1pm vs Total Party Planner: an honest comparison
You have eleven tabs open. Two are pricing pages. One is a demo booking form you have half completed twice. Somewhere among them is a spreadsheet a colleague created with a "must have" column that you have already given up updating.
This is how catering and events software actually gets chosen. Not in a boardroom, but in the forty minutes between a tasting and a site visit, by someone who still has to run the business while making the decision.
So here is the comparison I would want if I were the one with all those tabs open: 1pm versus Total Party Planner, written by the person who builds one of them, so keep that in mind. I have tried to be honest about where they are better, because a comparison claiming "we win everything" is useless and you would stop reading anyway.
The short version
Total Party Planner is catering operations software. It was built by caterers for caterers, and that shows. If your business is mainly about producing food at scale and getting it to the right place, its back-of-house depth is substantial: recipe costing, equipment and inventory, online ordering, delivery and kitchen paperwork.
1pm is a lead-driven event booking CRM. It handles the commercial side of an event business (leads, quotes, proposals, terms, deposits, invoices, payments, reporting) and then runs the event itself through a live BEO and live run of show that your crew, suppliers and client can open on their phones without logging in.
There is genuine overlap between the two. Both cover events, BEOs, menus, invoicing, payments and CRM. The key difference is where each product came from and what happens when the event is actually underway.
At a glance
A tick means the product ships something in that area. It does not mean the two work the same way, and on Total Party Planner's side it does not always mean the tier you were pricing. The detailed table underneath says how each one actually does it.
| 1pm | Total Party Planner | |
|---|---|---|
| Winning the work | ||
| Embeddable lead form for your website | ✓ | ✓ |
| Leads land in a threaded inbox | ✓ | ~ |
| Auto reply that checks the date and sends a priced quote | ✓ | ✗ |
| Quotes and proposals | ✓ | ✓ |
| Proposal is a live page rather than a document | ✓ | ✗ |
| Terms and electronic signature | ✓ | ✓ |
| Running the event | ||
| BEO / function sheet | ✓ | ✓ |
| BEO stays current, so there is no version to resend | ✓ | ✗ |
| Run of show for the day itself | ✓ | ✗ |
| Private crew link per person, no login | ✓ | ✗ |
| Keeps working when the venue wifi drops | ✓ | ✗ |
| Client portal to accept, sign, pay and follow the plan | ✓ | ~ |
| Site visit and tasting booking page | ✓ | ✗ |
| Food and logistics | ||
| Menu library | ✓ | ✓ |
| Recipe and plate costing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Equipment and inventory tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Online ordering storefront | ✗ | ✓ |
| Delivery management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Staff rostering and scheduling | ~ | ✓ |
| Money | ||
| Invoices, deposits and balances | ✓ | ✓ |
| Card payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Accounting sync | ✓ | ✓ |
| Getting started | ||
| Sign up and trial the whole product without a sales call | ✓ | ✗ |
| No setup fee | ✓ | ✗ |
Key: ✓ built in. ✗ not built. ~ partly built, or built in a way that covers only some of what the row describes.
Two of those need their nuance said out loud rather than left as a symbol. 1pm assigns crew to timeline items and gives each person a call time, which is not the same thing as rostering forty casuals across six jobs, so that row gets a tilde rather than a tick. And both products sync to accounting, but 1pm syncs one way to Xero only, which matters if you run QuickBooks.
Feature by feature
Prices and features are as published when this was written. Check both before deciding, because software changes.
| Area | 1pm | Total Party Planner | The honest comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead capture and reply | Embeddable form, leads land in a threaded inbox, auto reply can check availability and send a real priced quote | Lead capture and client communication, CRM module on the middle and top tiers | This is the biggest gap. 1pm can send an actual quote at 9:14pm on a Sunday while you are working. Most tools simply acknowledge the Lead and wait for you |
| Quotes and proposals | Priced item and package catalog, quote as a link, proposals as branded live web pages that update when details change | Proposal generation, strong templates, well liked by users | Both are good. TPP's proposals are a document. 1pm's are a page that remains current, so a changed pax count does not require a re-export |
| Contracts and signatures | Versioned terms library, client ticks and types their name, 1pm records who agreed to which version and when | Electronic signatures | Comparable. TPP has been doing it longer |
| BEO / function sheet | Lives on the event record, one live copy, updates the moment anything changes | Generated as a document to print and send | 1pm was built to eliminate the version-four-emailed-Thursday problem |
| Run of show on the day | Live ROS with countdowns, one-tap start and finish, per-person filtered links, no logins, works offline | Not a comparable feature in their published materials | Nothing else in this category handles the day this way. It is our clearest point of difference |
| Crew and supplier access | Private link per person, no account needed, 25 active crew included | Staffing and scheduling module | Different approaches. TPP schedules labor. 1pm distributes the plan. See the honest section below |
| Menus | Menu library, appears on the BEO, the confirmation, the charges, and the printed card | Menu management, long-standing strength | Close to even |
| Recipe and plate costing | Ingredients, recipes, sub-recipes, yield, plate cost, food cost percentage, margin (Hospitality plan) | Menu recipe costing and bulk cost updates (top tier) | Genuinely comparable now. This was TPP's moat and it is the feature we deliberately built to close it |
| Inventory and equipment | Not built | Equipment and inventory tracking | TPP wins outright. If you rent out chafers and linen, this matters |
| Online ordering | Not built | TPP Order, a paid add-on | TPP wins outright. Drop-off catering and boxed lunches need a storefront |
| Delivery and routing | Not built | Delivery management | TPP wins outright |
| Invoicing and payments | Deposits, balances, service charge, gratuity, credit notes, running statement per event, card payments via Stripe | Invoicing plus TPP Pay | Even, with one caveat: carefully compare the card processing rates on both sides |
| Accounting sync | One-way sync to Xero, itemised and tax-mapped | Accounting integrations | Check your specific setup. If you use QuickBooks, ask us where that fits before committing |
| Client-facing portal | One private link where the client accepts, agrees, pays, and can watch the plan | Client communication tools | 1pm puts more emphasis here |
| Appointments | Public booking page per Space, site visits and tastings, with an .ics confirmation | Not a headline feature | Small feature, but surprisingly useful for venue tours |
| Onboarding | Self-serve, 30-day free trial of everything, no card, no setup fee | Guided setup, one-time $299 fee, human check-in | Their approach is better if you want hand-holding. Ours is better if you want to try it on Tuesday |
| Entry price | $20/month (Professional), $40/month (Hospitality), $4 per extra user | $119/month (Nibble, 1 user), $299 (Feast, 2 users), $429 (Delicacy, 3 users), $25 per extra user | That is a significant gap. More on this below |
Where Total Party Planner is genuinely stronger
Inventory and equipment. If your business owns physical equipment that leaves the premises and needs to come back (chafing dishes, linen, china, tables, coffee urns), TPP tracks it and 1pm does not.
Online ordering and delivery. A caterer producing 200 boxed lunches a week needs a storefront and a delivery plan, not a proposal. TPP Order was built for exactly that, and 1pm has nothing equivalent. Same answer: if that is your business, buy the software that handles it.
Depth of catering back-of-house. They have been doing this for a long time for a specific type of business, and there are parts of a large catering operation they have considered that we have not encountered yet.
Staff scheduling. TPP has a staffing and scheduling module. 1pm approaches crew differently: we assign people to timeline items, give them a call time and their own filtered link, then stay out of the way. That is excellent for running an event, but it is not a labour scheduling system. If you roster forty casuals across six jobs each week and want that managed inside the same system, they are closer to what you need.
Where 1pm is stronger
The live BEO. This is the one I care about most. In most event software, including TPP from what we can tell from their own docs, the BEO is a document. You generate it, send it, and from then on it represents what was true when you created it. Then the pax changes and you have two versions. The service style changes and you have three. The duty manager has one, the kitchen another, and the client is referring to a fourth.
In 1pm, the BEO is a view of the event record. There is one copy, it stays current, and everyone sees the same information. There is no version to resend because there are no versions.
The live run of show. Nobody else in this category runs the day quite like we do. Every crew member gets a private link with no login, filtered to their own items, with countdowns and one-tap start and finish for real wall-clock timing. It works on venue wifi and when the wifi fails, because the timeline is cached locally and taps queue until the connection returns. Change the ROS once and everyone is working from the change.
Speed on a new lead. Most event work is sent to three to five suppliers at once, and the first meaningful response can shape how the client sees the decision. 1pm's auto reply is more than an acknowledgment. It can check whether the date is available, create a quote from your priced catalog, include your usual attachments and send it while you are busy working.
Price, and the shape of the price. $20 a month versus $119 is a genuine difference. So is $40 versus $429 for the tier with recipe costing. Add no setup fee versus $299, and $4 per extra seat versus $25. For a two-person planning business or boutique venue, the difference between these products is not just another line item; it can determine whether you buy software at all this year.
No locked features and no sales call. There are two plans: Professional, and Hospitality if you cost plates. Everything included in your plan is available from day one. You get a 30-day trial of the whole product with no credit card, no demo and no sales call.
It runs both halves of an event business. TPP is strongest when the job is producing and delivering food. 1pm is designed to take an event from the first message through to the final payment, then run the day itself. If your business is more event than kitchen (planners, AV, photographers, celebrants, boutique venues, restaurants with a function room), that balance is the main argument.
How to actually choose
Forget the feature matrix for a moment. Two questions will largely make the decision for you.
Is your business primarily food production, or primarily events? If you are a volume caterer with a warehouse full of equipment, a delivery fleet and an ordering site, buy Total Party Planner. Seriously. What you would be missing in 1pm is significant, and I would rather you were happy with another product than unhappy with ours.
If you sell and run events where food is only one part of the job, look at 1pm. That is the business it is designed around.
What does your day of the event look like? If the main problems are in the kitchen and the truck, choose TPP. If the problem is managing leads and booking more events or fourteen people needing to know what changed at 4pm, while you currently manage that through a group chat and three versions of a PDF, that is exactly the problem 1pm was built to solve.
Try both. Ours gives you 30 days with everything unlocked and no card required. Put one real event into each and see which one you stop fighting first.
A quick note about words
I use "run of show" throughout, and ROS for short. If you learned the trade in the UK, Australia or New Zealand, you probably say run sheet. If you came from catering, you may call the BEO a function sheet or event order. The documents and purpose are the same. In your 1pm account you can rename Events, Crew, Spaces, and the run of show, so the software can use your terminology rather than mine.
Closing
Total Party Planner is a great product with a clear target customer, and if that customer is you, this article has done its job by saying so. If you sit somewhere else on the map, running events where food is only one part of a much larger day, 1pm will cost less, probably take less effort to get started and handle the thing at 4pm on event day that nobody else is doing.
Either way, choose one and put a real event through it this week.
Chris Jack Founder, 1pm.app