more in-depth training would be good as there are so many uses and ways to do things.
- Optional integrations are really cool, but most require additional fees - would be nice to have some free options.
- Would be nice to be able to customize appearance of contracts more.
- Has made our team more efficient and be able to have a central place to store all info so everyone can access it.
- Manually printing BEOs has proven to be incredibly inefficient as they get updated quickly and often times just causes confusion and mistakes.
- It's nice to be able to generate contracts fairly quickly for clients