Banquet staffing and scheduling software

Why restaurant schedulers fall short for banquets

Restaurant scheduling tools think in fixed shifts: lunch, dinner, the same eight servers every Friday. Banquets don't work that way. Your crew comes from the event order: the guaranteed count, the service style, how many bars, whether wine is poured, whether there's a VIP table. Change any one of those and the crew changes with it.

Hotelwright starts from the event, not the shift. Each function is one event in one room on one date, and its crew is worked out from what's on the order.

How many servers per guest? Start from your own ratios

You set the ratios once, per service type. The defaults are a starting point you edit, never a floor or a ceiling:

• Plated: 1 server per 20 guests, 1 per 25 before 3 pm (breakfast or lunch), 1 per 16 with poured wine or French service
• Buffet: 1 per 30; reception stations: 1 per 40; passed hors d'oeuvres: 1 per 25; coffee break: 1 per 100
• Bartenders: 1 per 100 guests and at least 1 per bar; 1 per 50 during a cocktail hour
• Bussers: 1 per 3 servers; captains: 1 from 50 guests or 4 servers, plus 1 per 250 guests

Which number drives staffing

Staffing runs off the guarantee, falling back to the expected count until a GTD comes in. You can switch the basis to expected, set or the highest of the three. The screen always shows which number is driving the crew and why, so nobody staffs a 300 off an old 250.

Set a GTD cut-off (by default noon, three days out) and any event still without a guarantee inside it gets flagged. A count you type yourself locks: re-running the plan never touches it. If you would rather enter every count by hand, switch staffing to What I enter and the ratio stays on screen as a hint.

Filling the slots in a Suggested order

Open a slot and the roster comes up in a Suggested order built from your own rules: who's available, then full-time, part-time and on-call tiers, then seniority, then fewest hours this payroll week. The reason sits next to each name. It's a fixed sort of your own settings, and no AI decides who works.

Auto-fill handles the rest in the same order and never moves anyone already assigned. Agency slots count toward the crew, marked with the agency's name. On the Team plan, staff confirm shifts and pick up open shifts on their phones.

Schedule checks that flag, never block

Pick your state and, for the seven states with a preset so far (California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Alaska, Nevada and Colorado), Hotelwright fills in that state's schedule checks, such as meal breaks, daily overtime, spread of hours and consecutive days worked. Weekly overtime is a hotel setting in every state. Every number is editable. A check that trips puts a flag on the shift; you can still assign the person, and the reason you give is recorded. Checks read scheduled times, so treat them as a second pair of eyes, not a legal sign-off.

When a guarantee drops, the count never goes below the people already assigned. The slot shows "2 over" and you decide who to release.