A small caterer can run quotes, orders and invoices on free tools: Wave or Square for invoices and estimates, a form and sheet for orders, and a free AI assistant for drafting. Free tiers cover one or two jobs each, so AI is the glue that joins them.
The comparison sites list free tools and stop. The more useful question is what a free assistant adds to each tool, because on most free plans the AI is not built in at all; you bring it. Prices below are USD list prices checked on 27 October 2026 unless stated.
The three jobs a free stack has to cover
Strip catering paperwork to its core and you get three jobs. Each has a free option, and each has a limit that shows up the day you grow.
Quote: what the client sees before they say yes
A quote needs line items, a total, terms and some record of acceptance. Free ways to do it: the estimates feature in an invoice tool (Wave's free Starter plan lists unlimited estimates and invoices; Square's free plan lists estimates and contracts), a document template, or the free Starter tier of a catering calculator such as Caterway, whose page lists one calculator with up to three categories of five products each.
Order: what you cook, for whom, by when
Once accepted, a quote becomes an order sheet with date, time, guest numbers, dishes, dietary needs and delivery details. Free tools for this are a form feeding a spreadsheet, or a shared document. Airtable's page lists paid plans from $20 per user per month billed annually and does not state free-plan limits, so check its current free tier before building on it.
Invoice: how the deposit and balance reach you
Wave's Starter plan is $0 with card payments at 2.9 per cent plus $0.60 per card transaction; Pro is $19 a month. Square's free plan lists invoices and recurring invoices; its page does not show processing rates in the fetched text, and payment schedules sit in the Plus tier. Zoho Invoice's free plan allows two users, three projects and 500 invoices a year. For a caterer, the invoice limit matters less than whether deposits and balances can be set up as two payments.
Free tool limits side by side
| Tool | Free tier covers | Limit to know | Paid step up (list, USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wave | Estimates, invoices, bills, bookkeeping, unlimited | Online payments are an add-on that needs approval; card fees 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction on Starter; taking deposits through estimates is a Pro feature | Pro $19 a month or $190 a year |
| Square Invoices | Invoices, recurring invoices, estimates, contracts, projects | Payment schedules and custom templates need Plus; rates not on the fetched page | Plus and Premium prices not shown on the page |
| Zoho Invoice | Business quotes; up to 2 users, 3 projects, 500 invoices a year | Whether clients accept quotes online is not stated on its page | Not shown on the fetched page |
| Caterway | Starter: one quote calculator, three categories of five products, one language | Deposits and AI not mentioned on its page; priced in euros | Pro EUR 49 a month, EUR 39 if billed yearly |
| CaterCamp | No free plan; 14-day trial | Pricing on a separate page | Not checked |
| Airtable | A free plan exists; limits not on the fetched page | Check records and automation limits first | Team $20 per user a month annually; Business $45 |
Two points stand out. None of the free tiers above lists AI drafting on its own page; where it exists it is a paid feature or absent. And the limits that bite are rarely the headline ones: they are processing fees, a missing payment schedule, or a catalogue too small for your menu.
For paid tools, with prices and timings, the sibling tutorial on catering quote software and which tools turn enquiries into quotes picks up where this one stops.
What a free AI assistant adds, step by step
As of October 2026, the consumer plans from the main assistants have free tiers: ChatGPT Free, Claude Free and a free Gemini app. Their message limits and model access change often, so treat them as free to try and expect caps in busy weeks. What they add is words, arithmetic and structure.
| Step | Free tool does | AI adds | AI cannot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiry | A form collects fields | Reads a rambling email and fills the fields; flags what is missing | Know whether the date is free |
| Quote | An estimate template holds the layout | Drafts line items from your price sheet; offers two budget variants | Choose your prices or record acceptance |
| Order | A sheet lists the event | Turns the quote into a prep list, scaled recipes and a shopping list | Check stock in your cupboard |
| Allergens | A table you type | Builds a draft allergen table from recipes | Guarantee anything; you verify with labels |
| Invoice | Sends deposit and balance requests | Writes the reminder wording | Take payment |
| Follow-up | Nothing | Drafts day-three and day-seven nudges | Send them without you |
The main worked example: a home-kitchen caterer, six events a month
Take an illustrative caterer working from a registered home kitchen, with two part-time helpers. Six events a month: four drop-off buffets for offices (20 to 40 guests) and two private parties (50 to 80). Average order $1,100. Orders arrive by email, a website form and messages. The free stack:
- Enquiry form on the website, writing to a spreadsheet: date, guests, venue, dietary needs, budget, decision date.
- Free AI assistant drafts the quote from a pasted price sheet.
- Quote sent from Wave or Square's estimate tool using the figures the assistant produced.
- Deposit invoice at 30 per cent, balance invoice due 7 days before.
- Order sheet row per event, with the assistant producing the prep list.
What it costs
Software fees: $0. Card fees are the real cost. Take a $1,100 event paid by card through Wave Starter: a $330 deposit costs 2.9 per cent plus $0.60, so $9.57 plus $0.60, which is $10.17; the $770 balance costs $22.33 plus $0.60, which is $22.93. Total $33.10, or 3.0 per cent. Over six events a month that is about $199, and Wave's page says Pro waives the 60 cents on the first ten transactions each month, which trims it only slightly. Paying by bank transfer avoids the fee but means chasing, which is the time cost you were trying to remove. A caterer on card payments should price the fee into the quote rather than absorb it.
Where it fits and where it creaks
Quote and invoice flow fine. The seams are in the middle: the quote lives in one tool, the order sheet in another and the enquiry in a third, so changing a guest number means three edits. At six events a month that is tolerable. At twenty it is the moment to look at one paid tool that holds all three.
A prompt that turns a messy enquiry into form fields
Paste an email, get a structured row. Replace names with [client] before pasting.
Extract these fields from the enquiry. If a field is missing, write "MISSING".
Fields: event date, arrival/setup time, guests (number or range), service style,
venue facilities, dietary and allergy needs, budget, quote needed by.
Then list the three questions I should ask to complete the quote.
Enquiry: "Hi, it's for our team away day, around 35-40 of us, 18th of June.
Probably sandwiches and something hot? Two people don't eat meat and
one has a bad reaction to sesame. We'd like to know costs by Monday. Thanks, [client]"An illustrative result: date 18 June; setup time MISSING; guests 35 to 40; service style cold sandwiches plus one hot item; venue facilities MISSING; dietary two vegetarian, one sesame allergy; budget MISSING; quote needed by Monday. The three questions: what time should food be ready, is there a kitchen or only a table, and what budget per head? What you fix: the assistant may treat "don't eat meat" as vegan. Write the dietary line yourself, and confirm the sesame detail in writing, because it can sit in bread, dressings and hummus.
A prompt that turns a menu into a draft allergen table
This is one of the most useful free-AI jobs and one of the riskiest, so use it as a draft only.
Here are my recipes with ingredients. Make a table with one row per dish and
columns for the 14 major allergens (cereals with gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish,
peanuts, soya, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphites, lupin, molluscs).
Mark "contains" only when an ingredient listed clearly contains it.
Mark "CHECK LABEL" for any ingredient where a bought-in product may contain it.
Do not mark anything as free from an allergen.The "CHECK LABEL" instruction is the point. A stock cube, a sauce or a bought-in bread can hide an allergen the recipe does not name, and the assistant cannot see your packets. Walk the table against the real labels before it goes near a client. The deeper version, with costs, is in a four-week menu cycle with costs and allergens.
Three smaller caterers, three free stacks
A sandwich-and-salad office supplier
Orders repeat weekly. A free calculator such as Caterway Starter handles up to three categories of five products each, which is exactly 15 items, so the menu must stay tight. AI adds nothing at quote time; it earns its place writing the weekly menu email and checking quantities.
A wedding caterer with 10 events a year
Quotes are bespoke and revised several times. A free estimate in Wave or Square, a shared document for tasting notes and an AI assistant for revisions is enough. The price of mistakes is high, so AI drafts and you approve every number. See wedding catering proposals, tastings, quotes and follow-ups.
A food truck with private hire
Three or four enquiries a month. A short form, a sheet and a saved reply are enough. Use the assistant for the price list and the Instagram caption, not for a system.
Scaling a recipe into a prep list and shopping list
Once a quote is accepted, the free assistant is at its best turning it into work. Paste the order row and your recipe quantities for one portion, and ask for scaled amounts. An illustrative prompt and output for the 40-guest office lunch:
Scale this to 40 portions. Recipe per portion: chicken thigh 150 g, rice 80 g (dry),
roasted peppers 60 g, yoghurt dressing 30 ml. Add 5% for waste on chicken and peppers.
Give a shopping list in kilos and litres, rounded up to sensible pack sizes,
and a prep order for the day before and the morning of.A good answer gives chicken 6.3 kg (40 x 150 g = 6 kg plus 5 per cent), rice 3.2 kg, peppers 2.52 kg, dressing 1.2 litres, then a prep order: marinate the chicken the evening before, cook rice and roast peppers on the morning, dress at the venue. What you fix: it will round to numbers that ignore your supplier's pack sizes, and it may not know that rice triples in weight when cooked. Check the arithmetic yourself on one line, which takes a minute, and keep the corrected quantities as a saved recipe. More depth on this step is in scaling recipes and shopping lists with AI.
Three ways to get AI into the chain, compared
There are three routes, and the cost differences are bigger than the feature differences.
- Free assistant on the side. You copy details in and out. Cost $0, plus a few minutes of copying per quote. You control what is shared. It is the right first step for any caterer with under ten quotes a month.
- Paid assistant on the side. ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro are each $20 a month (list). You get higher limits, which matters in a busy season when a free tier runs out mid-week. Worth it if you hit a cap more than a couple of times a month.
- AI inside a paid catering or proposal tool. Convenient because the draft lands in the quote, but you pay for the platform. The pages checked for this tutorial listed AI in HoneyBook (all plans, from $29 a month billed yearly) and in a field-service quoting tool; the free catering tiers did not list it.
The sums for a caterer sending 8 quotes a month: route 1 costs $0 and about 3 hours a month of copying and checking; route 2 costs $240 a year and saves perhaps half an hour of waiting on caps; route 3 starts at $348 a year for the cheapest HoneyBook tier and saves the copying. Because the free route works, the paid routes have to justify themselves in hours, not in features.
Before and after: a payment reminder
Before, written at 10pm after a long day: "Hi, just wondering if you've had a chance to pay the balance. Thanks." It is vague, apologetic and does not say what is owed or when.
After, drafted by the assistant and trimmed by you, illustrative: "Hi [first name], a reminder that the balance of $770 for Thursday 12 March is due on Thursday 5 March. The payment link is below. If anything about the numbers has changed, reply and I will send a corrected invoice today." It states the amount, the date and what happens next, which is why it gets paid faster. Save it as a template with the amount and dates marked, and have the assistant fill them each time.
Free-tier traps to check before you build on a tool
- The cap you only hit once you grow. Caterway's Starter holds 15 products; a caterer with 22 dishes hits that in week one. Count your menu before you pick a free calculator.
- One-user plans. If a partner needs to edit quotes, a one-user tier means sharing a login, which defeats any record of who changed what.
- Processing fees on invoices. A free invoice tool earns money from card payments. Add the fee to the quote if clients pay by card.
- Locked exports. Before you commit, export a sample quote and a client list. If the file is unusable, you are renting your own records.
- Trials that end with a card charge. Some trials ask for a card (QuoteIQ's does); set a reminder for day 12 of a 14-day trial.
A mistake: the assistant that quoted from last season's prices
Illustrative: a caterer keeps a price sheet in a chat conversation so the assistant "remembers" it. Ingredient costs rise in the autumn and she updates her spreadsheet but not the chat. A week later a quote goes out with the old per-head figure, thirty guests at $2 too low, a $60 loss on one job. The fix: paste the current price sheet at the start of every drafting session, or keep one pinned source and replace it when prices change. Never let the assistant be the only place the prices live.
Keeping customer details out of the chat
Free consumer plans often allow the provider to use chats for improvement unless you change a setting, and the setting names differ by vendor. The simple rule works everywhere: put [client] in place of names, and keep phone numbers, addresses and payment details in your own sheet. Allergy details are health information about a named person, so treat them with care, use first names or initials only, and ask a data-protection adviser if you hold many records. If you move to a paid team plan later, the data terms improve for most vendors, but read them.
When free stops being cheaper
Free software has a cost in your time. A sensible test: if keeping three tools in step takes you more than two hours a week, one paid tool at $29 to $83 a month is cheaper than your evenings at $25 an hour. Another trigger is a second person who needs to edit quotes; free tiers often allow one user or two. A third is deposits: if you chase balances by hand more than twice a month, a tool that sends reminders will pay for itself.
The wider picture of AI across a catering business, from menus to quotes, is in how caterers use AI to quote events and plan menus, and if your price sheet is shaky, the cost-per-person sheet comes first. For spreadsheet prompts you can reuse on the order sheet, see Google Sheets AI prompts.
A weekly routine that keeps the free stack honest
- Monday, 15 minutes: open the enquiry sheet, list quotes unanswered for three days, and send the saved follow-up.
- Midweek, 10 minutes: check deposits against accepted quotes; remind anyone more than three days late.
- Two days before each event, 20 minutes: ask the assistant for the prep list and shopping list from the order row; compare with the quote and your allergen table.
- Month end, 20 minutes: count quotes sent, accepted and the average minutes each took. If minutes are not falling, change the template, not the software.
Free catering software, answered
Is there a fully free catering platform?
Not one that covers quotes, orders, deposits and invoices without limits, among the tools checked here. Free tiers cover one or two of those jobs. The practical answer is a free quote or invoice tool plus a form, a spreadsheet and a free AI assistant to join them.
What does free AI do that free software does not?
It reads messy enquiries, drafts quotes and replies from your price sheet, turns a menu into an allergen table and writes reminders. It does not hold your prices, record acceptance or take payment, so you still need a quote or invoice tool for those.
Is it safe to paste customer details into a free chatbot?
Avoid names, addresses and phone numbers. Consumer plans may use chats to improve models unless you switch that off, and settings vary by vendor. Paste the order details with the client name replaced by [client], and keep contact details in your own sheet.
When should I stop using free tools?
When you hit a limit that costs you time every week: more than one person editing, too many menu items for a free tier, or deposits you chase by hand. At that point compare a paid plan of $20 to $100 a month against the hours saved.
Do free tiers change?
Often. Limits, trials and promotions shift without notice, so a free plan you chose in spring may look different by autumn. Check the vendor page before you build a process around a limit, and keep an export of your data.
Further reads
- Catering Event Checklist: Build the Run Sheet From One Brief With AI — From one brief to a run sheet for the day.
- Best AI for the Food Industry: Picks for a Cafe, Caterer or Takeaway — AI tool picks across cafe, caterer and takeaway.
- Catering Proposal Template: Packages, Prices and Terms With ChatGPT — A ChatGPT build for caterers: package tiers, per-head pricing, deposit and cancellation terms, then one 40-guest corporate lunch filled in and checked.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: vendor pages for Zoho Invoice, Square Invoices, Wave, Caterway, CaterCamp and Airtable, plus facts for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini plans, checked 27 October 2026.