Online booking, on your page and in the marketplace. Your own booking link plus a profile customers can find by service and suburb. You choose whether bookings confirm instantly or wait for your approval.
Booking software for caterers, where the deposit is what makes a date real
A catering enquiry is a date, a headcount and a conversation — none of which fit a booking form built for appointments. Bookka takes the enquiry as a quote, holds the date with a deposit that was actually paid, and keeps the dietaries somewhere other than the bottom of an email thread.
- No commissionon any booking, on any plan
- From $39 a monthflat, however many staff
- 0% in persononly Stripe’s own rate applies
What caterers put up with
If none of these are your week, you probably do not need us.
- A date held for months on an email that said “pencil us in”, then lost three weeks out.
- Headcounts moving twice between the quote and the week of the event.
- Dietaries and allergies buried in a reply-all thread, found the morning of service.
- Quotes written from scratch each time because nothing remembers what the last one looked like.
- Deposits taken by bank transfer and reconciled against an inbox.
- Small, repeatable jobs — office lunches, platters — needing a conversation each time.
What changes
Each one is a thing the product does today, not a thing on a roadmap.
Enquiries arrive as quotes, not bookings
Date, headcount, venue and style come in through your page as a quote request. You price it properly and nothing takes a date out of your calendar until both sides have agreed what the job is.
A deposit is what holds the date
Collected at the time of booking with the balance due later, and your cancellation terms shown before they pay. A paid deposit behaves differently from a pencilled diary entry, particularly in the months before an event.
Dietaries live on the client record
Allergies, intolerances and standing preferences kept as notes and tags against the customer, private to the business, so the kitchen is not reading back through an email chain the morning of service.
Repeatable jobs book themselves
Office lunches, platters and set menus go on your page at a fixed price and lead time, confirming instantly or waiting for approval, so the small work stops costing a phone call each.
Pay online or on the day
Deposits and balances by card online, or cash and terminal at the venue, with no Bookka fee at all, and the money in your own Stripe account.
The books connect
Xero sync on the Executive plan, with accounts provisioned when you connect, so deposits and balances reach your accountant without a monthly export.
What you get
Everything a catering business runs on, in one place
Instead of an inbox of enquiries, a quote template, a bank transfer to reconcile and a whiteboard with the month on it.
Fill the book
Enquiries arrive mid-service, and at eleven at night.
A calendar per person. Every team member has their own services, hours and schedule, with roles deciding who sees what. Chair renters and multi-location shops are handled as first-class cases, not workarounds.
Services with options, add-ons and quotes. Length variants that change the price, add-ons that extend the appointment, and a quote request for the jobs that have to be seen before they can be priced.
Get paid
The deposit that holds the date, and the balance after the event.
Deposits and cancellation policies. Take a per-service deposit at the time of booking, with the balance due on the day. The customer sees the amount and the cancellation window before they pay, and a cancellation inside the window refunds itself.
A point of sale for walk-ins. Ring up services and retail at the counter, take cash or card, or use a WisePOS E terminal. Bookka charges no fee on an in-person payment — only Stripe’s own terminal rate applies, and cash costs nothing.
Gift cards and an online shop. Sell gift cards and products from your booking page, with pickup or post, and refunds and fulfilment tracked in the same place as your appointments.
Bring people back
The office that books you monthly is worth ten weddings.
Reminders by SMS and email. A confirmation immediately and a reminder before the day, sent automatically. No-shows are mostly a memory problem, and this is the fix for it.
Bookka Rewards. Points for what people spend or stamps for turning up, redeemed against a catalogue you set. Rewards come off the bill at the till and in the shop.
Campaigns, social and ads. Email and SMS campaigns with single-use promo codes, a scheduler that publishes to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and a manager for Google and Meta ads.
Run the place
The admin that happens whether or not you have software for it.
Numbers you can act on. Revenue, bookings, your best services and the regulars who have quietly stopped coming — with exports and custom reports when you need to look properly.
An assistant that does the admin. Ask it about your own figures in plain English. Turn on changes and it will complete bookings, record cash, adjust stock and draft campaigns — confirming before each one and logging every change. It cannot cancel bookings, refund anyone or touch billing.
Xero, and the rest of your stack. Native accounting sync with accounts provisioned on connect, calendar sync so your own diary stays right, and Stripe underneath all of it.
Everything caterers need, in one tool
All of it on every paid plan unless the card says otherwise. Where something is limited by plan, the pricing below says so rather than this list hedging each line.
Quote requests with the detail you need
Date, headcount, venue and style captured up front, so pricing starts from facts rather than from a reply asking for them.
Deposits against a date
Taken when the booking is made rather than chased by transfer, with the balance due closer to the event.
Cancellation terms agreed up front
Shown before payment and applied automatically, which for a date booked a year out is the clause that does the work.
Set menus as fixed-price services
Platters, office lunches and packages bookable directly with their own prices and lead times, so routine work needs no conversation.
Dietaries and preferences on file
Against the customer, private to the business, and in front of whoever is prepping rather than in an email nobody can find.
Add-ons for staff, hire and delivery
Selected at booking so the extras are priced into the job instead of being absorbed on the day.
Gift cards and vouchers
Sold from your page with a tracked balance, redeemable against a booking or at the counter.
Payment at the venue, 0% from Bookka
Card, cash or a WisePOS E terminal on site, with no Bookka fee at all — only Stripe’s own rate, and nothing on cash.
A team with their own schedules
Staff added with their own hours and roles, so who is on which job is visible rather than being in one person’s head.
Xero on Executive
Accounting sync with accounts provisioned on connect, so deposits and balances land where the bookkeeping happens.
Email campaigns to past clients
With single-use promo codes, aimed at the corporate customers your reporting shows have gone quiet.
No commission on any booking
Your own page plus a marketplace profile, with Bookka taking no share of the job’s value.
Pricing
One flat price, not one per chair
No commission on any plan, including clients who find you through the marketplace. Paid plans start with a 14-day trial.
Free$0/monthTesting & side hustlers5 bookings per monthUp to 2 team members
Business$39/monthSolo barbers & growing businessesUnlimited bookings & instant auto-confirmUp to 5 team members & 1 location
ExecutiveBest value$69/monthMulti-chair shops & serious businessesEverything in BusinessUp to 20 team members & 2 locations
Booking software for caterers, answered
Still curious? Get in touch — we reply fast.
Partly, and the honest answer is that it fits the front half well and the back half not at all. Enquiry, quote, deposit, date held, balance, payment, client history — all of that works. What Bookka has no concept of is production: no kitchen run sheets, no ingredient costing, no purchase orders, no staff rostering against a job. If your bottleneck is quoting and getting paid, it helps. If your bottleneck is the kitchen, it will not.
Make the deposit the thing that holds it. It is taken at the time of booking rather than chased afterwards, and the client sees your cancellation terms before paying. A date held against money that has actually moved behaves very differently from one held against an email saying “pencil us in”.
Requote. Because the job started as a quote request rather than a fixed menu item, changing the numbers means issuing a revised figure and agreeing it, which is how catering actually works. There is no automatic per-head recalculation — you set the new number.
On the customer record as notes and tags, private to the business. That covers standing requirements for a client you cater for regularly. For a one-off event with twelve individual dietaries, Bookka has no per-guest list — that detail still lives in whatever document you build for service.
Yes, and it is probably the biggest single gain here. Put your platters, set menus and office lunches on your booking page as fixed-price services with a sensible lead time, and a regular customer orders in thirty seconds instead of starting an email. The small repeatable work stops consuming the time the big jobs need.
Not automatically. Bookka has no recurring bookings, so a weekly Thursday platter is placed each time rather than repeating by itself. A regular client can rebook in a few taps from your page, but if standing orders are central to your business, that is a real gap.
Yes. The deposit is taken by card when the booking is made and the balance is due later — by card online, or cash or terminal at the venue. Bookka takes nothing when you take the balance on site — only Stripe’s own rate applies — and nothing at all if they pay cash.
No commission, on any plan, including clients who find you through the marketplace — which matters more here than in most trades, because the jobs are large. Free for five bookings a month, then Business at $39 a month and Executive at $69 with Xero sync and custom reports. Online card payments cost 2.2% + 30c, all in and GST inclusive on Australian cards. In person Bookka takes nothing at all — you pay only Stripe’s own rate — and cash, your own EFTPOS machine and a gift card being redeemed cost nothing. Everything settles into your own Stripe account rather than ours.
Not quite your trade?
Bookka runs the same way for anything booked against a person’s time. See every trade we have written up.