Assigning table and seat numbers to crew — Help

Most crew at a corporate event work the floor and don't sit down. But for the speakers, the executive attendees, the sponsor reps, and the smaller crowd of crew who join the sit-down dinner as guests, the BEO needs a table number against each name. The Table field on each crew row in the run of show captures it, the autocomplete saves you re-typing "Table 5" twelve times, and the printable RSVP roll surfaces the value so door staff can hand each crew member their seat assignment on arrival.

This article covers where the field lives on the planner page, the autocomplete with the running "N seated" count, the text conventions for what to type in, and the surfaces the value flows through to once you've set it.

Where the field lives

Open any event in the planner and scroll to the Guests & Crew panel (or Crew, if RSVPs are off for this event). Each row has the person's name on the left, status badges in the middle, and the ROS or Generate link button on the right. The Table field is the small input pinned to the far right of every row, immediately beside that button.

Click into it, type a value, click away (or press Enter). The field saves on blur. No Save button, no confirmation step. The next planner to open the event sees the same value.

The position is deliberately fixed. Every row's input lines up vertically so anyone glancing down the panel can read all the table numbers as one column. If you've seated forty crew across ten tables, you can spot who's at which table without expanding any rows.

The autocomplete

Focus the input and a dropdown appears showing every distinct value already in use on this event, each with a running "N seated" count next to it.

Each entry in the dropdown is one row: the table value on the left, the running count ("2 seated", "5 seated") flush to the right. Pick a row to re-use the exact value rather than re-typing it. The count updates as soon as another planner picks the same value or you assign one more crew member to that table. The dropdown is sorted naturally so 2 comes before 10.

The running count is the reason the autocomplete exists. A banquet round of ten is the typical configuration at a corporate gala or awards dinner; the running count tells you when a table is approaching capacity. If you see 9 seated next to a table, you know the tenth seat is the last one going. You don't need to manually tally rows or count entries on a spreadsheet.

The dropdown is filterable. Start typing "1" and only matching entries appear. If your typed value doesn't match anything in the existing list, press Tab to save it as a new entry; the next person who focuses any field sees it as an option in their dropdown.

Arrow keys navigate the dropdown, Enter picks the highlighted option, Escape closes it without picking. Tab commits the typed value as-is.

What to type in

The field accepts any short text up to 100 characters. The most common formats:

A plain number. "5", "12", "203". The simplest form, when your floorplan is numbered and no further detail is needed.
A prefixed label. "Table 5", "T12", "Round 8". Useful when your floorplan has multiple seating types and the number alone is ambiguous, say cabaret rounds alongside theatre rows.
A position label. "Stage left", "Bar", "Standing". For crew who don't have a seat but need a position on the BEO. The autocomplete groups them the same way numbers are grouped, so all "Stage left" crew share a running count in the dropdown.
A row-and-seat compound. "5 / 3", "T12 S4", "Row C seat 12". For high-detail seating where individual seat assignments matter, usually because of named place cards, dietary requirements being plated to specific seats, or VIP protocol seating order.

There's no enforced format. Whatever convention works for your venue and your client's floorplan is fine; the autocomplete groups by exact text, so consistency within an event is what makes the running counts useful, not adherence to any particular format. Pick a convention at the start of an event and stay with it.

Where the value flows to

The printable RSVP roll. The clipboard print of confirmed crew (covered in the RSVP roll and name tags article) carries a Table column. Door staff handing crew their seat number on arrival read directly off this column with no extra step.

The crew CSV export. The Table value is one of the columns in the exported spreadsheet, so a venue using its own check-in tool can ingest the seating data alongside the names and contact details.

The Avery name tags. The name tag sheet itself shows each crew member's name and company; if you want the table number printed on the badge as well, the easiest route is to export the CSV and run a mail-merge through your label software, since the in-product name tag layout currently keeps to the two-line name and company format.

The crew member's own live link. When the event has "show on the crew view" turned on (it is on by default), each crew member sees their assigned value in a prominent badge at the very top of their run of show, so a guest or stallholder knows where they are the moment they open the link. You can turn this off per event while seating is still a draft, and you can rename the label it shows under. Both are covered in the next section.

Showing it on the crew view, and what to call it

Open the event's edit form and you'll find a "Table / seat numbers" section with two controls.

The first is the label shown on the run of show. It defaults to "Table", but it's free text, so set it to whatever fits the event. Venues running a market or an expo floor set it to "Stall holder" or "Booth". A conference with exhibitor stands uses the same wording. Venues grouping people rather than seating them use "Group" or "Zone". Whatever you type becomes the word that sits above the value on each crew member's link, and the autocomplete remembers it for next time, the same way the BEO fields do. The toggle's own wording updates as you type, so you can see exactly how it will read.

The second is the "show on the crew view" checkbox. It's on by default, because most events want crew to see where they're placed. Turn it off while seating is still a draft. Right up to the day, people get moved between tables, seats, and stalls, and you don't want a number that's still in flux showing on the runsheet. Leave the values in place as you work, keep the toggle off, then flip it on once the plan is locked. The badge appears for every crew member on their next refresh, no need to re-share the link.

The toggle is per event, so a draft gala with seating still moving and a confirmed expo with fixed stalls each behave the way that event needs.

Per-event, not per-contact

The Table value is scoped to a single event. A crew member seated at 5 at a gala on the third of May is not automatically at 5 at the next event the same client books in June. The field starts blank on every new event.

This is the deliberate behaviour. Seating is almost never a property of the person; it's a property of the floorplan, the headcount, the protocol seating order, and the client's brief. Carrying it across would be wrong more often than it would be right.

If you want a default seat for someone who always attends in the same role (a CEO who always sits at 1 in their organisation's events, for example), set it manually each time. The autocomplete makes the re-entry trivial: focus the field, the dropdown shows the running count for 1 once you've typed one row, and you pick from there.

Editing and clearing

To change a value, click into the input and overwrite. Save on blur.

To clear a value, delete the contents and click away. The row drops out of the dropdown for the next person focusing a field, and the running count on whichever table the crew member was previously assigned to falls by one.

There's no edit history specifically for Table changes. The value is small enough and edited often enough that an audit log would add noise without much value. If you need to reconstruct who was sat where on the night, the most recent state is what's saved, and the printable roll archives a snapshot of the seating at print time.

When to set it

You can set the Table value at any point during the lead-up to an event: before RSVPs go out, after acceptances come back, the morning of the event, or in the venue just before doors. There's no enforced order.

The two common workflows:

Seat early, adjust late. The planner pre-allocates tables when the guest list firms up (a week or two before the event), uses the autocomplete to keep each table at or below capacity, then nudges names between tables as last-minute RSVP changes come in. Suits events with a fixed seating plan: gala dinners, awards nights, conference dinners.
Seat at the door. The planner leaves the field blank until check-in, then assigns crew to whichever table has an empty seat as they arrive. Suits more informal events: networking lunches, smaller corporate gatherings where the seating is roughly grouped rather than strictly assigned.

The autocomplete supports both. In the first workflow it's the planning tool that stops a table being overfilled. In the second it's the check-in tool that shows which table still has room.

Summary

The Table field sits on the right edge of every crew row in the share-with-crew panel. The autocomplete surfaces existing tables on the event with a running "N seated" count, so you can spot a table approaching capacity at a glance. The value flows to the printable RSVP roll, the CSV export, and (when the event has it switched on) a badge at the top of each crew member's live link, under a label you choose. It's per-event, not per-person. Use whatever text convention matches your floorplan and your client's brief; the dropdown groups by exact text, so consistency within an event is what makes the counts useful.