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Abacus Online Ordering can be used for catering purposes.
This article will cover how you can set online ordering to accept your customers' "pre-orders" (i.e. orders for the future), and how you can use our reports to find the information you need to cater for these orders.
How to let customers request catering
Your customers can make a catering request via your online ordering platform if you have enabled "pre-orders". A "pre-order" is any order for a future date (tomorrow onwards).
For you to set this up:
1. Go to Online Ordering > Configuration
2. Under Order Types > Pre-Orders (Future), tick delivery and/or pickup if you want catering orders to be delivered and/or picked up. Note that delivery/pickup for pre-orders are only possible where they are an option for same-day orders, too.
3. Specify how many days in advance a pre-order can be taken, e.g. if you let customers order catering up to 2 weeks in advance, specify 14 days.
4. (Optional) Under Pre-Order Cut-Off Settings > Pre-order cut-off days before delivery, set the number of days that you require notice for an order (between 1 and 14 days).
For example, let's say you have 2 days for the pre-order cut-off, with the cut-off time 10:00am. A customer is looking at your menu on Monday at 9:00am. The soonest they can pre-order for is Wednesday, because they have not missed your cut-off time. If another customer looks at your menu at 10:30am, the sooner they can pre-order for is Thursday, as they have missed the cut-off time.
5. Click Save.
Upon checkout of their catering order, customers will select a date that falls within your pre-order date range. Any dates outside that will be greyed out.
You will receive a notification on your POS, so you can accept the order like any other order.
How to view your catering orders
You will get a docket printing out every time you accept an online order (catering or otherwise). We recommend you keep this docket for your reference. It will contain any delivery instructions that customers may add upon checkout.
For a digital reference of all your orders:
Go to Online Ordering > Invoices
Toggle on Filter by scheduled time, then select the Scheduled From and Scheduled To dates. This means that you will be searching your orders based on when they are expected to be delivered or picked up, instead of when the order was placed.
3. The table will reload to show the orders with Scheduled dates that fall within your specified range, with the the soonest scheduled order first.
4. Click on the pencil icon to view the details of the order.
How to download your orders for Excel use
Following the above method of viewing your orders, you will have enough information to take care of those catering orders one-by-one.
Export Order Items Consolidation
Click Export Order Items Consolidation to download a CSV file that tells you the total amount of products ordered for your selected date range.
If there are product variants (or combo add-ons) that are attributed to the product, these will be listed separately.
In the below example, there is a total of 7 "Easy burgers" which have been ordered, of which one comes with a cola.
Export Invoices
Click Export Invoices to download a CSV file that lists out each order.
