Running the job
You have Catering Calc Pro. Here is what to set up first: the client quote that hides your cost, the defaults you make your own, the saved event that holds the whole job, and two conveniences.
You have Pro. Here is what to set up first.
Three of these change the numbers the app gives you. Two are conveniences. If you only do one thing today, do the first one, because it is the one you will show a customer.
Reading this before you have Pro? Everything below is part of Catering Calc Pro.
Every event exports two ways.
The kitchen sheet carries the weights, the counts and the pan quantities. It is the one you print and tape to the pass.
The client quote carries a single estimated total and a per-guest figure. It does not carry your cost per pound, your food cost percentage or your margin. Whatever you are paying stays on your side of the app.
Most quoting tools make you build the client's copy by hand, or hand them a spreadsheet that shows everything. This is the difference.
The shipped values are widely published catering rules of thumb rather than a standard anyone is bound to, and your own event history will beat them. Your protein portions are probably not ours. Your staffing ratio is definitely not ours.
Every calculator has a Defaults button in its header, and every result card opens the same sheet. Open it once, set the numbers you actually work to, and every event you price after that uses yours.
This is the difference between a generic calculator and your calculator, and it takes about four minutes.
Saved Events is not a list of results. It is the job.
One saved event holds the guest count, the service style, the food, the drinks, the staffing, the disposables and the costing. Open it next season, change the headcount, and every number moves with it.
It is also the reason a Pro account signs in on the website. The same events are there.
Set the headcount once and every calculator uses it.
Cost & Margin is the clearest case: it prices the exact pounds Food Quantity just worked out, so you never retype a quantity. It says so at the top of the screen, naming the calculation it is pricing.
Nothing to set up. Worth knowing so you stop re-entering things.
Dessert is rarely priced per pound, and neither is a cake or a tray of passed appetizers.
On Cost & Margin, the small control at the end of each price row switches that row between $ per lb, $ per head and a flat total for the job. Use whichever matches the quote your supplier gave you.
A flat cost stays where you put it when the guest count changes. Everything priced by weight moves. That is deliberate, and the row tells you which it is.
Everything above is a starting point, including the numbers. That is the point of them.
Skip the math
Plug in your guest count and get the quantities in seconds. Free, no account.
Pro takes it from the quantities to the quote: a suggested price from your costs, and a client quote with your name on it. Free for the first week.