How To Keep Your Cool When Planning Your Company Event

Stress is inevitable, but preventable, especially when it comes to event planning.

People commonly ask us: How do you plan an event without clocking-in an exorbitant amount of hours before the final deadline? So we thought we'd share a few ways of using Accelo to plan your next event, seamlessly.

Stay Organized

This is one of the most important factors in event planning. Staying incredibly organized is key for tracking all of the moving pieces that go into making an event a success. Traditional methods, including Excel spreadsheets, calendar reminders, and to-do lists fall short when planning big events.  Keeping track of multiple documents and platforms for one large project is time-consuming: manually updating each platform, making sure everything is in sync, and watching for tasks that could fall through the cracks takes up a lot of time that would be better spent focusing on your product.

Our Event Manager, Rachel Muench, is a pro at keeping things organized and is a model for successful planning. She says, “My biggest piece of advice is to write everything down and stay organized by keeping a detailed task list. With so many moving parts, being organized is the most important thing. Also, in event planning, you work with so many different people that essentially help you to make things happen, so building strong relationships and knowing that you need them is super important. I always make sure to be extra nice with every person I work with.”

With Accelo’s all-in-one system, flexible Team Scheduling, and flexible Task Board, our clients are able to do just that, and most importantly, it allows you to track details while still paying attention to the big picture.

Follow This Checklist:

• Define the goal of your event. Do you know your target audience and how to reach them? What budget do you need to assist the event’s success?
• What happened the last time there was an event like this? What was a success and what is something you would like to change?

• What do I need to do to promote the event? Do I have the tools necessary to successfully run a social media campaign or an e-marketing plan?
• Do I want to serve food and drinks?
• Is it necessary for people to RSVP before the event? What system will I use to track attendance and RSVP responses?

With all of these boxes in check, you are showing up for yourself and your company in a way that will reduce your stress levels and enable you to focus on tackling bigger goals in preparation for your event.

Execute 'The Basics'

How do you find the right venue, stay on a budget, track attendance, invite guests, and manage gifting or company swag without losing your sanity? In our experience, creating a project for your event is Step One. From here, you can arrange a reasonable workflow, categorize tasks, make subtasks, assign tasks to teammates, assign due dates, and mark the order of certain activities (ie: waiting on task 1, or marking things as ‘5 weeks out’ ‘3 weeks out’ ‘1 week out’ and ‘day of’). Accelo’s Utilization Dashboard enables you to see who on your team is being underworked or overworked so that you can best assign tasks and automate reminders or check-ins! That way, every deadline gets met without any added stress.

The right systems allow you to prioritize work, avoid rotational neglect, and communicate effectively with your team so that duties don’t fall through the cracks. If you’re the event coordinator for your team or company, sign up for a free trial and see if it works for you!