Ask for adults and children separately

"Sixty guests" is not sixty of the same thing. If eighteen of them are seven-year-olds, the kitchen wants to know that in advance rather than at half past four on the day. Switch this on and the customer tells you when they book.

How to turn it on

• Log in to CaterWay.
• Open Calculators from the menu on the left and open the one you want to edit.
• Stay on the Basic tab, where the guest limits are.
• Under those limits, switch on Ask for adults and children separately.
• Set Default number of children, Minimum children and Maximum children if the defaults do not suit you.
• Fill in Who counts as a child. Do not skip this one, see below.
• Save.

Say who counts as a child

Who counts as a child is shown to the customer right under the selector, and it is the difference between a number you can trust and a number you have to chase. "Children are under 12" takes five seconds to write and saves the email exchange where you find out they meant teenagers.

There is an optional Who counts as an adult line too. Most of the time you do not need it, because saying what a child is already answers the question.

Pricing does not change

This is worth being clear about, because it is the first thing caterers ask. A child costs exactly what an adult costs. The split tells you how to cook, it does not discount anything.

The total guest count is still what drives everything else: your volume discounts, your minimum order, and any per-person pricing all read the total, adults and children together. If you want children to cost less, that is a separate product or a pricing tier, not this setting.

Where the answer ends up

Once a customer has answered, the split travels with the booking. You see it on the quote itself, in the emails, on the prep sheet the kitchen works from, and on the calendar entry. Nobody has to remember to pass it along.

Good to know

• Leave the setting off and nothing changes, the customer picks one guest number as before.
• A customer cannot say there are more children than guests in total, the calculator refuses the combination rather than sending you an impossible booking.
• Turning it off later does not erase the answers already on your existing quotes.