Work Tools and Templates 11 Event Planning Templates: Customizable, Free, and Easy to Use
In this article, we’ll be providing you with a wide range of free event planning templates you can use to streamline the process of organizing events large or small.
The templates are made available in Google Docs and Google Sheets, making them easily accessible, shareable, and customizable. Moreover, you can download Microsoft Word or Excel versions if you wish to work on them offline or take advantage of some of the Office suite’s unique features.
Finally, if you need a printable event planning template, some are also available in a PDF format, so you can distribute them safely or print them out without fear of the layout getting jumbled.
Without further ado, let’s get to the templates!
Table of Contents
Template #1: General event planner template
This is a simple all-in-one template for event planning. It’s not as extensive as some of the other templates you’ll find here, but it has all of the most important bases covered.
It includes basic event information, along with the scope, milestones, and goals. It also has a table where you can note your expenses, risks, and planned measures for mitigating said risks. On top of that, there’s a task-tracking event checklist, too.
This makes it a good general template for smaller or simpler events that don’t involve too many moving parts.
Templates:
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
If you’d like to learn more about different types of event planning and how to best utilize and customize this template, you might be interested in the following articles:
Template #2: Event schedule template
This template allows you to create a detailed and precise schedule for your event within 15-minute increments. You can also easily plan out several sets of activities for different venues or groups.
In addition to using it for planning, you can distribute this sheet to the staff for organization and coordination. Moreover, you can also distribute it to the guests to give them an accurate overview of how the event will go.
This template is great for events that need to stick to a schedule, or events that involve several sets of activities side by side.
Templates:
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
Need a little help choosing between Google Sheets and Excel? Our comparison post might help you make the decision:
Template #3: 5-day event schedule template
In case you’re planning an event that will span several days, then you’ll likely find this template useful.
Similar to the 1-day template above, it allows you to create a detailed schedule with 30-minute increments over the course of 5 or more days. As before, the template is useful both for internal planning and as an itinerary for attendees.
You can use this template independently, or in combination with the 1-day template for more precise planning.
Template:
Template #4: Event task tracking + event timeline template
This template is meant for advanced task tracking, allowing you to track various information pertaining to a task, including:
- Assignee,
- Reviewer,
- Start date,
- Deadline,
- Task status,
- Task instructions,
- Additional notes, and
- The team the task is assigned to.
The template is easy to customize, as you can add additional rows and columns to account for more tasks, teams, or any additional values tied to the tasks you want to track.
Furthermore, this template also allows you to create an event timeline, which is extremely useful for planning events with lots of time-sensitive tasks and/or tasks with dependencies.
To do this, simply select all the fields you want to include in the timeline. Then, select Insert, and click “Timeline.” This will create a new page with a timeline based on the dates specified, complete with color-coding based on the Status column.
Overall, this template is great for event organizers who are managing multiple teams or are simply organizing events with lots of delegation of interconnected tasks.
Template:
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
If you’d like to try out additional templates for task tracking or learn more about how to create task lists and timelines for your projects, take a look at the following pages:
Template #5: Event budget template
The event budget template is meant to give organizers a convenient overview of all event-related expenses.
You can note your expenses across multiple categories, input your projected expenses and your total expenses, followed by the difference between the two — if you’re going over budget, you’ll know exactly by how much.
That said, this template is good for any event planner who wishes to have an accurate overview of where their money is going, and it’s especially good for high-cost events.
Template:
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
Looking to learn more about different budgeting methods you can use to plan your events or other projects? You might find the following article useful:
Template #6: Event proposal template
This simple template covers all the important information you need to include in an event proposal, regardless of whether you’re pitching to a client or to a superior.
It includes tables and fields for:
- Personal information,
- Event scope,
- Event goals,
- Projected costs, and more.
All in all, this template is ideal for professional event planners looking to pitch an event to a client, or for anyone aiming to organize an event within a company they work at, be it a team building event, a professional development conference, or anything else.
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Template #7: Event feedback template
This simple template is used to collect quantitative and qualitative feedback from event attendees. It includes a Likert scale questionnaire, as well as a table for open-ended questions.
You can easily expand and tweak this template to suit exactly the kind of feedback you need to collect on your event.
This template is useful for any event planner who wishes to collect feedback from attendees, be it as a metric of how successful the event was, or to improve future events.
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Template #8: Event sign-up template
This template has two purposes:
- It can be posted publicly or shared with people you wish to invite, and
- It lets the event planner know who and how many people will be attending.
Alternatively, this template can also be used as the event planner’s own master list of attendees, based on responses to public sign-up sheets or invitations that were previously sent out.
By default, the template has the following fields:
- Attendee name,
- Phone,
- Email, and
- Additional notes.
Naturally, the template can easily be customized with additional columns if there’s any additional information you’d like your attendees to share.
As such, this sign-up template is great for any event planner who needs to have an accurate number of attendees in order to plan for factors such as catering, transportation, venue size, accommodation, etc.
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Template #9: Event catering template
If you’re planning on having catering at your event or even basic snacks, you will need a caterer. With this event catering template, you can:
- Note all important information about the caterer and their company,
- Have an overview of the services they offer,
- List their certificates, permits, and licenses,
- Note their fee, and
- Break down the food costs.
This template is useful for any event planner looking to hire a caterer, have the most important information pertaining to them in one place, and form a budget effectively.
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Template #10: Event venue template
Many events require large, properly equipped venues, and this template allows you to keep track of all the important details tied to the venue where you wish to hold your event.
This includes:
- Basic venue details,
- Available areas and their guest capacities,
- Parking details,
- Venue policies, and
- Additional services offered by the venue.
If you need to create a comprehensive overview of a venue you have your sights set on for your event, then this is the template to use.
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Template #11: Event speaker template
Your event might involve one or multiple speakers. These could be subject matter experts, industry veterans, professional consultants, or even entertainers.
This template makes it easier to keep track of all the important factors tied to your event’s speakers, such as:
- Information about their presentation,
- The equipment that needs to be secured,
- The time of any rehearsals you might hold,
- The time and length of their presentation,
- Their fee, and
- Any additional notes they might provide.
All in all, this template is a great way to keep an accurate overview of important information tied to your event’s schedule, budget, task timeline, equipment requirements, and more.
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How to plan events with Plaky
If you’d like to avoid juggling multiple templates and would prefer an all-in-one solution, then the Plaky and its comprehensive event planning template will likely be a good fit for you.
From the get-go, the template has tasks grouped into the following categories:
- Preparation,
- Promotion,
- At event, and
- Post event.
Creating additional tasks and categories is easy, and each task offers much more customizability than you could get from a spreadsheet or a text-processing app.
Specifically, each task’s item card shows the following information:
- Task name
- Person responsible,
- Team,
- Reviewer,
- Date,
- Vendor,
- Cost,
- Status, and
- Approval status.
Moreover, each item card allows users to leave comments, as well as upload files for easy sharing, ensuring that all important information is accessible and facilitating communication in project management.
On top of that, at the bottom of each category, you can find a summary row that displays information such as:
- Workload distribution between teams,
- The final due date for the task group,
- Percentage of completed tasks,
- Percentage of approved tasks, and
- An automatic sum of all the costs listed.
With features such as multiple view modes, filters, and a search function, Plaky makes it much easier to find and review specific information than you ever could with an event planning spreadsheet.
Ultimately, Plaky is a user-friendly tool you’ll be able to get a hang of easily, even if you don’t have experience in project management, event planning, or similar fields. In addition to its intuitive interface, it also offers a number of useful templates in its project management template center.
Free project management software
Looking for a simpler way to manage your event planning projects? Try Plaky.
