Change your package prices and on-site times

Your package prices and on-site times live on the package itself, on the menu. Open the menu, click the package, and everything a buyer pays for is on the Details tab. There is no Save button — changes save as you type, and your website and quote widgets pick them up on their own.

First, the thing most people get wrong

An item inside a catering package has no price of its own. The package prices it.

So if you open a dish looking for its price, you are in the wrong place. On an item's Price by channel control, the Catering Package tab deliberately has no price box, and says so: "No price is set here — an item inside a catering package is covered by the package's own price."

The two item prices you can set are both for selling that item on its own, not as part of a package:

• Retail Trade — sold individually over the counter, at markets or events. One price per unit.
• Online — sold individually through online ordering. One price per unit.

If you really do sell a dish by the unit on the day as well — a grazing platter, a cake, an extra board — choose Sell this on its own on the Catering Package tab. Everything else, which is to say what each guest pays, is the package's job.

Where package pricing lives

1. Go to Menus in the sidebar and open the menu the package sits on.
2. Scroll to your packages and click the one you want to change.
3. The editor opens on the Details tab. The price fields are at the top.

The header reads Editing package above the package name, so you can always see which one you have open. The other tabs, What's included and Prep & ordering, change what guests get and what you prep — not the price.

How you charge

Charged sets the shape of the price:

• Per head — one price for every guest. Price is the per-head rate.
• Fixed fee — one price for the whole package, whatever the headcount.
• On enquiry — no number is published anywhere. Buyers are asked to enquire and you quote by hand. Your stored price is kept, so switching back brings it straight back.

Price is the number itself. Type it without a dollar sign; the field already shows one.

Charging less per head for bigger events

With Charged set to Per head, a panel called Cheaper for bigger events sits under the price. It is optional — leave it alone and every guest pays the same rate however many come.

1. Choose + Add a range.
2. Fill in the sentence it gives you: From so many guests, charge so much per head.
3. Add as many ranges as you need.

A booking is charged the rate of the largest range it reaches. A range has to cost less per head than your base Price, or it can never apply — the editor warns you in red when one doesn't.

Minimum and maximum guests

• Min guests — smaller bookings are priced as this many.
• Maximum guests — leave blank for no limit. Your instant quote hides this package for groups bigger than this, and the enquiry falls through to you instead.

Setup fees and other flat fees

On a per-head package, Flat add-on fee is charged once per event on top of the per-head price, and shows as its own line on quotes — a caravan, travel or setup fee. Fee name is what the customer sees it called; leave it blank and it reads as a setup fee.

On-site hours — your service time

On-site hours is the total time this package needs on site: service plus setup and pack-up, together. The default is 3 hours. The shortest it accepts is a quarter of an hour.

This one is worth getting right, because it is not just a label. When a customer books through your Date & Price Checker they only choose a start time — the finish time is worked out from this number. That finish time is what your calendar then checks for clashes. A package carrying the wrong on-site hours will either let you double-book your crew or block out a day you could have sold twice.

So set it per package. A drop-off platter and a five-hour wedding service should not be carrying the same number.

Putting a price up on a future date

You don't have to remember to change a price on the day it rises. Beside Price is Rises to: the new rate, and the date it starts.

Fill in both. Half of it saves as nothing, and the editor says so — "Set both the new price and the date, or neither."

The event date decides, not the date you quote. A booking you take today for an event on or after the rise date is quoted at the new price already.

Saving — there is no Save button

The editor saves as you type. Beside the package name you will see Saving…, then Saved, and All changes saved when nothing is pending. If a save fails it says Save failed — try again rather than pretending it worked. Choose Done at the bottom when you have finished.

Your website and widgets update themselves

You do not re-embed anything, paste any code again, or rebuild your site.

A package is one shared record: your menu, your website, your quotes and every Date & Price Checker all read the same row. So as soon as a price or an on-site time is saved, each of them is reading the new number the next time it loads.

Two things follow from that, and both surprise people:

• A price edit is not a draft. Unlike a widget's layout changes, it isn't held back until you press Publish, and Undo in the widget editor will not reverse it. To reverse a price, change it back.
• It reaches everything showing that package, not just the widget you happen to be looking at. If you edit a package from inside a widget editor, it tells you before you start: Saves now · also changes your menu, and any other widgets showing that package.

Weekend and peak-date surcharges, a minimum spend, travel and price breaks are layered on top of these package prices, and live in the widget instead. See Change your Date & Price Checker prices.