An ordinary order is one occasion. A Contract Order is a school, hostel or office mess you serve every day for months: the same customer, a menu that repeats every week or fortnight, a headcount that moves a little each day, and a bill once a month. It is a paid add-on to the Premium plan: Premium accounts add it from Plan in the user menu, and it is open to try during the free trial.
A contract does not replace orders. It creates them: one ordinary order per billing period (a calendar month by default), with one event per service day and meal, each carrying that day's guest count, the quoted rate and the day's menu from your rotation. Everything you already use on an order — menus, raw materials, the Kitchen Plan, the Customer Bill, payments, invoices, execution — works on a contract's orders unchanged.
Sidebar → Contract Orders (under Kitchen Plan).
Set up a contract
- Contract Orders → New Contract. Enter the institution as the customer (name and a contact number) — start typing to pick one you already have, so a second contract for the same school lands on the same customer — then the contract name, order type, place, the start date and, if it has one, the end date. Leave the end date blank for an open-ended contract.
- Choose the Billing period: Monthly (calendar months), Fortnightly (two-week blocks counted from the Monday of the start date) or Weekly (Monday to Sunday). One order is created per period.
- Choose the Menu rotation: Weekly when the same menu repeats every week, Fortnightly for a two-week cycle, up to four weeks.
- Tick the Service days. Monday to Friday is the default.
- Create Contract opens the contract page.
Meal slots
A slot is one meal served every service day. On the contract page click Add slot, pick the meal (an event type such as Lunch), the default headcount, the rate per plate you quoted, and the serving time. Add one slot per meal: Breakfast, Lunch, Evening Snacks.
Each meal can have only one slot. If you serve two lunches at different rates or headcounts, say for staff and students, give the second one its own event type such as Staff Lunch.
The slot's rate is what the bill uses. The catalog menu's own rate is ignored on contract orders, so one menu can serve two contracts at two prices.
Menu rotation
The rotation grid has one row per slot and one column per service day of each week in the cycle. Pick a catalog menu in each cell and click Save rotation. The number in brackets is the headcount the catalog menu was built for; quantities scale from it to the day's count, so build institutional menus at a realistic strength (a lunch menu built for 10 guests scaled to 400 students multiplies rounding error on small quantities). The card's header links to Catalog Menus in a new tab, so unsaved picks stay; menus created there appear in the cells once this page is reloaded. See Catalog Menus.
A cell left empty is allowed: the day's event is still created, with no dishes, and the preview and the headcount sheet point it out.
Holidays
Add date ranges the contract does not serve — vacations, exam days, a public holiday. Generation skips them. A single day is a range of one.
Generate a period
The line under the contract's name says which period needs generating next: red when the current period has no order yet, amber when the next one starts within a week, green when everything is in place. Pick the period there (the one that needs doing is preselected) and click Generate period…; All periods jumps to the table at the bottom of the page. A preview lists every service date with the menu each slot would get and flags days without a menu. Create the order then makes the order in Booked status with all its events and menus.
Generating is safe to repeat. If the period already has an order, only the days and meals it is missing are added and nothing already there changes — so after adding a slot or lifting a holiday, generate the same period again to fill the gaps. An order that is Locked or beyond is not touched.
The periods table shows each period's order, its guest-days per meal, the bill at quoted rates, payments and the outstanding amount. Headcount opens the sheet; Order opens the order page. The table covers the recent periods and the next couple; older periods are counted below it with a link to the Orders list.
Nothing generates on its own. The Dashboard shows a Contract Orders card whenever you have active contracts: it names any contract whose current period has no order yet (the Kitchen Plan has no days for it until you generate), and any contract whose next period starts within a week. Make generating the next period part of your month-end routine.
The headcount sheet
Open it from the periods table, or from the current period on the Contract Orders list. It is a grid of the period's service days by meals. Type the day's count into each cell (and the Non-Veg count where the split is offered — see Events and Menus) and click Save counts. Each changed day's menu quantities are rescaled exactly as changing guests on the event would, and the order's Customer Bill reflects the new counts immediately.
- Holiday on a day removes that day's events and records the holiday on the contract. Serve this day brings it back and recreates the day from the rotation.
- Click the menu name under a count to apply a different catalog menu to that day only, scaled to its count, or to clear it. A shaded cell has no dishes yet.
- The footer shows guest-days per meal and the bill at quoted rates, before misc expenses, discount and taxes.
Once the period's order is Locked or beyond, the sheet is read-only, with the same message the order screens show. That is how a month is closed: lock the order, execute it, raise the invoice from the Customer Bill — see Orders.
Changing a running contract
- Rotation, slots and holidays affect days generated from now on. Days already generated are snapshots: changing a catalog menu later changes nothing on them. To change a generated day, use the headcount sheet.
- A slot's rate or default count applies to new days only. Existing events keep their quoted rate, so a rate change never silently moves a bill.
- Pause a contract to stop generating; End it by setting its end date and status. Generated orders stay as they are.
- Delete a contract and its generated orders remain as ordinary orders.
Where contract orders appear
On the Orders list a contract order shows the contract's name under the customer; click it to open the contract. The order page header links back the same way. The Dashboard's Contract Orders card points at any contract whose period is due. On Catalog Menus, a menu in a contract's rotation says Used by N contracts, and deleting it leaves those rotation cells empty.
Contracts are included in Restore Points and in a full database export; see Saving and Restoring Data.
Permissions
Viewing contracts needs View Orders. Creating or editing a contract, its slots, rotation and holidays needs Create Orders / Edit Orders. Generating a period needs Create Orders and Create Events. The headcount sheet needs Edit Events to change. Deleting a contract needs Delete Orders. See Roles and Permissions.
Common questions
The institution bills on registered strength, not attendance. Leave the counts at the slot default and only change days that differ. The default is what every generated day starts with.
My menu repeats every two weeks but the bill is monthly. That is the normal setup: Billing period Monthly, Menu rotation Fortnightly. The two are independent.
Can one contract serve breakfast and dinner at different rates? Yes: two slots, each with its own rate and default count.
I started using Neviscater in the middle of a contract. Set the start date to the day you want the first order to begin. Earlier months stay wherever you kept them; nothing from before the start date is created.