Planning Your Event
Work a planning checklist
Turn a vague plan into dated tasks with priorities, and tick them off as you go.
On this page
What it is
A task list for your event. Each task has a title, a status, a priority, a category and a due date. You can write them yourself or have a starter checklist generated from your event type and date.
When to use it
In the first week, and then every time you sit down to plan.
Who can use it
Any signed-in user, for their own events. The public checklist generator works without an account but does not save.
Where to find it
Step by step
Open Checklist.
Generate a starter list if you want one — it is built from your event type and how far away the date is.
Generated tasks are ordinary tasks. Edit, delete or re-date any of them.
Add your own tasks for anything specific to your event.
Set a due date and a priority on the things that actually have a deadline.
Tick tasks off as you complete them.
What you should end up with
Options and settings
- Priority
- Marks what must not slip. It sorts and highlights; it does not send anything.
- Due date
- What the checklist sorts by, and what the calendar view reads.
- Category
- Groups related tasks — venue, catering, paperwork — so a long list stays readable.
Common mistakes
- Generating a checklist several times and ending up with duplicates. Generate once, then edit.
- Setting every task to high priority, which is the same as setting none.
If something goes wrong
- The generated checklist has dates in the past.
- The generator works backwards from your event date. If your event date is wrong, fix it on the event and generate again into an empty list.
- Generation failed or returned nothing.
- Try once more. If it keeps failing, see A generation failed.
Worth knowing
- Put the two or three things that unblock everything else at the top and date them first — venue, headcount, budget.
Related guides
- See everything on a calendarYour events and dated tasks laid out by month, so nothing collides.
- Track what your event actually costsRecord estimates, what you have spent and what is paid, by category, with the remaining balance always visible.
- What Creative Studio isA set of planning assistants that draft the things you would otherwise stare at a blank page over.
- A sensible order to do things inThe path most hosts follow in their first week, and why this order saves rework.
Still stuck? Tell us what you were trying to do and what happened instead.