Catering software can be a powerful solution to meet many of the needs of your business, letting you combine useful components such as a calendar for event scheduling, menu creation, and financial tracking into a single software package. As useful as this all-in-one catering software can be, however, there are a few things that can be added to it in order to make your business even more efficient. Here are some of the features which are available to add to your all-in-one catering software solution to help take your business to even greater heights.

Labor Management Features

It can be difficult to make sure that you have enough staff at an event to make things run smoothly without having too many people scheduled. To keep from being understaffed while avoiding unneeded labor costs due to over scheduling, labor management add-ons are available which will let you do everything from creating labor reports to developing custom labor templates based on different types of events. You will even be able to print your labor schedules directly from the software.

QuickBooks Integration

If you use QuickBooks as your preferred accounting software suite, you can use an add-on to allow you to directly import customer invoices into QuickBooks to make sure that all of your costs and income are accounted for. This will not only save you time but will also help to ensure that you don't accidentally make mistakes while inputting invoice information.

Outlook Syncing

Just like the QuickBooks import functions, add-ons are available which will let you synchronize contact information and event scheduling with Outlook Express. This will give you an easy method of being able to look up customer information in case you need to contact them, while also giving you a secondary set of reminders of upcoming events and tasks which need to be completed before the events occur.

Room Mapping

One of the most useful add-ons that you can get for your catering software, room mapping features allow you to create a high-quality map of the event floor with ease. This will make it much easier to organize your staff in advance of the event, giving them a good idea of exactly where they will be working instead of having to figure it out once they get there. The room diagram will also give you an opportunity to recognize potential problems related to the event layout beforehand so that you will have a suitable solution ready before the event even occurs.

Automatic Online Inquiry Processing

The central server used by your catering software can be linked with your website, allowing the automatic importation of customer inquiries so that they can be dealt with more easily. This helpful add-on will let you see at a glance whether you already have events scheduled on the days that potential customers want to book your catering business, helping you to avoid double-booking. The integration into your website can also help you to keep an up-to-date online calendar to let those interested in your services know when you are available even before they make an inquiry.