Account Manager

A new tab has been added to the New Booking Defaults area of the program, allowing you to opt to have the address and phone number information for a new contact person default to that of the account he or she is added to.

Now when you add a new customer to Caterease, you can optionally select a default tax schedule for that customer. That way, when you book a new event for that customer, their specific tax schedule will be brought into that event automatically. You can even query by this field in your Account Query, to see which customers use specific tax schedules.

Sure, we let you attach multiple prints to one email. But what if you want to send one customer his contracts from several events, all in one single email? Well, now you can!

Now when you post large payment to multiple events using the Apply Payments tool in Account Manager, you will be prompted if the payment amount does not perfectly match the total balance due.

Contact Manager

The "Contacts Made" report now offers many more options, including the ability to display details of the specific events associated with each of your contact history notes. Now you can track all phone calls you've made and tasks you've performed as well as the events they relate to!

Now you can save and view copies of all letters and emails you send - including any email attachments! One mouse click from the preview window dynamically saves all pertinent details as a contact history note available for review in your Contact Manager. Never have you had so much power to manage your history with a client!

Event Manager

An exciting new feature for those of you who deal with multiple addresses and billing information for your client. Now you can select the appropriate event billing information from a list of all names and addresses associated with an account, rather than having to type that information by hand each time!

A new, optional feature will automatically close an event when a payment is posted to zero out the event's balance. Thus, with the event closed, you are able not only to track it but also to optionally lock it from being edited by specific Caterease users.

Now you can limit the number of events you book for a single day, or optionally base that limit on certain event criteria - Event Category, Theme, Sales Rep, etc. If, for example, you can only have three off-premise parties in a given day, you can tell Caterease to warn you when you have exceeded that limit.

Also through your New Booking Defaults, you can determine if the text you have entered in the Directions tab of your Account Manager should default as the site location directions for each new event for that customer.

In your program's New Booking Defaults, you can determine whether you want any notes you have entered for a particular customer in Account Manager to default as the Event Notes of any new event you create for that client.

Now you can assign a special "From" and "To" times to all inventoried menu items, different from the "Start" and "End" times of the corresponding event itself. Accurately keep track of availability of every replenishable menu item in your inventory.

All menu items that can be replenished (equipment rentals, etc.) can be tracked using the new Item Inventory feature. Identify any menu item as being inventoried and then tell the program how many of those items you have in stock. Caterease will do the rest - keeping track of each item and letting you know if you exceed your inventory amount.

The number of "actual" guests entered for an event has always had an optional relationship to the number of "members" or "non-members". For example, when you enter the number of "members" at a party, the program has always (optionally) subtracted that number from the Actual guest count and calculated "non-members". Now, however, you can do the math the other way! Now when you change the number of "members" or "non-members" attending an event, this new Global Setting recalculates the Actual guest count!

Rather than having the quantity of a menu item link to the number of general guests attending a party, you can link it specifically to the number of Member or Non-Members (or "Adults", "Children", "Students" - or whatever you've named these custom fields). For example, an event with 100 guests - 45 of whom are adults - can have a menu item with a quantity that automatically becomes 45, and changes as you edit the number of adults attending.

Sometimes a menu package contains items with differing tax or service charge rates. A Wedding Package, for example, might be made up of food items as well as liquor and equipment. Now, you can build a package out of other packages, so all items can be charged tax and service charge at the appropriate rates.

The Apply Discount feature in Event Manager has two exciting new facets to it. First, you can type in an exact dollar amount as your discount, rather then simply using the percentage discounts. Secondly, you can enter a comment for your discount that will appear on the contract for the event. You can even create a quickpick list of discount comments - so you never have to type the same thing more than once! You can even optionally display the discount on the Event Manager screen - so you can instantly tell which events are discounted and which are not. You can even query for event discounts - so you can easily keep track of all those events! This is incredible sophistication!

A few new fields have been added to this report to give you all the details you need about an event's payments. New fields include: Check Number, Credit Card Number, and Credit Card Approval.

Just like the new query/grid features, except these deserve their own mention because - hey - they're in the Event Manager! Now with just one mouse click you can filter out all events you don't want to see, and even switch to a custom view of event details. Event management just got even easier!

If you have more than one event management operation that you need to keep track of, this handy new field is the perfect solution. Combined with our amazing query and filter tools, you can track all events for a certain operation, and even filter your database so only those events are visible.

This handy feature lets you quickly change an employee's wage from hourly to a flat rate. Simply type the amount and it will be included in the event's cost and calculated in your staffing costs - but will not change based on the number of hours an employee works.

The Production Sheet, the popular print generated from Event Manager that breaks a party's menu items down by Prep Area, has been enhanced to allow you to show the descriptions of items if you want, rather than simply the item names.

In addition to the number of menu items you've ordered, you can now track the number of items actually used! A new field called "Returned" allows you to enter the number returned for each menu item, and based on that number Caterease automatically calculates the amount used.

Proposals and partial billing just got a whole lot easier! Now you can choose one or more sub-events on-the-fly to be included on a print for a party. If your customer wants to see what the invoice would be without the breakfast included, you can show him in an instant. If he would like separate contracts for his afternoon meeting and his dinner buffet, you can easily select those options as you print!

Now you can make certain tools windows semi-transparent, enabling you to see details on the window behind them. No longer will you have to move small tool windows out of the way to see all the information you need to see!

General Program

In your Caterease Print Designer, you can now select the option "None" on any print field to have no information appear in that area of the print.

Now any Caterease user can change his or her password while logging into the program. The password field on the login screen has an ellipse button (triple dot) next to it, letting you access your personal password information and change it as desired.

User defined fields are our popular feature, allowing you to create your own data fields and use them for anything you want. Now we've increased the number of these fields available throughout the program, so you can truly modify Caterease to suit your needs!

The Audit Trail is a popular feature, tracking changes made to any event by any user in the program. However, if you never use this feature, and have many users on your network making multiple changes constantly, you can now disable the Audit Trail so it does not slow down processing speeds.

This powerful tool lets you keep track of certain changes made to events, accounts and group room contracts, and shows when the changes were made and by whom. Details are stored in a robust detail grid, which - like every other grid in the program - allows you to sort, group and rearrange the data, as well as print or export grid details.

Schedule your Caterease backup to run automatically anytime. All of your data will be safe and secure, and you'll never again have to worry about forgetting.

From a technical perspective, a "client-server" program means that all processes are done on your network's server, rather than on each workstation. In layman's terms, what this means to you is faster - faster navigation from one screen to another; faster saves when adding or changing information; faster results when generating a query; faster everything.

Now when your customers pay by credit card, you can include their three digit security code with all the other card information.  This field is available in your event payments window and your multiple payments window in Account Manager, as well as in the general credit card information windows for events and contact people.

Talk about a time saver! Think about this: you already know that you can select multiple event prints - for example, a Contract, a custom back-of-house print, an ingredients list, AND a merge letter - and generate all of them together with one mouse click. Well, now you can save that collection of prints and retrieve it instantly whenever you want! But wait - there's more! You can also enter unique quantities for each print in your custom list! Imagine! With one mouse click, you can choose to generate 1 contract, 2 kitchen prints, a payments list and 3 production sheets! And then you can instantly choose another list of prints! This is Caterease at its best!

When you first open the program each day, you will be greeted with a beautiful picture, or a joke, or an inspirational phrase. In addition, you can create your own "daily reflections" to pop up on every Caterease screen in your office on any particular date - perhaps a message reminding everyone of a co-worker's birthday, or your own motivational expression, or a special announcement or incentive for your staff.

Sure, you already had the ability to print menu item labels. But now, you can actually edit label details prior to printing! Not only that, but you can set quantities for each label - so if your Chef's Buffet will not all fit in one package, you can request multiple labels to suit your needs!

Now you can instantly edit any Caterease print in Microsoft Word or Excel before you send it to the printer. Simply click the Edit in Word or Edit in Excel button at the top of the print preview screen, and the print you were looking at is now opened in that Microsoft application - and you are free to edit as you choose! It's the utmost in flexibility!

When generating an email from an event, the Caterease address book now shows email addresses for all employees working the party, as well as for the customer's contact people.

A brand new "easy report" lets you instantly track all events based on the dates they were booked. Set any date range and choose from a host of powerful options, and you get a detailed report listing important information about events booked during that period.

This exciting new feature automatically notifies any or all Caterease users the moment (well, OK - 5 seconds after the moment!) an event is edited, added, deleted, cancelled, etc. Basically, it goes like this: you're minding your own business, working in Caterease, and your colleagues is doing the same. He (or she) changes an event, or adds a new one, etc. If you leave the program inactive for 5 seconds (let's face it - isn't it annoying to be typing something and suddenly get a pop-up message?), a pop-up will appear informing you of the change. Of course, you can determine what specific changes will prompt a pop-up "ping" on your machine, and even whether you want to be "pinged" at all! The feature is handy and very well thought out - classic Caterease!

The following fields have been added to the Event Wizard Tool: Members, Non-Members, All Sub-Event User Defined Fields, All time fields (available in the Time Wizard) and just like in other areas of the program, you can remove times that do not apply and rearrange the way times are displayed on the Time Wizard tool. In the Standard and Professional version you also have all the Member/Non-Member field dynamics that are available in the Event Manager - linking them to the Actual or Guaranteed guest count, etc.

Instantly generate labels for any collection of menu items - either for a single event, a group of events, a date range of events, etc. What's more, you even get to choose what details appear on the label!

We've added a Feedback button at the top of this help menu window. Please let us know about any troubles you have finding information about the program. If a topic is not in the index, if a link doesn't work properly, if anything is wrong - we want to fix it immediately.

Talk about flexibility! You can now create your own custom prefixes for your program's event numbers, account numbers, employee numbers and guestroom log numbers. For example, when you add a new event to the program, its event number might default to something like "E00257". Well, if you don't like the "E" as a prefix in that number, you can change it to anything you want! This is a particularly useful tool for corporations using multiple installations of Caterease. Now you can easily see which location booked each event!

This powerful report not only lists all menu items used during a particular date range - complete with details about the corresponding events - but also lists all items not used. This is a great way to see which items need more promotion, or need to be removed from your company's menus!

Your Time Wizard is now customizable. You can set the start time of the wizard on each individual Caterease workstation through the Preferences tool. Then, you can stretch or shrink the Time Wizard to cover whatever time spread you want - all the way up to 24 hours!

Caterease now supports any MAPI provider. This means that you do not necessary need to be using Microsoft Outlook to take advantage of our incredible (and newly enhanced!) email features!

The Payments Made report is a quick way to track all payments you have received for any day or date range. Now this report offers an option to include even more payment details, including: Sales Rep, Check Number, Credit Card Number and Credit Card Approval.

Several new text formatting tools have been added throughout the program, including: New Bullet Wizard (create custom bullets), Increase Paragraph Indent, Decrease Paragraph Indent, and Normal Formatting (strips text of bolding, italics and underlines). In addition, the existing formatting tools have been enhanced to offer better performance and reliability.

For large clients using multiple Caterease installations on a Citrix Server or through Windows Terminal Services, we have completely streamlined the way the server is setup. Now all data directories will be held in one program folder, making all future updates a snap. From now on, you'll only have to update one program, and that update will be shared to all of your installations automatically!

In addition to storing email addresses for contact people and your various employees, your Caterease email address book now lets you create a list of personal addresses, as well. This limitless list is unique to each Caterease user and not shared across the network.

Running reports in Caterease just got even easier with the addition of relative dates. Now, rather than typing in a common date spread, you can just select from a drop-down list of options such as "This Month", "Next Month", "Last Month", "This Year", etc. Other options include "Last 30 Days", "Next 7 Day", "Past", "Future" and many other frequently-used periods of time.

Another new button in the Event Wizard! This one gives you access to the popular Time Wizard feature when filling in time fields. A wizard within a wizard! Only in Caterease!

Another fun tool designed to make Caterease your all-purpose program! Say you're planning an outdoor event, and you need to know what the weather forecast is for the day. Simply click the Tools menu at the top of your Caterease screen and choose Tools > Internet > Today's Weather. Your internet browser will open to weather.com with today's local weather (using the zip code stored in your Company Information to determine the locality).

The print engine in the background of the program has been completely updated. What does this mean to you? First of all, faster prints! Secondly, if you ever experienced any print engine conflicts with other software programs you have installed, these will be totally eliminated!

When you are entering event details in the Event Wizard, you will find a new button allowing you access to your event user defined fields. This is a powerfully dynamic feature - if you have created user defined fields, they will automatically appear on the screen, and you can simply fill them in.

Guestrooms Manager

A new Deposits Due report has been added to Guestrooms Manager, allowing you to track any future deposits scheduled for your group rooms contracts - for any day or date range.

Now the amazing direct email function is even available in Guestrooms Manager - including the ability to attach Guestrooms prints!

Now you can keep track of future deposits in Guestrooms Manager the same way you can with your events. So you don't have to wait until money is received to make a note of it.

The Average Room Rate field on the Guestrooms Control Log report has been altered to ignore complimentary sleeping rooms. This way, if you comp a block of rooms, they will not throw your average room rate off.

A new Payments Made report has also been added for tracking payments for group rooms contracts - again by day or date range.

Now the Guestrooms Manager allows you three optional tax rates just like your Event Manager. Companies that charge multiple rates (including Canadian companies) can now separate them out for their group rooms contacts.

Interfaces

Multiple improvements have been made to these popular accounting interfaces, including: an account code field for each unique credit card type for processing payments; a surcharge fee percentage for each credit card type; an account code for that credit card fee. In addition, you can now take advantage of the relative date range feature when exporting data.

The interface with Room Viewer room diagramming software has been completely updated to allow you to jump back and forth from your diagram in Room Viewer to your event in Caterease without having to close the diagram first. Now you can switch back and forth between programs as much as you want, and still enjoy the power of this phenomenal interface!

Marketing Tools

A new Create Table tool allows you to draw the table you want to insert in a letter, and border buttons let you control which areas of the table have borders and which do not.

Merge letters can now be exported as PDF files, just like every other print in the program.

You can now create headers and footers for any or all pages of your letters. These sections can even optionally include dynamic merge fields and/or images.

Tables, tabs and rich text formatting tools have all been improved to offer more reliability when you design your custom letters.

Many new formatting dynamics have been added to images that are inserted in your merge letters. For example, you can insert an image as a character - so that it acts just like any other character on the page, and moves with the text that surrounds it. Or, you can have text automatically wrap around the image - either to the left, to the right or both. You can even place an image behind text on a page, to use it as a watermark.

The same new text formatting tools as mentioned in the General Program section are available for use in your merge letters, including custom bullets, increase or decrease paragraph indent and normal formatting.

A small pane at the lower left side of the Marketing Tools window offers a live thumbnail of all pages of the letter or envelope you are editing.

Prospect Manager

As if this tool wasn't cool enough! Not only does this exceptional tool let you quickly and easily import all client information into the program - and not only does it walk you through the whole process in an incredibly intuitive wizard-type format - but now, when you are previewing the data you want to import, you can actually DRAG AND DROP contact people from one customer to another prior to pulling the data into Caterease! Once again, Caterease is redefining flexibility!

Caterease now gives you the ability to maintain a database of leads or prospective clients, separate from your list of active accounts. You can import entire collections of leads in various formats, or add them by hand. Then track next actions and action dates and log correspondence (including batch prints and emails) with these potential customers. Once a prospect decides to review a proposal with you, instantly convert that prospect (or multiple prospects) into an active account with the click of a button!

Query/Grid

Not to be outdone, the Account Query offers drill-down grids as well. You can now view event details for all events associated with each account displayed in your Account Query results grid.

If you want to know the total outstanding event balance of each of your clients, you can now find out using the Account Query tool. "Event Balance" is now available as a detail to be displayed in the results grid - and will total all balances for all events associated with each account.

You already know how easy it is to export grid data - simply click your right mouse button and pick a format! Well, now those optional formats include exporting a custom grid as a PDF file!

Caterease grids have always been extraordinarily flexible - allowing you to complete customize details and then print that custom information. Now, you can instantly email or export a grid print - just like other prints throughout the program.

In addition to the option above, you can also tell the program what rules to follow when grouping or filtering by date. For example, you may want to group a list of events by month - seeing those that take place in January, then those in February, etc. Or, you may prefer use the concept "relative to today" for your groupings - and thus see those events taking place today, those scheduled tomorrow, those next week, those next month, etc.

There is now a handy setting where you can tell the program how you prefer to group or filter data by time. For example, you might decide to use "hour" instead of "minute" when grouping events by time, so you can see all events taking place in the 12PM hour, and then all those in the 1PM hour, etc.

Now you can run you normal event query, find only those events you want to see, and then actually view sub-event details - including menu items and staffing - right there in the results grid! Customize all grid details and export or generate custom reports! Any piece of event information you need is right at your fingertips!

Now each snap filter drop-down menu contains check boxes beside each filter option. You can click as many check boxes as you want to filter for multiple details at the same time. For example, in the Event Status snap filter list, you could click the check boxes next to "Definite" and "Tentative" to see only those events with a status of "Definite" or "Tentative".

We've added a lot of new chart views to this popular feature! In addition to the bar graph you are used to, you can now view data in column graph, a line graph, an area graph or a pie graph. Advanced options let you play with the arrangement of the graph, realigning the title, repositioning or removing the legend, etc.

Instantly filter any data out of your various detail grids by creating any number of custom filters. Optionally share filters across your network so all Caterease users can instantly see the details you need them to see!

Create limitless custom views of any detail grid in the program, and then switch from one view to another with a single click of the mouse! Customize views for your computer only, or even share them across the network!

Caterease is all about flexibility! Even though you are free to change the titles of any reports you generate from your various query screens, you can now even create your own custom subtitle. For example, you can generate a report called "Payment Details" and give it a subtitle of "Next 14 Days", etc.

Instantly query your customers based on their preferred site locations, so you can track all the business you do in each location.

Now you can use the Event Query tool to instantly find all events that you made "Definite" during any date or date range.

Now you can not only quickly pick which columns appear in your grid using this handy tool, but you can also rearrange those columns right in the quick column customizing list. Simply hold your left mouse button down on a column name in the list and drag up or down into the desired position.

The same relative date options that have been added to the Caterease reports have also been added to our powerful activity queries. Now you can simply select common date spreads such as "Last Month", "This Month", "Next 30 Days", "Past", "Future", etc. - rather than having to enter in the actual dates.

Setup

In addition to including the list of payments received on your various Caterease event prints, you can now optionally include the schedule of future deposits.

Now you can prohibit individual Caterease users from being able to view any of an event's financial totals. Of course, in Caterease everything is carried through to the ultimate degree. So that means that this setting will also prevent a user from using the Event Payments, Event Deposits Due and Event Costing Summary tools - since all of those display the financial details of the event!

In keeping with the idea above, you can also prohibit individual users from generating certain event-specific prints. Choose whether or not users can generate a print identified as a "Contract", one identified as an "Invoice" or one identified as a "BEO". Therefore, you might choose to prevent someone from seeing event financial totals on screen (using the feature - Event Financial Information Hiding) and then prevent him or her from generate prints that show those totals, either!

Markup all menu items a certain percentage of their costs instantly, using a default percentage or even a unique percentage for individual menu items.

Your Marketing Tools Package and Print Designer now offers four powerful new merge fields that can be added to your merge letters or event prints. The "Sub-Event Room Charge" field will insert the specific room charge of whichever sub-event you highlight when you generate the print, while the "Room Charge" field will insert the total Room Charge for the party. The same distinctions apply to the new fields "Sub-Event Delivery Charge" and "Delivery Charge", as well.

You now have the option of including your financial totals broken down by menu item type - Food, Beverage, Liquor, etc. - on your Event Manager prints (no longer just your invoice).

Now you can optionally prohibit individual Caterease users from adding custom menu items to an event. With this security feature enabled, a user will have to retrieve existing menu items from your default food/service menus.

In order to help you maintain PCI compliance, a new Global Setting option allows you to remove the credit card security code number field from your program.

The unique Sub-Event Number is now a field that is available to be added to your Contract, BEO or other event print. It was already available for display on the Sub-Event display in Event Manager.

The Employee information area of the program now offers five user defined fields that you can create for any purpose you want. Just like other user defined fields in the program, you can create custom quickpick lists for these fields, or access drop-down calculators or calendars if you're using them for numbers or dates.