| Catering can be a rewarding career, especially for a | | | | Meal Preparation |
| home-based businessperson. But no matter how | | | | With the emphasis on healthy meals today, it's easy to |
| much you enjoy the thrill of crafting excellent meals | | | | understand why a customer would be upset if your |
| and putting together flavors, the paperwork can be a | | | | offerings were lacking in a notable aspect of |
| real downer sometimes. That's why Microsoft | | | | well-balanced-meal-dom. Use Excel's pull down |
| invented Excel -- it's the paperwork eliminator that can | | | | menus and assign a category or two to each part of |
| make a surprising number of catering tasks | | | | a meal, and Excel can easily graph out each proposed |
| remarkably simple. | | | | meal to make sure all of your basic nutrient groups are |
| Scheduling | | | | covered. |
| Making sure that your people are going to be able to | | | | Time Stamps |
| cover every event you have coming up can be a big | | | | The other side of Scheduling, Excel can also track the |
| challenge. With Excel's ability to keep track both | | | | time-in, time-out, and breaks taken by everyone |
| numerically and graphically of everyone's availability, | | | | working on a given project, making sure that you're |
| you'll always be confident that you have the people to | | | | sticking to the labor laws (and providing proof should a |
| get the job done. | | | | dispute ever come up.) |
| Customer Tracking | | | | Profitability |
| Put all of your customers' details into an Excel | | | | Determining the profitability of a given event can be a |
| database, and you'll be able to search for any attribute | | | | bit brain-twisting, with the costs for food, people, any |
| of an order to call up the entire thing in the future. | | | | equipment that needs cleaning or replacing afterward, |
| Great for resolving disputes with customers that aren't | | | | and various other expenses. A well-designed Excel |
| entirely happy. | | | | template will make sure you don't miss any |
| Recipe Alterations | | | | miscellaneous costs and tell you how profitable each |
| You might find an excellent recipe for Chicken | | | | event was for you. |
| Saltimbocca, but for a small family -- can you be | | | | Projecting Future Business |
| certain of your ability to convert it to a recipe that will | | | | There's nothing like getting caught off guard by the |
| serve hundreds? With Excel, you can. | | | | start of some season, and not being able to take a |
| Inventory | | | | client because you don't have the goods or people |
| Excel's abilities to project future need based on past | | | | handy. Use Excel's projection ability to see what |
| consumption and send an Email alert when a certain | | | | future business may look like based on previous years, |
| number drops below a given amount combine to make | | | | and your chances of being flatfooted when |
| it the perfect inventory-tracking system. | | | | opportunity knocks drop dramatically. |