Event Timeline and Run Sheet Template
The run sheet is the document that actually carries an event. It is the difference between a planner answering forty questions on the day and a planner watching an event run itself. Build it once properly and you will use the same structure on every booking you ever take.
See the coursesEverything on this page is yours to copy and adapt. The courses cover the decisions behind it: what to charge, what to promise, and what to put in writing.
What yours needs to cover
- ✓ A bump-in schedule sequenced so suppliers do not arrive on top of each other
- ✓ The minute-by-minute running order for the event itself, with owners against every line
- ✓ Cue lines for the things that have to be triggered: speeches, music changes, service, the cake
- ✓ A supplier contact sheet on the same document, because a phone number in another file is a phone number nobody has
- ✓ A bump-out schedule, which is where deposits are lost and nobody plans for it
- ✓ A contingency column: what happens if it rains, if a supplier is late, if a speaker does not turn up
How to use it
- Start at the moment guests arrive and work outwards in both directions.
- Put a name against every line. A task with no owner is a task you are doing.
- Send it to every supplier a week out, and ask each of them to confirm their own lines.
- Print it. The one thing you can rely on at a venue is that the signal will be poor.
Event Timeline and Run Sheet Template FAQs
What is the difference between a timeline and a run sheet?
A timeline usually means the planning schedule that runs over the months before an event. A run sheet is the minute-by-minute document for the day itself. You need both, and confusing them is how a planner arrives with a beautiful document that does not say when the caterer gets access.
How detailed should a run sheet be?
Detailed enough that somebody who has never met you could run the event from it. That is the test, and it is not hypothetical: the reason to write it that way is the day you are ill or stuck in traffic.
Should suppliers get the whole run sheet?
Yes, and it is worth being deliberate about that. A supplier who can see the whole day solves small problems without calling you, and the calls you do not receive on event day are the entire value of the document.
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