Guide · Buying
A buyer's checklist for banquet office software
Written by a hotel banquet operations manager ·
Before buying software for the banquet office, test it on one real week of your own event orders and ask fifteen questions: how the orders get in, what happens when they change, whether hand-made fixes survive, how staffing is worked out, what prints, which languages your team gets, and how you can try it. The checklist below is printable and works for any tool, including ours.
14-day trial, no cardEnglish · Español
First, which kind of software do you need?
Banquet software falls into a few groups, and many tools mix them:
- Sales and catering systems take the booking, hold the client and write the banquet event order (BEO).
- Operations tools take the BEO and run the event from it: daily sheets, labels, staffing, the schedule.
- General staff schedulers build shifts for any business but don't read event orders.
If your hotel prints event orders, it already has the first. The questions below are for the operations side, where banquet staffing software sits: what happens after the BEO is printed.
The checklist
Print it, take it into each demo, and write the answers down.
Getting the orders in
- Can it read the event orders we already print, as they are? Ask whether it reads PDFs, including scanned pages, and whether one order with several functions becomes several events.
- Do we have to connect it to our sales system? A connection means work for your IT team. Ask whether it can work from a PDF or a spreadsheet export instead.
- Can we check what it read against the original page? Ask to see an event beside the page it came from, and what happens to a field it wasn't sure of.
When things change
- What happens when a revised order comes in on Thursday? Ask whether it compares the new version with the old one field by field, or simply replaces it.
- Does a fix someone typed by hand survive the next upload? If the answer is no, someone will retype it every week.
- What happens to sheets that were already printed? Ask whether old prints are kept and marked out of date, or quietly replaced, and whether the reprint shows what changed.
- Can we undo an upload? Mistakes happen at 6:00 am.
Staffing and the schedule
- Does staffing come from our own ratios, or the vendor's? Ask to change one ratio in the demo and see the crew change.
- Does it ever cut staff below the people already assigned when a count drops? It shouldn't do that silently.
- Do schedule checks flag or block? Hours and rest checks that block a manager at 11:00 pm tend to get switched off. Ask whether they flag, and whether an override records a reason.
- How do staff get their shifts? An app to install, a browser link, a printout? Can they confirm, decline and report a call-out?
Paperwork and labels
- What prints, and on what stock? The daily sheet, event packets, buffet labels with allergens, line-up cards. Ask for a test print on plain paper before you buy card stock.
- Who decides what's in a dish? Allergen information should print only after someone at the hotel has confirmed it.
Languages, data and trying it
- Which languages does each person get? If your team works in English and Spanish, ask whether each person picks a language, and whether allergen names are translated by a fixed, checked list or by machine.
- Can we try it on our own week before paying? Ask how long the trial is, whether a card is needed, and which features the trial includes. And ask who can see your hotel's data.
How to run the trial
- Use one real, busy week, not a quiet one. Changes are where tools differ.
- Have the person who does the paperwork today run it, not the person who signs the contract.
- Make a change mid-week on purpose: move a guarantee, swap a room. Watch what happens to the printed sheet.
- Print everything on plain paper first.
- Keep your current process running in parallel until the new one has matched it for a full week.
Use synthetic or test data in any tool until you are sure how your hotel's data is handled; your hotel's own policies come first.
How Hotelwright answers the checklist
We wrote this checklist to work for any tool, so here are our own answers, plainly:
| Question | Hotelwright |
|---|---|
| 1. Reads the orders we print | Yes: PDFs, scanned pages included, and spreadsheet exports with the columns matched once. One order with several functions becomes several events. |
| 2. Connection needed | No. Nothing to install or connect. There are no live integrations with booking systems or schedulers. |
| 3. Check against the page | Every event sits beside its source page; uncertain fields are highlighted; nothing counts until you confirm it. |
| 4. Revised orders | A re-upload is compared field by field; unchanged lines stay put; a change notice can apply to one event. |
| 5. Hand fixes survive | Yes. A value a person or a notice set is never overwritten; a conflict shows and you pick. |
| 6. Printed sheets | Kept with their time and marked Stale; the reprint highlights what changed. |
| 7. Undo | A restore point is taken before every upload and change notice. |
| 8. Our ratios | Yes, on the Team plan; every ratio is a setting. |
| 9. Never below assigned | A count change re-runs only the counts nobody set by hand, and a re-run never sets a count below the people already assigned. |
| 10. Flag or block | Schedule checks flag; they never block. You can still assign the person, and the reason you give is recorded. |
| 11. Staff shifts | Team plan: a browser link on the phone, no app; confirm, decline, availability, call-outs. |
| 12. What prints | Daily Event Sheet, print packets, buffet labels and station cards (Paperwork); line-up cards (Team). A plain-paper test print is offered before card stock. |
| 13. Allergens | Allergens start unconfirmed; the Contains line prints only after someone confirms them. |
| 14. Languages | Each person picks English or Spanish. Allergen and dietary text comes from a fixed dictionary, never machine-translated. |
| 15. Trial and data | 14-day trial, no card, with the full Team plan. Only people you invite see your hotel's data. If AI reading is on, uploaded event-order pages (and menu text, if translation suggestions are on) go to the AI provider to be read into fields; you can switch it off. |
What it doesn't do: write BEOs, take bookings, send contracts, bill clients or run payroll. Plans are Paperwork and Team, per hotel; see the home page.
FAQ
What banquet managers ask.
What should I look for in banquet software?
For the operations side: it reads the event orders you already print, handles mid-week changes without losing hand-made fixes, works out staffing from your own ratios, prints what the floor uses, and gives each person their language. Test it on one real week before you buy.
Do I need to replace our sales and catering system?
Not for operations software. You can keep the sales system that writes the BEO and add a tool that reads it.
How long should a trial be?
Long enough to run one busy week, including at least one change. Two weeks gives you room to repeat it.
Should schedule checks block a schedule?
In our view, no. A check that blocks tends to get switched off. A check that flags, and records the reason when someone overrides it, keeps the manager in charge.