Unified Banquet & Catering Software for Venues with In-House Food.

Take a 400-guest wedding at a Pune hall with its own kitchen. The package is Rs 1,150 a plate before GST, so revenue is Rs 4,60,000. Variable cost is Rs 490 a plate, made of food at Rs 360, kitchen labour at Rs 85 and fuel and breakage at Rs 45, which is Rs 1,96,000. Hall overhead is Rs 38,000. GST on purchases that you cannot claim back at 5% is Rs 14,000. The margin is Rs 2,12,000, or Rs 530 a plate, 46% of revenue, and the event breaks even at 79 guests. Now suppose the same family brought its own caterer, and you rented the hall for Rs 1,20,000 plus a Rs 150 a plate kitchen fee. You would keep Rs 1,34,000. On these sample numbers the package pays Rs 78,000 more, which is why venues push it, and why a system that shows margin per event and not only revenue changes decisions.

Tax explains part of the gap. A hall let on its own, SAC 997212, is 18% with credit on your inputs. A hall and food package sold by the same venue at an ordinary, non-specified premises is treated as a composite supply of catering at 5% with no credit, under the outdoor catering entry as amended by Notification 20/2019-CT(Rate). That is the position most guides quote, but online articles disagree on bundled halls, so have your CA confirm it in writing for your premises. At specified premises, meaning hotels that provided accommodation above Rs 7,500 per unit per day in the previous year or that opted in, the same package is 18% with credit. Décor, DJ and the fee you charge an outside caterer are 18%. Do not call a plain hall rental a package to get 5%, and do not split a genuine package into lines to change the rate. Classification follows what you actually supply.

Licences differ too. In FSSAI's Kind of Business table, updated 1 April 2026, banquet halls with food catering arrangements can hold a registration (Rs 100 a year) up to Rs 1.5 crore of turnover and need a state licence (Rs 5,000 a year) above that. A caterer, by contrast, needs a state licence at any turnover up to Rs 50 crore. If your kitchen also serves events outside your own hall, ask the licensing office which category covers you, and print the licence number on every invoice and bill.

A hall calendar can show two halls free while the kitchen is already full. In the workbook's example, Hall A has a 350-guest lunch, Hall B a 250-guest lunch, Hall A a 450-guest dinner and Hall B a 200-guest dinner. Lunch is 600 covers and dinner 650, against a kitchen that manages 650 a service and 1,000 a day. Each service fits, with no more than 50 to spare, but the day adds up to 1,250 covers, which is 250 over. The calendar said yes four times. Put a kitchen capacity check into your own booking rule whatever software you use, and set the limits from what your kitchen has actually delivered on a good day, not from what the brochure says.

Many venues let outside caterers in for a fee. Write the policy down: the fee per plate and its 18% GST, whether the list of caterers is approved or open, a copy of the caterer's FSSAI licence, which parts of the kitchen they may use, access and out-by times, a damage deposit, waste removal and the cut-off for late changes. The workbook has a checklist for it. Treat the fee as a venue service and not as a discount on your own package. Then look at how many bookings your own food packages lose because of it, and whether the fee makes up the difference.

Cancellations cost differently when you own the kitchen. Perishables for a 400-guest dinner are bought about two days ahead and cooked on the day, so a cancellation seven days out is cheap and one at 48 hours is not. Tie the advance you retain to the procurement timeline. One example is 25% retained if the family cancels more than 30 days out, 50% within 30 days and 100% within 7 days. Those numbers are illustrations, so write your own into the contract. Ask your CA how a retained amount is treated for GST, because that point is not settled by a rule of thumb.

One system or two? Dedicated tools can each go deeper: a hall product may draw floor plans and manage resource layers, and a catering ERP may plan purchasing across three kitchens. The price is double entry. The same guest count is typed into two places, an advance sits in one tool and the bill in another, and your accountant gets two exports. A venue with one kitchen and one to four halls usually gains more from a single record than from that extra depth. A hotel that already runs a PMS and POS, or a venue whose catering is a large separate business, should probably keep specialised tools and connect them. Kaliquid's Pro plan is Rs 999 per month per hall, or Rs 750 per month per hall if you pay yearly, and Enterprise is custom-priced for chains.