Banquets and events: booking, prepayment, kitchen and settlement

For a wedding with 40 guests, a company celebration for 20 or a catered lunch for 80, use the standard reservation, POS, kitchen and stock tools in cenaly.ge. This is a team workflow: there is no separate event record with its own lifecycle yet, but the banquet menu can be entered in advance as a pre-order for the reservation. The example below covers a dining-room banquet; delivery at a specified time has its own step.

What you need to start#

• An owner or manager with access to location settings, menus and stock; hosts with table and reservation access, and cashiers with POS access.
• Tables and booking configured for the selected location, browser POS, and a kitchen display or configured kitchen printing.
• Agreed guest numbers, menu, course sequence and a contact responsible for the event.
• For an online deposit: online payments enabled and a working payment provider at the location. On cenaly.ru, real-money online payments are not available yet, so online deposits cannot be taken there.
• For POS prepayment on cenaly.ru: a connected Russian fiscal register that supports payment-method signs.

Before accepting the order, agree who changes guest numbers and the menu, who takes payment, and who tells the kitchen to fire the next course. Configure employee permissions and limits through staff roles.

Step 1. Reserve tables and assign staff#

1. In the Hall panel, open the Reservations tab, switch the view to Timeline and check table availability at the required time.
2. Create a reservation with the organizer, guest count, time and event name in its comment.
3. For several tables, follow the large-party instructions.
4. On the floor plan, in Waiters mode, assign the serving staff to the tables.

Result: hosts can see the reserved interval, and waiters know their tables. The reservation timeline currently shows one location day in web POS, without drag-and-drop. When a guest selects several tables, separate reservations are created, with the entire party's deposit attached to the first. These are separate records: check each table when moving or cancelling the booking.

Step 2. Agree on the menu and service requirements#

Agree on portions and serving sequence with the organizer. Enter the agreed list in POS right away as a pre-order for the reservation: the kitchen does not get it until the guests arrive.

Line and order notes appear on KDS and the kitchen ticket; allergens from the dish card are printed with the kitchen line.

Check allergen details and agree ingredient substitutions with the kitchen separately: a note does not change the recipe. A scheduled menu does not create separate prices for “ordered in advance” and “added during the banquet”.

Pre-order for a reservation#

You can enter the banquet dishes in the reservation's bill in advance — a day or a week ahead — and take an advance against it. Until the guests arrive, the kitchen neither prepares nor prints that bill.

1. Open POS, then Hall panel → the Reservations tab.
2. On a confirmed or pending reservation, tap 🍽 Pre-order. POS opens the reservation's bill on its table; Table bill in Tables and reservations does the same.
3. A banner appears above the bill: Pre-order for … booking — not sent to the kitchen until the guests arrive. Enter dishes, portion variants, courses and notes, and save the bill.
4. If needed, take an advance on the bill — it does not send the dishes to the kitchen either.

What happens to the pre-order:

When the guests arrive, tap Seat on the reservation. POS opens the reservation's bill and sends the first course to the kitchen: station tickets print and the kitchen display starts it. The next courses stay held — fire them as usual. To start the banquet before the guests arrive, tap 🔥 Release to kitchen in the banner. Dishes added after the release go to the kitchen immediately, like any additional order.

Result: the banquet menu is entered and paid for in advance, and the kitchen starts cooking only when the guests arrive.

Step 3. Record the company's terms#

If a company pays for the event, create its card in Companies & Invoices. Save the organizer's and accountant's contacts with their roles; record the agreed payment deferral, credit limit and prepayment percentage in the contract.

Open Orders on the company's card and select Create document on the relevant order to prepare a company invoice. Check the recipient, items and amount before sending: documents and settlements are a separate workflow. See counterparties, contracts and invoices.

Corporate accounts are for employee meals with a daily limit, not banquet payments.

Step 4. Take payment in advance#

Choose the appropriate route and record which reservation or order the money belongs to.

The Take prepayment action is available only when the fiscal register supports payment-method signs (Russian fiscal tag 1214). At final payment, earlier advances are included in the calculation of the remaining amount due. Without that support, use the available split-payment or debt operations for their intended purposes.

The Russian fiscal sequence is covered in “Banquet: Advance Payment and Event Day” and “Prepayment, advances and credit”. Do not record the same payment twice as both a reservation deposit and a POS advance.

Step 5. Prepare the kitchen and bar#

Calculate portions from the agreed menu, and ingredients and semi-finished products from recipes. Check stock, purchase shortages, and replenish the bar or service pantry separately.

If the banquet dishes are already entered as a table order with a serving time ("serve at 19:00"), open Inventory → Forecast → "📅 Prep for a date" and pick the banquet day: ingredients per kitchen station by recipe, raw goods in total, guests' requests for dishes and a sheet per table with serving time and cutlery — on one printable sheet. Details — "Prep for a date from placed orders".

Inventory → Forecast includes a printable Prep plan; the forecast appears once enough sales history has accumulated. It uses sales history and does not include a future banquet as a separate event. You can manually change the To produce quantity in existing rows before printing. This is a temporary adjustment: changing the date or warehouse resets it; check the figures again after reopening the screen. If a needed semi-finished product is missing from the plan, put it on a separate kitchen work list: you cannot add a new banquet row here.

Result: the kitchen receives agreed quantities, not just a forecast of an ordinary day. See the forecast guide and bar replenishment by transfer.

Step 6. Open the bill on the day#

1. On a confirmed or seated reservation, select Table bill.
2. Check the table and linked bill; for a new reservation, POS opens a draft without dishes, for a reservation with a pre-order — the prepared bill.
3. Enter the agreed menu, portion variants, notes and courses.
4. Save the order when the kitchen should receive it. The bill of a reservation whose guests have not been seated yet is saved as a pre-order and waits for Seat.

A paid reservation deposit is a separate payment method, not a discount, and is credited only once. Open the bill from the reservation to keep the link; when splitting the bill, do not manually apply the same deposit again. If a bill is already open on the table, Table bill links the reservation to it: check that it is the right bill and do not open a second one for the same payment.

A4 bill for the organizer#

Organizers often need a cost estimate or a bill on A4 paper — before the banquet for approval or after it for payment. POS prints it from the open bill on an ordinary office printer.

1. Open the banquet bill: on the reservation choose Table bill and add the items.
2. In the bill's ⋯ menu choose A4 bill (banquet).
3. Check the header. If the bill was opened from a reservation, POS fills in the organizer, phone, date and time in the location's time zone, number of guests, hall and table, and puts the reservation comment into the note. If there is no link, pick a reservation in the Booking field or fill in the fields by hand.
4. Enter the Event, for example “Smith wedding”. In Already paid enter the deposit or advance you have taken; a paid online reservation deposit is filled in automatically.
5. Click Print and choose a printer or Save as PDF in the browser's print dialog.

Result: the sheet shows the bill number and date, event details, items with quantity, price and amount, discount, service charge, total, prepayment, balance due, amount per guest, the location's business details and space for the manager's and organizer's signatures. The business details come from the location's tax details — the same as on the receipt; if there are none, only the location name is printed.

POS remembers your header edits on this device for this bill, so you do not have to retype them when printing again.

Step 7. Manage courses and the kitchen#

In KDS settings, turn on Enable coursing and assign courses to starters, mains and desserts. Lines in course 2 and above are held; when guests are ready, use Fire next course or Fire course 2. This controls service for a saved order; it is not a calendar for a future banquet.

On KDS, check line and order notes before cooking.

Configure automatic course firing and the ready-together option using the KDS guide. Agree with the kitchen who fires the next course: automation and waiter actions should follow the same service plan.

For an off-site event#

For catering “deliver at 14:00”, create a scheduled delivery order; for pickup, set the collection time. These orders appear in the kitchen's Upcoming panel and are released closer to the deadline according to cooking time. Check the date, location time, address and recipient's contact details; do not turn a normal table order into a delivery order. This scheduling option is not available for dine-in orders.

Step 8. Settle with the organizer and guests#

1. Confirm actual food and drinks with the organizer, including additions made during the banquet.
2. Check the location's service charge and, if configured, the separate large-party charge from the set guest threshold (web POS beta).
3. If the charge must be removed, enter a reason; see service charges.
4. For an agreed discount, set an amount or percentage on a line; role limits and PIN approval apply — see POS discounts.
5. Split the bill by guest or equally if several people are paying; check credited deposits and advances.
6. Collect the balance or use On credit (debt) with a selected customer and an available-limit check.

Result: settlement accounts for actual consumption, charges, discounts and payments already received. Reconcile the company's invoice and document payments separately; a contract does not mean the POS order has been paid.

If you have several locations#

Table deposit policies share an account-level registry: the editor binds new rules to the selected location; rules without a location restriction may apply across locations. Shared cards do not mean identical settings at every location: check a new location's settings before its first banquet.

Limitations#

• Reservations, POS orders and company documents remain separate records; there is no shared event card yet.
• The pre-order lives in the reservation's bill, not in the reservation itself; it is not cooked by time on its own: by the reservation start the kitchen display shows it on the rail with a held course, and cooking starts with Seat, Release to kitchen or Fire on the kitchen display.
• The pre-order is released immediately when Seat is tapped in the POS hall panel. If the guests are marked as seated in the bookings journal or on another device, the pre-order goes to the kitchen when the reservation's bill is opened in POS.
• The Cenaly POS apps for Android, Windows and Ubuntu handle pre-orders the same way: “🍽 Pre-order” on a booking in the Reservations tab of the hall panel, the banner above the bill, “Save pre-order” (the order is created without payment) and “🔥 Release to kitchen”. “Seat” in the app’s hall panel releases the booking’s bill right away, even if it is not open. The POS apps do not print kitchen tickets themselves: the kitchen screens receive the dishes. “Open ticket” on a seated booking opens that booking’s bill, not a new bill at the table.
• Stock forecasting does not calculate ingredients for a future banquet; manual plan adjustments do not save an event menu.
• A company's price list is not applied in POS; a corporate meal allowance is not a banquet settlement method.
• The A4 bill is printed from the web POS; the Cenaly POS apps for Android, Windows and Ubuntu do not have it yet. The event name is not stored in the reservation or the order — only on the device.

Troubleshooting#

Frequently asked questions#

Can I save the entire menu in advance without sending it to the kitchen? Yes — as a pre-order for the reservation: tap 🍽 Pre-order on the reservation and enter the dishes. Until the guests arrive, the kitchen does not get the bill, even if an advance was taken on it. Use scheduled orders for delivery and pickup.

How do I run a banquet across several tables? Create separate reservations and use the same event name in their comments; see table reservations.

Can I print one production report specifically for the banquet? There is no such report yet. Prepare a separate list of portions and ingredients from recipes; use the forecast sheet as a supporting document.

Related sections#

• Table reservations and deposits
• POS and split bills
• Kitchen display and courses
• Recipes
• Bar or pantry as a separate warehouse: replenishment by transfer
• Service charges and discounts
• Counterparties and documents
• Prepayment, advances and credit on cenaly.ru