As the leading software provider in the diverse event planning industry, we at Caterease have established partnerships with other prominent players to provide our customers with the most robust, feature-rich solution available. One of those partners is Nowsta – a powerful staff scheduling program specifically designed for the food service industry.

Below, our the Nowsta team explains what makes their platform such an exceptional solution.

What is Nowsta?

Nowsta is a cloud-based staffing platform that makes it incredibly easy to manage staff. Nowsta not only automates and simplifies the most difficult tasks associated with labor management, but also provides you with the insights and analytics you need to drive bottom line cost-saving results. Quite simply, when companies want to become more efficient, they turn to Nowsta.

Unlike other platforms, Nowsta is a true “all-in-one” product, bringing together scheduling and communications, time-tracking, analytics, and payroll reporting under one system. As many managers and coordinators know, the labor management process can take hours, and even days, to complete (payroll alone often sucks up the better part of a day!). With Nowsta, long hours wasted on activities like manual data entry are a thing of the past. For events-based businesses, it’s like magic.

Coordinators can access Nowsta from any computer or their phones. Staff can download Nowsta apps for iPhone or Android, making it easy for them to see all their job details in one place (and on the go). As much as Nowsta is a scheduling tool, so too is it a communications platform. To that end, coordinators are able to communicate with their staff in real-time, via SMS text messaging, mobile push notifications, and email (coming soon).

Why should I be excited about Nowsta?

A joy to use

The Nowsta team interviewed over 200 caterers and events companies to get feedback while they were developing the software, and it shows. The result is a platform with hundreds of little touches that makes managing staff effortless and even, dare we say it, fun.

“Nowsta allows us to work smarter, not harder. We are scheduling event staff more efficiently and more consistently. This is huge, considering we have a pool of around 350 part-time event staff to manage.”

Ashley Greene, Head of Human Resources, Butler’s Pantry – Nowsta and Caterease customer.

To highlight just one example: the Nowsta team noticed that staffing coordinators with multiple events on the same day struggled because they couldn’t see all their events (and staff) in one place. In response, Nowsta created a proprietary multi-event view page where staffing coordinators could pull up all their events side by side, see which staff are available to work, and even drag-and-drop staff between the events.

This attention to detail means that managing the staffing process is much easier than before.

Time and attendance tools built for the events business

Nowsta’s thoughtful design extends to the time and attendance process. Nowsta offers three methods to record time and attendance electronically.

First, Nowsta offers a mobile app for on-site event managers. Once the manager arrives at the event, he or she can view a list of staff (including staff contact information and photos) and can check staff in and out of the event.

Starting in September 2017, staff will be able check themselves in and out of events on their mobile devices. Nowsta will record staff location using GPS to ensure that staff are actually at the work-site. This feature is particularly useful for large events or events where there is no designated on-site manager.

We have done away with paper timesheets as well as time cards not just for events, but for our regularly scheduled employees in the prep-kitchen, café, warehouse and office alike. This has cut down on several hours of totaling and entering hours manually for payroll and accounting.

Alisha Spaulding, Thomas Caterers of Distinction. Nowsta and Caterease customer.

Finally, Nowsta also offers a stationery tablet timeclock app for staff who regularly work events at the same job-site. Staff can approach the tablet, key in their special code, then check-in to their assigned event. The app automatically takes a picture of the staff member, eliminating the possibility of time-theft and buddy punching.

Payroll is a snap

Many caterers and events businesses struggle because they use one system to manage their event staff and another system to manage their hourly staff. Nowsta is the only staffing software platform designed to work for both event staff and hourly staff. This is hugely beneficial for two reasons.

First, Nowsta users don’t have to worry about conflicts or overtime. Nowsta automatically identifies when conflicts are arising and pre-emptively warns coordinators. Likewise, Nowsta identifies when staff are in danger of working overtime and automatically warns coordinators.

Second, Nowsta makes the payroll process incredibly easy. Staff hours are automatically reviewed to determine whether there are discrepancies between what was scheduled and what was recorded. And Nowsta can export hours and earnings to almost every payroll provider under the sun.

World class customer service

Last but not least, Nowsta has outstanding customer service.

For new customers, Nowsta offers one-on-one training, walking them through the platform and showing them how every aspect of the platform works. Even after companies get started on the platform, Nowsta has customer service reps available to answer any questions right from within the app. The average response time is less than 3 minutes.

Nowsta’s commitment to customer service extends to improving the platform. Nowsta actively solicits feedback from customers to get ideas for new features or tweaks to existing ones.

Integration with Caterease

Syncing Caterease and Nowsta is easy with our new integration. Caterease users can transfer individual events or all the events within a specified time range into Nowsta. The events will populate with all of the key details like venue, client, time, and even required positions and shifts. This alone can save hours every week.

What’s more, if you import an event into Nowsta and then decide to make changes to it, simply re-import it and Nowsta will automatically identify what the changes are and update the event automatically.

How to learn more

If you’re interested in learning more about Nowsta, check out their website. From there, you can schedule a walk through with one of their product specialists by hitting the request demo button.