Most catering software gives you reports. Reports are fine when you know what you’re looking for. But the real value in your data usually isn’t in the report you asked for. It’s in the thing you didn’t see coming. It can be margins that’ve slipped unexpectedly for three months running, or the line that’s suddenly costing twice what it used to.
That’s the gap we’ve been closing with our product update, and it’s the start of a new phase for catering software and how we help our customers at IndiCater.
A new way to see your data, alongside your reports
We’ve built a dashboard that you shape yourself, sitting alongside your existing reports.
You have complete personalisation. Pick from around 30 widgets across sales, purchasing, gross profit, stock, wastage, forecasting, finance and insights.
Drag them where you want them, resize them, and save as many named dashboards as you need. Whether it be one for finance, one for ops, one per region, whatever fits how your teams actually work.
Our 30 widgets are just the starting point, not the finish line. We want to build out a genuinely useful widget library. And the fastest way to get there is by hearing what you’d actually use. That’s why every dashboard has a direct “request a new widget” link built in for exactly that.
Does this mean new setups?
Nothing about this requires a new setup. It’s built entirely on data IndiCater already holds: sales, purchasing, wastage, stock, and estimates.
You’re not exporting anything or wiring up a new system. You’re just getting a faster, more flexible way to look at what’s already there, whenever the detail of a full report isn’t what you need.
Simply set the dates and outlets once at the top of a dashboard, and every widget on it follows. No fiddling with the filters widget by widget.
It tells you when something’s worth a look
This is the part we’re most excited about… You’ll now find a whole insights layer including separate widgets watching:
- Revenue
- Purchasing
- Wastage
- Stock value
- Outstanding estimates
- Top sellers for meaningful movement against trend and prior year
- Plus a “Top insights” view that rolls up the highest-severity findings across everything you can see.
When something’s genuinely worth your attention, it surfaces on its own. When nothing’s unusual, it says nothing, because a dashboard that cries wolf is worse than one that stays quiet.
You still get the number. You just don’t have to go investigating for the story behind it every time.
Forecasting, not just history
Three of the new widgets look forward rather than back:
- Projected sales
- Purchasing spend,
- Wastage for the periods ahead
Each with a confidence range. It’s the same data you already trust, just pointed at what’s likely to happen next, as well as what has already happened.
Built for how your business actually runs
If you’re operating across multiple countries or currencies, each dashboard can be set to the currency that makes sense for it, so a UK-based team and a European or North American site can both work in their own currencies, on the same platform.
Why this matters now
By helping your teams identify important trends earlier, you’ll connect information more effectively and receive training and support where decisions are actually made.
For finance leaders, that means greater confidence in budgeting, performance and forecasting.
For operations teams, it means better visibility across multiple sites and faster access to meaningful insight.
For catering managers and chefs, it means less manual investigation and more time focused on food, service and customer experience.
And the best part? This isn’t a one-off feature. It’s the foundation for a dashboard experience we intend to keep building on, shaped by what you, our clients, actually need to see.
If your team is still exporting data into spreadsheets or struggling to piece together several reports to answer one question, this is worth a conversation. We’d love to show you what it looks like against your own numbers.
If you’d like to explore how IndiCater can support your catering team, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us below – we’d love to support your team.
Curious how it works and fits into your team?
See how we worked with Coombs Catering to expand their business and increase the number of sites they served.
