Total Party Planner

Kommentare: It has allowed us to move into the cloud and keep all of our information in a reliable and easily interfaced system.

Vorteile: This allows any hospitality professional or small business to present itself professionally and efficiently! It brings together all the different parts of our business under one software platform so we can easily communicate and excel. It is a lifesaver for our hectic industry and we cannot recommend it enough! On top of everything else, the customer service from TPP is rapid and helpful.

Nachteile: The UI and UX could be a little bit improved. We are used to seeing all the web software interfaces being very streamlined and modern nowadays. As amazing as TPP is, the interface feels a bit clunky and outdated.

Kommentare: I was you, 1 year ago. My restaurant was running me, requests for catering were pouring in and we had just put our catering food truck on the road. I was stressed to the max, drowning in Excel Catering Event Order spreadsheets and missing catering pick-up orders and panicking my kitchen.
I know.. you assume that I'm a newbie, and that's sweet. I'm in my 30th year of cooking for a living, and at the age of 43 own one of the top restaurants in my industry category in our Province. We staff 40 plus people for a 15 table full-service restaurant that turns 10 to 11 times a day from Thursday to Sunday - every week. That doesn't include six figures per year in take-out and six figures in Catering now a year later. Add to that, I'm no slouch on the computer and can code in Excel like it's second nature. Why do you need to know this? It gives you context for this review.
Without Total Party Planner to take away the headaches of searching for pricing, building proposals, databasing clients and providing seamless continuity for all of our communication, we wouldn't be able to grow like we have.
Yes... evaluate how much the software costs, and look at your business and determine if you can afford it - it's not cheap. However, bear in mind this one caveat. - How much is your time worth?
- How much are you spending in repairing your credibility with clients, when you miss a detail?
- How much are you losing when you forget to add a detail to an order and have to take it at a
loss?
- Are your skills being utilized in the right facet? I'm a chef, not an event planner and certainly not an accountant. TPP assists me to be a better business person. I could have designed a database in MS Access, or continued in Excel - but why? My results would not have produced the package that TPP offers. I know what you're thinking... this reads too good to be true, and in fact, there is one thing that needs to be cleared up.
This program came easy to me, it all made sense from a Culinary perspective and the types of information required to utilize the program to its fullest were familiar to me. There, I said it, this is a professional level program. Not that it's just for enterprise level clients, but, hospitality professionals. Just be prepared. The learning curve here is quite steep for the uninitiated.
But.... Their customer service is outstanding... really... they care - a lot. I use 8 different subscription business services, and TPP is the best!

Vorteile: This software allows hospitality professionals and entrepreneurs who own small to medium sized operations present themselves in a polished and consistent way

Nachteile: The steep learning curve would be a con for those who aren't computer savvy. This was not my case, but teaching other staff members has presented these challenges. With proper coaching, which TPP does so very well, and which I have modelled my internal training on, you can be up and running in a fairly short time. Be prepared though, no matter which software suite you choose, there is a ton of hard data that needs to be inputed. TPP handles this really well, and after using it for a year, I can navigate around and produce proposals and maintain my financials with ease.

Vorteile: The Total Party Planner software is both an efficient and effective program that I use every day. I rely on the TPP technology to support my busy catering schedule with reliable, detailed, automated information. The program facilitates communication between our customers, our sales team and our staff with ease. Daily reminders keep me on track. From day one, I was confident that it wasn't just a software program, but a partnership between my company and Total Party Planner. The training, set-up and continued customer support is consistently excellent and done in a friendly efficient effective manner.

Nachteile: I have had very few issues with the program. The Total Party Planner software was designed by people with experience in catering who had a strong voice in the design which was coupled with superior technical programming. This makes all the difference. The software is user friendly, specific to catering needs. Each time I had a question, a solution was provided. In most instances, the technology was already in place. The customer service team walked me through the steps to use it effectively. The company is interactive with me and other catering professionals. They are open to exploring suggestions and endeavor to provide solutions.

Kommentare: Overall it was great. We got our money's worth. It was easy to use and efficient until it wasn't.

Vorteile: We used this product for many years as we were starting our Catering Company. It did exactly what we needed it to do and it was extremely easy to learn and navigate

Nachteile: We found as we got more into the catering business and our other services grew that this platform was just not able to grow with us. We were not able to customize the way we needed it. We couldn't track our customers the way we would like and it did not integrate with our other systems so we opted for a system that we could use between departments.

Kommentare: It was a great product that served our company for several years. It allowed our business to grow and service a retail store front, a catering and bakery business in a new expanded facility. Currently we are spending more time trying to fix problems with the software than we are spending with clients. It is costing us money in labor, time off task, plus the added expense of redoing the event over and over to get it correct.

Vorteile: It was easy to use, make changes on and produce a quality product. We were not having any issues so why they made big, big changes I do not understand. For a while we could continue to use the original system but then over night the old system would not work to process payments, create menus, etc. No new manual was created and you must tech support every time you create something new. For the money we pay we should have a quality product again.

Nachteile: Changes were made without preparation to train the users on the new product and the product was not field tested and fixed before the release.