A corporate event walkthrough — Help

Most help articles in this section cover one feature at a time. This one's different. It walks through using 1pm end-to-end for a single event type that venues run weekly: a corporate dinner. Awards nights, sales kick-offs, supplier galas, fundraisers, end-of-year functions, they all share the same underlying shape, and 1pm's BEO fields, Spaces, RSVPs and vendor portal are designed for the way this work actually runs.

The example throughout is a 250-pax corporate gala in a hotel ballroom; the same workflow scales up to a 1,000-pax conference dinner or down to a 60-pax board reception.

If you're new to 1pm, this article assumes you've signed up and you're looking at the home dashboard. If you've used the app for a while, treat it as a sample workflow: you'll recognise the individual features from other articles.

The shape of a corporate event

A corporate event has a few traits that shape the workflow. The client is an organisation, not an individual, so attribution matters: the client is "Acme Pty Ltd", the day-of contact is whoever from Acme is on the night, and the planner is usually a venue or an external production company. The venue is reused (the same hotel, the same conference centre, the same function room), which means saving venues as Spaces pays off the first time you book the room a second time. The food, the room layout, and the AV are non-trivial: the kitchen wants pax figures and dietary numbers, the banqueting team wants the setup style, the AV crew wants the stage plot and the mic list. And the night is on a clock: doors at 6, sit-down at 7, speeches start at 8, dancing by 9:30, last drinks at 11.

The phases we'll work through:

Capture the event with its BEO fields filled in.
Set the Space, or pick from your existing list.
Build the timeline.
Add the suppliers (your crew) and the client's day-of contacts.
Turn on RSVPs if the event collects them.
Share the live link and the vendor portal.
Run the night.
Close out and capture actuals.

Capture the event

From the events list, click New event. Fill in:

Name. The client and the date, in whatever shorthand you'll recognise on a busy events list. "Acme Awards, Sat 14 Jun" works. The name shows to your crew on their live link but never to the guests directly.
Date. The night the event happens. If the load-in is the day before, that gets handled on Access from / Vacate by, not by changing the event date.
Status. Most events start as Tentative (a hold the venue is keeping for the client) and move to Confirmed when the contract is signed. By the night of the event the status should be Confirmed. After the event, set it to Completed so it drops out of the active pipeline on the home dashboard.
Event value. The quoted dollar amount for the event. This is what feeds the pipeline value on your home dashboard, so even a rough number is better than blank.
Pax and Pax guaranteed. Pax is the expected headcount based on the RSVPs and the client's working number. Pax guaranteed is the contractual minimum the venue is charging against, regardless of who actually shows. The kitchen preps to Pax guaranteed; the room is laid for Pax. Both are typed on the event row.
Start time and End time. The night's headline times. Doors at 6:30pm; carriages at 11pm. These render on the BEO header, the home dashboard, and the planner page; they're not the same as the individual timeline-item times.
Service style and Setup style. Free-text fields with autocomplete from your own history. Common service styles for a corporate gala: "Plated, alternate drop", "Buffet", "Cocktail (canapés + roving)". Common setup styles: "Rounds of 10", "Long banquet tables", "Cabaret of 8", "Theatre with rounds at rear". The first time you type "Rounds of 10" 1pm remembers; the second corporate dinner you book that uses it, the value is one tap away.
Bar package, Dietary summary, Menu summary, AV notes. The free-text BEO fields. Fill in what you have at the time, top up as the brief firms. The kitchen team reads Dietary summary on the night ("32 gluten-free, 18 vegetarian, 4 nut-free, 2 strict vegan including no dairy"). The bartenders read Bar package ("Premium bar all night, no shots, cocktails close at 10pm"). AV reads AV notes ("Lavalier on the CEO, hand-held on the MC, two big screens, comfort monitor on stage left").

Set the Space

If you've worked at the venue before, the Space picker on the event form will autocomplete its name. Picking the saved Space pulls in the address, the access instructions (parking, gate codes, dock locations), the venue capacity, the floor plan and any other files you've attached at the Space level.

If it's a new venue, click Add new Space from the picker and fill in:

Name. The room, not the venue: "Plaza Ballroom Level 3", not "Plaza Hotel". A real-world hotel with three function rooms is three Spaces in 1pm, not one. Each has its own address line (sometimes the entrance is on a different street) and its own access instructions.
Address. Multi-line, paste from Google Maps if it's easier.
Access and parking instructions. Where the dock is, what the gate code is, where crew should park, what time the loading dock is staffed. This is the field that saves the most repeated typing across many events at the same venue.
Capacity and Size sqm. The room's headline numbers. Capacity helps the kitchen and the safety officer; Size sqm helps the AV crew quote for stage size and rigging.
Main contact. The venue coordinator or duty manager. Once set, their phone number appears on the BEO header on every event using this Space, so crew always have a venue contact even when you forget to add them as a separate timeline item.
Files. Floor plans, seating charts, dock photos. Drag-reorder so the floor plan sits at the top. These files appear on every event you book at this Space, so a new event in the same room inherits the same floor plan without re-uploading.

If the event only occupies a slice of the Space ("east wing only", "stage right of the divider"), set the Zone field on the event itself. Zone is free-text and autocompletes from your own history.

Build the timeline

Click into the event from the events list to open the planner. The timeline is the chronological list of activities for the night.

A typical corporate gala timeline:

Load-in at 12pm. AV bump-in, banqueting set-up. Multiple parallel items at the same start time are fine.
Soundcheck at 4pm. AV crew on stage with the speakers, MC, presenters.
Doors at 6:30pm. Banqueting at the door, security in place, MC mic'd.
Welcome drinks 6:30pm to 7:15pm. Florists' final pass, AV bring up walk-in playlist, photographers shooting arrivals.
Sit-down 7:15pm. Banqueting team begins service.
Welcome speech 7:30pm. MC + CEO. AV cue the deck.
Entrée 7:35pm. Kitchen.
Keynote 8pm. Headline speaker. AV switch to keynote deck.
Main 8:30pm. Kitchen.
Awards segment 9pm. MC + AV.
Dessert + coffee 9:45pm.
DJ on 10pm. AV swap to DJ desk.
Last drinks 10:45pm. Bartenders begin close.
Carriages 11pm. Banqueting begin reset; AV begin pack-out.

You can type the timeline directly into the new-row interface (Tab to advance through Title, Where, Duration, Details, Responsible) or paste in a draft from a spreadsheet via the Paste run of show feature. Article 13 covers paste-in.

Add the suppliers and assign them

From the planner, open the Guests & Crew accordion (or Crew, if RSVPs are off for this event) and add every supplier and venue contact you'll be working with: the AV crew, the lighting tech, the band or DJ, the head of banqueting, the duty manager, the kitchen pass coordinator, the security supervisor, the photographer.

If you've worked with any of these people before, they'll be in your Contacts list with tags. Use the contact picker's autocomplete to bring them in: typing "AV" surfaces your AV-tagged contacts first. Article 67 covers contact tags.

For the client side, add the day-of organiser from Acme as a separate contact and assign them as the event's Organizer (a top-of-page field on the event briefing). The Organizer's name appears on every supplier's live link so suppliers know whose event it is they're working.

On each timeline item, set the Responsible contact. The MC item gets the MC; the keynote item gets the AV crew (since they're cueing the deck); the main course item gets the head of banqueting. Multiple contacts per item is fine when more than one person needs to know.

Turn on RSVPs if the event collects them

For an event where you're tracking attendance (internal staff for a company-wide event, board members for a private dinner, suppliers confirming for a load-in), flick on Collect RSVPs from the event edit form. Article 63 covers the dashboard and per-crew controls.

For a public corporate gala where Acme is handling the guest list through their own registration tool, leave RSVPs off. 1pm doesn't try to replace dedicated event-registration software; the RSVP feature is for the smaller, supplier-and-staff list, not a public guest registration.

When RSVPs are on, the Crew accordion on the planner relabels itself to Guests & Crew, and the underlying contact record holds the RSVP status alongside the rest of the contact's details. The dashboard above the list shows accepted, declined, awaiting, and lets you print a check-in roll and Avery name tags (articles 63 and 64).

Share the live link and the vendor portal

For each supplier on the event, generate a live link from the planner. Each link is unique to that supplier and shows only the timeline items they're responsible for, plus the briefing fields, plus the BEO data, plus the Space access instructions. Article 10 covers the live link.

Send the live link via email or SMS. The link doesn't require login: the URL itself is the credential.

Suppliers you work with regularly should also bookmark their vendor portal (a single URL unique to them that lists every event you've assigned them to, upcoming and past). Article 59 covers the vendor portal. Once a regular supplier has the portal bookmarked, you no longer need to find and send the right per-event link three weeks before each show; new events you assign them appear on their portal automatically.

For the venue's banqueting team and the kitchen team, the printed BEO is usually the right artefact. Open the event in the planner and click Print. Article 53 covers the printable run of show and BEO.

Run the night

On the night, you sit with the planner open on a laptop or tablet. Suppliers tap Start and Done on their live link as they hit each item. The planner refreshes in real time so you can see at a glance whether the kitchen is on time, whether the AV is cued, whether the next speaker is in position.

The countdown in the planner header counts down to the next un-started item, and counts up in elapsed mode once it has started. So at 9:05pm during the awards segment, the planner shows the keynote item as +35 minutes (running 5 minutes over its 30-minute slot). That's the cue to compress dessert or trim the DJ set by 5 minutes.

If a speaker runs long or a course is delayed, drag the affected timeline items to push them; the live link reflects the new times within seconds for everyone holding their phone.

Close out and capture actuals

After the event, each supplier sees a Close out this run of show button on their live link. They tap through it, fill in actual durations for each item ("speeches went 8 minutes over"), and write a Feedback note for you. Article 55 covers closeout.

You read the feedback under each supplier's row on the planner the next morning. The actual-duration data is stored separately from the planned schedule, so the next time you run a gala at the same venue you can see "the welcome speech was scheduled for 5 minutes and actually took 11" and adjust deliberately rather than guessing.

Set the event status to Completed. The event drops out of the active pipeline on the home dashboard but stays on the contacts' event history, on the Space's recent-events list, and on your Account > Export.

Save it as a template if you'll run it again

If the gala was for a repeat client (Acme runs an awards night every year) or for a venue you keep returning to (the Plaza Ballroom every quarter), open the planner and click Save as template. The next time the same shape of event comes in, you stamp the template down and only edit the date, the contacts, and the dollar value. Article 50 covers templates.

That's the workflow. Most of the value sits in two places: the BEO fields capture the venue-ops layer above the run of show, and the live link plus vendor portal mean every supplier knows what they need to know without a chain of emails or PDFs. The rest is just typing in the right places.