Project management for event planners running four events at once

It is Tuesday, mid-morning. Two events are live and a third is still a pitch: one loads in on Thursday, so the call sheet goes out today and the venue wants delivery windows by five, while the other has a venue deposit due Friday against a budget the client reopened when they added a second stage. The pitch itself closes in nine days. The same senior producer owns all three, and she is on a recce on Wednesday.

Everything runs backwards from a date that will not move

Project management for event planners almost always looks like this: a brief lands, you pitch with a concept and an indicative budget, and inside two to six weeks you know whether you won. Then comes the long middle, which any plan draws as one flat bar even though it holds approved creative and a production spec, then venue, AV, staging, catering, print, talent and permits, each with its own lead time and deposit date, plus the daily supplier chase and a budget that moves whenever the client adds a stage element, and because a plan only ever shows that one bar, the middle is usually where things quietly start slipping before anyone notices.

Roughly four weeks out the final push starts, the advance if you came up through touring, and everything compresses, so you draft the run sheet, lock in the crew, agree delivery windows and get final numbers signed off 72 hours out. The on-site block is never one day, since load-in, build, tech rehearsal, show, strike and load-out run three to five consecutive days with the team unreachable. Nobody schedules the tail, but it turns up anyway, in kit returns, supplier invoices, the debrief and the wrap report that all still have to get done once everyone has gone home. Most small teams carry somewhere between four and ten of these at once, each at a different phase, with the same two or three people named on all of them.

The Monday WIP, without the wall of dates

Call it the WIP, the traffic meeting or Monday status: every event team runs a version of the same ritual, walking each live event in date order against a spreadsheet somebody rebuilt last quarter, and while that walk-through does what it is meant to, the spreadsheet underneath it tends to be out of date again by Wednesday because nothing keeps it updated between meetings.

In ToDoing the Overview grid is that walk-through, live: the team's week sits on one screen, rows by person or by project, and you drag a task from Thursday to Monday, or from coordinator to producer, while everyone watches. Edits land on every other screen in under a second, which means people leave the meeting with the plan itself already updated, rather than a set of notes someone still has to type up and send round afterward.

Deposit dates and the 72 hour guarantee

Deadlines in this trade are not soft: miss a catering guarantee or a print cutoff and you pay for it, either in cash or in someone's Saturday spent putting it right. Milestones in ToDoing sit on the same calendar as the tasks, in the project colour, so a deposit date and the work feeding it appear in one glance. When the work drifts and the date does not, the gap shows up days early. Sourcing items with no date yet, like the second AV quote or the backup caterer, sit in the project's workplan as a list or a board until someone commits them to a day.

The last four weeks eat the first eight

Because the date cannot move, every small slip in the eight weeks beforehand lands in the final push, and ToDoing rolls unfinished tasks forward to today every working day, so what you see each morning is what is actually still outstanding, not a leftover plan repeating yesterday's version of the week. A Someday column holds the work you cannot place yet.

The coordinator tends to live in the operational detail, while the founder is watching the commercial picture instead, so neither one sees what is sitting on the other's week unless they go and look for it. My Week and the Overview grid draw on the same underlying data, just arranged two different ways, which is what keeps a coordinator's day-to-day view and a founder's wider one from quietly drifting apart.

Load-in week, when the team is gone

Three producers on site from Wednesday to Sunday is why the other four events stalled. Put the on-site days on the grid as tasks on the people who are there, each carrying an estimate that spans the block, so the week shows the team properly booked out for those days instead of looking free when everyone is actually on site. Leave, on the Pro plan, covers the other half, since half days count properly and public holidays follow the crew member's country and region. The annual leave someone booked in March shows on the team wall chart next to the show confirmed in July.

What the management fee actually cost you

Firms that quote a production management fee want to know whether it held. On the Enterprise plan, ticking a task done logs its planned time with a one-tap adjust, in days or hours, against a budget with a burn bar and a by-person report, without anyone having to start a timer or fill in a timesheet to make that happen. Estimation gives a median and a p80 per task type from your own finished history and turns them into a printable quote for your own fee, while the event budget itself stays exactly where it is.

What event planners need from project management software

Project management for event planners is not the same problem event management software solves. ToDoing does no registration, ticketing, badging or check-in, and no venue sourcing or floor plans. It does not touch the event budget: no supplier quotes, no POs, no reconciliation, no client invoicing. For most firms, that stack is the biggest spreadsheet they own. It does not roster the freelance bench with rates, pencils and holds, or track hired kit, contracts or RAMS. It is also not your run sheet, or run of show if you say it that way, since the minute-by-minute document called v4 FINAL FINAL belongs in a shared sheet or a run of show tool.

What ToDoing plans is the part that lives in someone's head plus a Monday meeting: which of your small internal team is doing what, in which week, across four to ten events at different phases. It plans the people.

Questions event planners ask

Is ToDoing good for a small event agency?

It is built for teams of roughly 3 to 15, which covers most independent event agencies and production companies. Below three people, a shared calendar probably still works; above about twenty you want something heavier, and the Asana comparison is honest about where that line sits.

Is ToDoing event management software?

No. Registration, ticketing, badging, seating and venue sourcing all live elsewhere. ToDoing plans your team's week across the events you are already running, and it sits beside whatever you use on the floor.

Can ToDoing replace our run sheet?

No, and you should not want it to: a run sheet is a minute-by-minute document read by forty people on a loud floor, and ToDoing plans the weeks that produce it.

How does it compare to a resource scheduler like Float?

Schedulers allocate hours and percentages against bookings, which suits agencies billing by the hour. ToDoing puts a task on a person and a day, and that alone is usually enough to keep the week readable. See ToDoing vs Float and ToDoing vs Resource Guru, or plan the week, not the backlog for the thinking behind it.

What does ToDoing cost?

At the time of writing, July 2026, ToDoing is free for 3 people and 3 projects, and you do not need to enter a card. Pro is $2 per person per month and Enterprise $6, and a 14-day trial opens everything.

The Tuesday at the top of this page stays just as busy. What changes is that the whole team can see it, not only the senior producer carrying it in her head.

ToDoing also works for accounting firms, architects, consulting firms, creative agencies, engineering consultancies, interior design studios, law firms, pr agencies, recruitment agencies, software studios, video production.