Event Planning Software

There are probably hundreds of thousands of event planning professionals in the world and there are probably many more that don’t publicly advertise their business even though they routinely act as event planning specialists for many of their clients throughout their city and surrounding area. Along with event planning, though, comes the need for a lot of technological help. Even though it is quite possible to remember everything you need to know and store information in your brain along with physically writing it down, chances are that event planning professionals and those that run event planning services from their home use some sort of technological organizational tool, such as a Palm Pilot or a Blackberry!

There are plenty of other tools on the market, though, that are designed to help with event planning. One of these tools is event planning software that can either be purchased from retail stores, manufacturers, or even from the World Wide Web. Nevertheless, though, these event planning software installations will truly be able to help improve event planning skills along with helping to keep organized while keeping the events straight. Here are some of the other benefits of professional event planning software, though:

Reporting Capabilities: As an event planning professional chances are that you will have a need to give either your clients or someone else you are working with professional reports about the daily activity of your business. In addition, though, reports for your event planning business may also contain information for your clients about the work that you have done for the day and the whole time that you’ve been working for them. These types of reports are essentially called timing logs and they track everything that an event planning professional does for his or her clients and keeps track of the amount of time spent as well. Much of the event planning software, though, contains these types of reports that are popular to hand out.

Confirmation Emails: Event planning software also contains a setting so that event planners are able to automatically send out confirmation emails to the guests-of-honor and attendants of the event as well. These confirmation emails will usually be filled with reminders about the big event and they are actually a helpful to have at your disposal because they not only will remind people about the event, but it will more than likely increase the amount of people attending the event as well!

Credit Card Processing: Any event planning professional knows that collecting payments for various reasons when planning large events is important! Whether you are trying to solicit donations from the attendees or the event requires a monetary fee that is mandatory, most all event planning software contains some form of automatic credit card processing tool!

There are plenty of other benefits to having an event planning software on you computer, though. In addition to everything listed above, some of the other benefits include being able to print off nametags for the event as well as being able to keep track of where money is being sent to as well! All in all, event planning software can be a great help to those professionals who need just a little extra organization and time-savers!

The Event Planning Checklist

If you have ever been responsible for planning a very large event then most likely you already know most of the stressful feelings that come along with it. Indeed, there is much to be stressful about when event planning for several hundred people, but chances are that you probably already knew about the event a great deal of time before it was actually here. This is the case in many situations, though, as large events will usually be scheduled weeks, months, if not years ahead of the scheduled date. Depending on how large the scheduled event is then there should be ample time to have everything completed. But if you need a little bit of advice and help, one suggestion that many people use is to actually use an event planning checklist for all the things that need to be accomplished. Some of the things that should be on your event planning checklist that need to be done well in advance of the actual date of the event include:

Choosing the Theme: If you are creating this event from scratch then chances are that you will also need a theme. When it comes to event planning then choosing a theme should be the least of your worries although it is an issue that definitely does need to be thought about and given some consideration. This step should be done at least 12 months prior to the event, or immediately decided as soon as you knew the event has to be planned.

Looking at Event Sites: This step that should be on your event planning checklist should also be done as soon as you know about the event and many times this is at least 12 months in advance! But visiting multiple sites for the event is an important task on your list simply because you’ll need to make sure there is enough room for all the guests that are going to attend.

Obtaining Food and Drink Quotes: Whenever any large event is being planned the number one thing that should be on your event planning checklist right after the locations for the event are visited is the gathering of food and drink quotes from multiple caterers around the area. This step should also be done at the same time as the previous two.

Booking Entertainment: If the event that you are planning to have will host some form of entertainment then it may be up to you to choose the individual or group that is going to be the guest entertainer for the event. When event planning the most important thing you could do is to make sure that entertainers know that they have a scheduled date well in advance of the actual event so taking this step is also important as soon as you found out that you should plan the event!

Of course these are only some of the first steps that should be taken in order to make sure that everything within your event planning checklist is taken care of. From the food and entertainment to securing a location for the event, all of these things are very important when event planning!

Charity Event Ideas

Charity event ideas begin from the easiest to put into action (selling candies, coordinating automobile cleaning), to more the extensive charity event ideas that involves a lot of time and effort on the volunteers (such as coordinating a trade fair or a fun night in the community).
In order for your charity event ideas to become a success is to think of charity event ideas that the contributing public will deem interesting. Do not be tentative if children want to volunteer or get involved in the charity fund raising event. Most people, if not all, are more charitable once they have noted that even the children are willing to do their share for the cause of the charity fund raising event. In order for your charity event ideas to succeed, you must make the people that you have chosen to participate in the fund raising event to volunteer, and not force them to volunteer for the said charity fund raising event.
How the charity event ideas are put into operation will sole depend by the amount of space, time and supply on hand.
Organizing a garage sale or rummage is one of the mostly exercised charity event ideas to succeed. You can ask for contributions on your local community or you can request the volunteers of the charity fund raising event to ask for donations to the people that they know or acquaintances. These kinds of charity event ideas require contributions and the use of a building or location.
Organizing a trade fair or bazaar is one example of a costly charity fund raising event. The organizing committee would have to spend considerable amount of funds for tent rentals, food procures, prizes and on some circumstances, ride rentals. All of these factors add to huge venture with the anticipation, but little assurance, that the said charity fund raising event can generate adequate amount of revenue not only to pay off the investment, also to generate revenues for the cause of the charity fund raising event.
You may come up with lots of brilliant charity event ideas, but before you commence in starting the fund raising event, you must first consider some factors in order for the charity event ideas to generate reasonable amount of revenue. The most essential of these factors is that you should ask yourself why should this charity event idea exist and who would help you or who would volunteer his or her time and effort for the said fund raising event. Your charity event idea must have a clear concept of what the revenue for the said fund raising event will be utilized for and where and when the particular fund raising event will take place.

Taking an Event Planning Course

There are all sorts of ways to excel at event planning and if you are one that is naturally talented and gifted with the skills that are required in order to be an event coordinator and planner then you must use those skills to the fullest. However, if you were not born with the natural talent and skills that are required to break into this business there are plenty of ways to learn the ropes of event planning. A couple of the ideas in order to learn how to event plan effectively can be learned through actual courses that teach you how to coordinate large events as well as becoming an assistant for an actual event planner. Both of these options will be explored, and both of them are very important to learning event planning.

Event Planning Courses

Even though it does not seem like event planning would have it’s own special section among colleges and universities, there are actually some places of higher learning that include degrees that can be achieved in event planning. Some of these colleges and universities may have bachelor’s degrees that can be received on the subject, they may have associates degrees, or there may even be simple event planning certificates that one can earn through other specific programs that the college or university offers.

Of course getting a full fledged authentic university degree is just one option that one has for taking classes in event planning, but there are also plenty of single courses that can also be taken if one just simply wants to get into the basics in order to start their own business from scratch. A few of the courses that may be taken at colleges and universities throughout the United States that do focus on event planning include Introduction to Event Planning, Party Planning, Organization, as well as Site Selection and Writing Event Contracts. There are plenty more classes that can be chosen but these are only a few examples of event planning classes!

An Assistant Event Planner

There is a whole other way that one can easily learn the ropes of event planning. Even though taking courses in event planning is also a good idea, learning factual material and reading textbooks are not going to teach you about the day-to-day work that an event coordinator will oftentimes actually do. In fact, becoming an assistant event planner for an event planning business will definitely help more than anything in order to know what’s all involved with becoming an event planner. Furthermore, the business you are working for may even inspire you to create your own, and if that happens your own event planning business would have sprung forth from that one assistant experience!

All in all, event planning courses will definitely teach you have to efficiently and effectively work your way up the event planning industry in order to become one of the best event planners around! Taking just a few event planning courses or becoming an assistant are good ways to become just that!

Event Planning: One Week Before the Event

As the story goes, there are actually very many people who actually do not have the best of event planning skills. If it were up to many people throughout the world many of the event planning responsibilities would not be done until the last minute or the week before the event. However, if one is going to truly excel with their event planning skills then the first idea that one must get his or her mind wrapped around is that organization is crucial to having a successful large event. Many large events are scheduled at least a year before the date of the actual event, which leaves plenty of time for event planning and other important duties. The big issues should be taken care of as soon as the event is known about, but what follows are some things that an event coordinator should do about one week before the scheduled event:

Last Minute Details

If you were not solely responsible for the event planning duties of the large scheduled event then chances are that you designated some of the responsibilities out to different sub-committees and sub-groups so that things would get accomplished in no time flat! One week before the event, though, the main leader should meet with all of the sub-committees and groups in order to go over last minute details. Much of this might typically be called “housekeeping” issues, but they are still very important to the event planning mentality and making sure that everyone is on the same page that close to the event!

Follow Up Phone Calls

Another thing that must be done one week before the scheduled event when performing event planning duties is follow-up phone calls. Follow-up phone calls are very important because there are some people for whom the event could have slipped their mind. The most important people that phone calls must be placed to, though, include the entertainer for the event, the main speaker, the food caterer, the music group (if any), and whoever else was hired to help with the main event!

Gather Volunteers

It is highly likely that the day of the event that you will be rushing around trying to get a lot of things done at once. For this reason, though, gathering volunteers to help with small things, including initial registration and check-in of attendees, is very important! Any event planning professional knows that volunteers are frequently used, and there are very good reasons that they may be put to work the day of and throughout the whole event!

Of course there are many other things that one should do the week before the main event takes place. For example, a few of the other last-minute event planning details that were not discussed above include confirming the number of people that are attending the event, making seating arrangements if any, creating nametags for the people attending as well as the people who are volunteering for the event, and distributing last-minute flyers and advertisements. It is important that everything goes according to plan when it comes to the actual date of the event and all of these things are important to making sure everything is right on schedule!