Free tools
The jobs event professionals and venues do on the back of an envelope, done properly. Free, no sign-up, and nothing to hand over to get your answer.
Run of show builder
Type the running order, set how long each thing takes, and the times work themselves out. Pin the moments that will not move. Print it, save it, or move it into 1pm.
For: Planners, caterers, photographers, AV crews, venues
Room capacity by setup style
How many guests fit in a room once the dance floor, stage, buffet and bar have taken their cut. Four setup styles compared side by side.
For: Venues, planners, caterers working an unfamiliar room
Catering price per head
Build a per-head price from food, staff, hire and travel, then check it against the food cost and labour benchmarks before you send it.
For: Caterers, private chefs, venues quoting F&B
Food quantity per person
How much to prepare per guest, split across the choices you offer, and converted into the raw weight you actually have to order.
For: Caterers, chefs, anyone writing a supplier order
The three calculators also have their own index. Tell us what you would find useful next.
Why these are free, and free without a catch
There is no email wall, no card and no trial clock on any of them. The run of show builder saves your work in your own browser and never sends it anywhere. The calculators do their arithmetic in the page. None of them needs an account, because none of them needs a server.
They exist because the same handful of jobs come up constantly in this industry and most of the answers online are somebody half-remembering a rule of thumb. Every figure in the calculators is either validated against a published source or anchored to an industry standard, and where two sources disagreed, the page says so. Building them found real errors in the conventional advice, and those parts are worth reading even if you never touch the tool.
Where the paid product starts
These tools each do one job and then stop. They do not remember your rooms, they do not know your clients, and nothing you type in them is shared with anybody. That is fine for a one-off, and it is exactly what falls apart once you are running events week after week and other people need to see the same information you are looking at.
1pm is where that goes: enquiries, quotes, confirmations, invoices, BEOs, menus and a live run of show your crew, suppliers and client all watch update in real time. If you build something here that you would rather not rebuild, the run of show builder will move it across for you.
Stop working it out twice
1pm keeps the answers against the room, the menu and the client, then carries them through to the quote, the BEO and the run of show your crew works off on the day.