Caterease Reviews

Pros

We use Caterease in over 20 of our accounts and it has been a great relationship from Mark in the sales department to Theo and the other tech support crew in the tech support department. The program itself offers all the tools we need to build proposals, beo's, contracts, invoices, etc. It helps us manage our financial viability with the reporting tools it offers as well as prospecting new clients. Caterease offers ongoing training and new tips to help maximize the program to its fullest potential. I would recommend Caterease to any company offering catering services from an off-site caterer to any on site facility.

Cons

We haven't found anything that we don't like. It does everything we've wanted it to do as far as a software is concerned.

Pros

It is very intuitive, and once you put in the pertinent data, you can create many different and useful documents. Also the reporting options are outstanding.

Cons

I can't think of anything, it really does satisfy all of our needs.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Caterease

Pros

The concept is great tool for caterers, though you have to pay for every add on
When its operational - i love it

Cons

- Very over priced!!!
- Forever having issues with the program not working. I lose too much time having to followup with customer service to fix issues.
- Is hosted on a 3rd party platform and its forcing a new download access everytime. this make it slow as.. Other CRMs have been smoother operationally.
- You have to pay for every addon... completely stupid idea and makes for costly program. the Web forms are hosted on a separate website which means you cannot customise without using customer service.
- every update seems to create more issues
- its slow in operation to change to different screens
- it doesnt communicate with zapier so creating external forms or merging data is all manual

Pros

Caterease makes it so easy to communicate to our kitchen what is needed and separate items in the menu by cooks/salad/bakery workers. The order form that is populated is easy to read, and is consistent for everyone in our department to easily understand what is needed and who needs to do it.

Cons

Caterease could use an autosave feature, as well as the ability to recognize trends and offer changes to the user based on the trends.

Pros

The possibilities are endless (Creating kitchen prep list, cost, ordering, budgetting, creating BEO's, templates, financial possibilities)

Cons

The software is a little archaic and is not the most user friendly. A lot of the functionality would certainly be used more often if the software was easier to use. A lot of duplicate information has to be entered

Pros

I have been using this amazing program for over 24 years. It is the most versatile and user friendly software I have ever used. The prints are flexible - yet SO professional. Anytime I call or email, the response time is amazing, their customer service far exceeds today's standard! I always appreciate the friendly, patient, & efficient support staff, they have an awesome product and an amazing staff to support it.

Pros

The software is easy to use. It keeps track of all of my events. The support team is always great to help me with any question that I have. I am not very good with technology and they always answer my questions in terms that I understand. They stay on the phone with me until my problem is resolved.

Cons

I wish the e mails through Caterease would hold an attachment.

Pros

I really like the ability to customize the program for your unique needs. I like that I am not relying on the IT department and I can make changes myself. It is user-friendly and has streamlined our operations improving our overall efficiency.

Cons

Because I use the prints templates, I am limited to the customization of them. I know I could make my own prints so this is a very small inconvenience.

Pros

I love the ability to pull simple reports quickly and permission settings.

Cons

It's not very user-friendly and can be slow. Pulling detailed reports is difficult because of limited search functions.

Pros

Caterease offers some good basic tools for caterers, and expanded functionality for scheduling and pack lists that other events software lacks (it is really geared to offsite and large catering operations).

Cons

It is just OLD. Layered and complex software that inelegantly tied together in unintuitive ways. Took so much time to set up, and perhaps longer to train even clever people to use it.

Pros

The Vantiv credit card processor was good value, it dropped out processing fees a bit... But that's a different company. The Caterease customer service started out okay; they were friendly at least.

Cons

Very convoluted software, difficult to use, leaves you wondering 'why would they do that??' when looking at the way it was designed. If you buy one of the 'cheaper' versions, they lock most of the useful features (unlike a service like Total Party Planner). The customer service was OKAY at first, but once I realized we were not told of the restrictions the desktop version has, I asked for a refund as we had not even owned it for 6 months yet. You know that didn't happen. I've been told we'll get a refund for the unused maintenance service.

Pros

Ease of use across systems (adding an event, account or client is all done with the same + / - icon )

Cons

Unable to batch print or email documents as one attachment
Unable to view the content of sent emails from within Caterease
Unable to pull up an "outstanding invoice list" across accounts

Pros

Ease of use, dependability, easy training, fast support, extensive thought put in to each aspect of program.

Cons

On site training is very expensive. However, we have found the website and support desk can help us through most questions and training for free.

Pros

We do love our Caterease package!! We have been users since 2000 so we have grown up with Caterease!! It is efficient and easy to use and gives us all that data and management tools we need to make our events a success!! We also just decided to research the mobile version of the program as we are going to have a sales person in the field in a couple of months! It truly is a great partnership!

Pros

This saves so much time and basically pays for itself in the end! I love all the customizable features available and I recommend this to any event company/coordinator!

Cons

They charge for training which I am not a fan of. And also the customer service isn’t very accessible.

Pros

In the beginning I enjoyed how the software made it simple to work with the client to process contracts. Customer service was always knowledgeable and responsive. Our clients also seemed to have an ease of use as well.

Cons

I felt that the software could do more and offer more compatibility with our websites and clients. We ended up switching to Gather because they have a lot more options in producing documents, having clients digitally sign and provide payment and it integrates with a lot of other software. Caterase lacks in those departments and we needed something that provided less steps for the vendor and the client.

Pros

I like being able to easily track the events - venues, menus, counts, dates, it's all there.

I like that I can export the data as needed in other documents, etc.

I like that it's uniform in presentation.

Cons

There is a lot of different potential ways to use the data, and I sometimes forget the path to some of the information I need; I need to keep a resource book to remember how to do some things that I don't need to do often.

Pros

Purchased this product because it had such good reviews and felt that it made my job easier as a small catering business we someone usually books an event with us while attending someone else event and having a moblie app handy was really nice.

Cons

My co-owner did not find this product useful. We were not able to interface our Quickbooks online with this software which caused me to double work.

Pros

My favorite thing about this program is that it looks just like my Office programs - so everything is so easy to use. I also love the cool browser-based dashboard and mobile app. I can't believe how much time this is already saving me - wish I bought it sooner!

Cons

Nothing yet! This program does everything I need and more.