#1 most frequent
United States of America
85.9%414 installations of 482
What is Caterease?
Categories & Use Cases
Videos
Who Buys & Uses Caterease
#2 most frequent
Canada
10.2%49 installations of 482
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
1.2%6 installations of 482
Easy to Use
Pros
- 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.
Cons
- 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.
Return on Investment
- 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.
Other Software Used
Cvent Social Tables, Microsoft Access, Google Hangouts
Cater-Easy
Pros
- 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.
Cons
- 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.
Return on Investment
- 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.
Other Software Used
Microsoft Office 2016, Canva, TSheets
A Bite of the Best
Pros
- Quick updates to contracts/files
- Great integrations available
- Report generation
Cons
- 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.
Return on Investment
- 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
Other Software Used
Hootsuite Enterprise, Canva, Eventbrite, Adobe Photoshop, MailChimp