Follow catering orders from quote to accounting
Rauschenberger Catering & Restaurants, based in Fellbach near Stuttgart, has around 500 employees and handles corporate, sports and private events, trade-fair catering and restaurants in Stuttgart, Munich and Mallorca. Seven entities have shared one system since June 2026, with daily use by sales and accounting since July. Previously, Dynamics CRM handled sales separately from accounting, and each event was entered into DATEV manually. This example explains the scope of Ruetech’s catering ERP and the customisations developed for it.
One event, from first call to posting
Catering quotes, down payments, final invoices and accounting entries need to agree. Rauschenberger’s workflow is configured as follows:
- Enquiry. The email lands in a personal or shared Microsoft 365 mailbox. The system turns it into a lead the whole team can see.
- Option. The sales team reserves availability. Six teams work with their own stages, from "reserve availability" to "signature received". Loss reasons come from everyday catering.
- Quote. The business unit on the enquiry sets company, bank details and legal information. Commissions for agencies and venues are built into the price per partner and product category. If the partner changes, the system recalculates.
- Follow-up. The system schedules the next steps in business days, up to the last call before the event.
- Down payments and final invoice. Tasks go to the finance team, with a separate team for Mallorca. Invoice and delivery dates come from the event date, and the project number appears on order and invoice.
- Posting. The invoice carries the revenue account of the business unit and goes to the in-house accounts team via DATEV export.
Quotes, orders, down payments, invoices, activities and DATEV export are standard functions. We developed the business-unit assignment and commission calculations. Scripts also transferred more than 200 email templates from Dynamics.
Taxes and documents: 7, 19 and 10 percent in one system
Catering in Germany involves 7 and 19 percent VAT, and Mallorca 10 percent IVA. Rauschenberger's old invoices consisted of placeholder lines such as "food total" and "drinks total". The amounts were calculated somewhere else.
Each entity has its own accounting settings and tax mapping for domestic, EU and Spanish transactions. The Mallorca branch issues Spanish-language invoices with its CIF. XRechnung and ZUGFeRD are standard. Splitting conference packages between food and drink revenue accounts is still planned work.
Ruetech Aviation Catering Solution: catering for airlines
Airline catering needs production to meet tight time windows. The Ruetech Aviation Catering Solution extends the catering ERP with the following functions:
- Production orders created from the flight-schedule data
- HACCP checks recorded in the system, with an audit trail
- Batches traced from goods receipt to the loading of the aircraft
- Cost and utilisation for management, without merged spreadsheets
Recipes, lots and checkpoints use standard Odoo. Menus by airline, route, class and season are configured; the flight-schedule import was developed by Ruetech. We cannot name the client, so the project is presented as an anonymised case study. The Ruetech Aviation Catering Solution guide explains its setup and scope.
Technology
The catering ERP from Ruetech and the Ruetech Aviation Catering Solution are built on Odoo, at Rauschenberger on version 19 Enterprise. Ruetech is an Odoo Silver Partner.
Where the catering ERP stops
Staff planning for events assigns people to dates. It does not check collective agreements, surcharges or rest periods. In Germany, payroll usually runs with the tax adviser in DATEV. Restaurant tills are not part of the Rauschenberger case study, so we have no reference for hospitality point of sale.
Your first step: one event with a down payment
An event from the last quarter with at least one down payment makes a useful example for the first call. Send redacted quotes, invoices and DATEV entries through the contact form, marking any manual data transfers. We will show which steps Odoo already covers and where customisation is needed. The Rauschenberger case study describes the project.