Catering software for Canadian caterers: orders, provincial tax and Quebec's billing rules

A Vancouver wedding order with three tax treatments

Take a 140-guest plated dinner in Vancouver. GST of 5% applies to the food, the service staff and the wine. British Columbia's provincial sales tax works differently: the province says sales of food for human consumption are exempt from PST, and so are catering services such as menu planning, preparing, plating and serving food. Liquor is not exempt. BC charges PST of 10% on beer, wine, spirits and other drinks above 1% alcohol.

So the dinner and the servers carry 5%, the wine carries 15% in total, and a caterer who sells no liquor or other taxable goods does not need to register for PST at all. One tax setting for the whole order gets this wrong. Catering software should let each line carry its own tax, and remember the treatment for that item the next time you quote it.

Other provinces have their own lists. Saskatchewan and Manitoba run separate provincial taxes, and the HST provinces fold everything into one rate. If you cater across a provincial border, test a quote in each.

What to test in a demo before choosing catering software in Canada

Quebec: mandatory billing reaches caterers, not just restaurants

Revenu Québec's mandatory billing rules for the restaurant sector are not limited to dining rooms. Its guidance treats the place where a caterer carries on business as a restaurant establishment when it offers catering for banquets, cocktail parties or special occasions such as private receptions, business meetings, weddings, anniversaries and birthdays.

Operators subject to the measures must send transaction data through a certified sales recording system compatible with Revenu Québec's WEB-SRM, give every customer a bill produced by that system, and keep records for six years. Since 1 June 2025 the web version of the sales recording module is the required route.

That changes how a Quebec caterer chooses software. Your order management, quotes and event sheets can live in one tool, but the customer's bill may have to come from a certified system. Check Revenu Québec's catering page for your situation before you buy anything, and ask each vendor directly if its product is certified. Venura is not a certified sales recording system.

Sample catering order: 140-guest wedding dinner in Vancouver

Plated wedding dinner for 140 guests in Vancouver, British Columbia, with wine and an 18% mandatory service charge on the food. Prices are illustrative.

• Illustrative prices, not a rate card.
• BC exempts food and catering services from PST but charges 10% PST on liquor; GST applies to every line.
• The service charge is shown as its own taxable line because the CRA taxes mandatory or suggested service charges on the bill.
• No GST is collected on the 25% deposit until it is applied to the final invoice.

The 18% on the order is taxable; the cash in the envelope is not

Many Canadian caterers add a service charge to food and beverage totals. The CRA says that if you add a mandatory or suggested service charge to the bill, GST or HST applies to it, and gives a banquet example where tax is charged on the dinner and the 15% gratuity together. A tip that a guest gives freely and that is not recorded on the bill is outside GST and HST.

In your software these must be separate line types. Put the service charge on the order as a taxable line, and record voluntary tips, if you track them at all, outside the invoice. Then pass the right information to payroll, because the CRA also has rules on how tips reach employees.

Deposits on catering orders and the cancelled date

Wedding caterers usually take a deposit to hold the date, then stage the balance closer to the event. Under the CRA's deposit rule, no GST or HST is collected when the deposit is paid. Tax is due when you apply the deposit to the price on the final invoice. If the client cancels and the deposit is forfeited, the CRA treats a taxable supply as made at that time and tax is payable on the forfeited amount.

A catering system should keep each deposit attached to its order as unapplied money, show the balance and due dates, and make a forfeit visible to whoever does the books. Treating deposits as taxable sales on the day they arrive overstates what you owe in the busy spring months and understates it later.

The Thursday call: counts, dietary needs and the van

Most catering errors start with a late change. The planner calls on Thursday: 140 becomes 152, two guests are now gluten free, and the head table wants the vegetarian main. If that change lands in an email and not in the order, the kitchen preps for the old number.

Software earns its place when one edit moves the food quantities, the staff count, the pack list and the invoice together. The dietary notes should travel with the guest count onto the kitchen sheet, not sit in a separate document. And the staff list for each event should show who holds the food handler certificate your province asks for, so nobody discovers on the morning that the only certified person is off sick.

Ask the vendor to make that exact Thursday change during the demo while you watch the kitchen sheet and the invoice update.

Quoting per guest when food costs move between booking and event

Wedding caterers often quote a menu in the autumn for a dinner the following summer. Between those dates, beef, dairy and produce prices can shift enough to change the margin on a large order. A per-guest price that looked comfortable when the couple signed can be thin by the time the kitchen orders stock.

Catering software helps in two plain ways. It keeps the cost per guest behind each menu, so you can see what a dish costs you now rather than what it cost when you wrote the quote. It also records the validity date and any price-review clause you put on the quote, so nobody honours an expired price by accident.

Neither of those needs a complicated system. They need the menu, the cost and the quote to sit in the same place as the order.

Where Venura fits for a Canadian caterer

Venura has a catering app alongside its venue app. It keeps orders and enquiries on a calendar, builds quotes, invoices and receipts with the tax rate you choose on each line, tracks deposits and balances, produces event and kitchen sheets, manages staff roles and shares documents by email or WhatsApp. It runs on the web and in native Android and iOS apps, in Canadian dollars.

It is a good fit for event and wedding caterers who want orders, documents and money in one place. It is not a point-of-sale system, it does not file GST, HST or PST returns, and it is not certified for Quebec's mandatory billing. Plans for Canada are quoted on request after a free 30-day trial, so bring a real order with your own tax lines to the first call.

Catering software questions from Canada