An event is booked months before it happens and paid for in pieces. Quote it, take a booking deposit, raise each staged invoice as the date approaches, and keep every supplier bill against the same customer as the fees you charged.
What is inside
A wedding or a conference generates a quote, a deposit, several staged invoices, a pile of supplier bills and a final reconciliation. All of it belongs to one client and one date.
The document the client signs
Event pitches run long: the concept, the run of show, the suppliers, the staffing plan and a budget broken down by category. Build it in sections from a template, price the budget table inside it, and let the client sign in the browser rather than printing a page to scan back.
Catering, hire and staffing are priced per head, and that number is rarely final until the week of the event. Let the client edit the quantity on the lines you choose, and the line total and the grand total follow. A revised guest list stops being a rebuilt quote.
Deposit, interim, balance
Most event contracts are settled in three or four moves across a long lead time. Split and partial payments put the deposit and the remaining amount on the same invoice, so a total is never tracked across separate documents and the client can see how much of it is closed.
A payment schedule agreed in January should not depend on somebody remembering it in June. Put the interim stages on a recurring schedule, or raise each one as its milestone lands, and every stage becomes a numbered invoice against the customer instead of a line in a planning doc.
Suppliers on one side, fees on the other
Florists, AV, venue hire, security and catering all invoice you separately and rarely on time. Record them as vendor bills with purchase orders behind them, track what has been paid and what is still owed to whom, and hold it in the account that already has the client's invoices.
Because invoices, supplier bills and expenses all post into the same double-entry ledger, the income, expense and profit and loss reports are drawn from one set of books. Group the work under a project for the event so the documents and the team's hours stay together.
The order of documents
Long lead times mean the paperwork outlives the planning. Each document hands to the next inside one account, so nothing is rekeyed between the pitch and the final reconciliation.
For a pitch that has to sell the concept: run of show, suppliers, staffing and a budget the client signs online.
For a booking that only needs numbers: priced lines, per-head quantities the client can adjust, and a validity date.
Approval raises the first invoice, and the deposit and later stages all sit against the same customer and the same date.
The client settles each stage through the portal using a gateway you connected, in full or as a part payment.
Supplier bills and expenses post beside the fees, so the ledger holds both sides of the event.
Also included
Nothing here is an add-on. It is the same subscription the proposals and the staged invoices already live in.
Bundle a ceremony, a reception and day-of coordination into one priced package you quote repeatedly.
Offer a photo booth or an extra hour of bar service the client accepts or declines.
Couples and corporate clients check documents, balances and payment history without emailing you.
PayPal, Stripe, Razorpay, Square, Payoneer, Braintree, Authorize.net, Airwallex, GoCardless, PayFast, PayTabs, Telr, PhonePe and M-Pesa attach to an invoice.
A stage that passes its due date chases itself rather than waiting for a free afternoon.
Add planners and on-site staff as team members with roles, at $5 a month each.
Invoice a client or a venue abroad in their currency while your reports stay in yours.
See which stage of which event is unpaid and how far past its due date it has drifted.
Run two sides of the business as separate profiles with their own branding and books.
Raise a credit note against an invoice when a booking is canceled or a stage is refunded.
A mobile-message integration sends invoice alerts by SMS, for clients who never open the email.
Custom fields carry the event date, venue and booking reference onto every document raised for that client.
Questions
Yes. Split and partial payments hold a deposit and a balance against one total, and a recurring schedule raises the interim invoices on a cycle you set. Each stage is a numbered document against the same customer, and reminders go out before a due date passes.
Per-head lines are quantities, so you can let the client edit them on the estimate or proposal and both the line and the grand total follow. Anything they may not take, an extra hour of bar or a second photographer, can be marked optional instead.
Yes. Vendors, bills, purchase orders, payments made and vendor credits all sit in the same account as the invoices you raise. Attach receipts to expenses, and the supplier side of an event sits beside the fees instead of living in a separate spreadsheet.
Every fee you invoice and every cost you record post into one double-entry ledger, so both sides of an event are in the same books. A project groups the documents and hours for a date, and the income, expense and profit and loss reports read that same ledger.
Yes. The customer portal shows the proposal or estimate they approved, every invoice raised for the event, what has been received and what is still due. They can download a PDF and settle a stage from the same screen through a gateway you connected.
Yes. Business profiles give each side its own branding, documents and books under one login: one profile on SOLO, two on PRO, five on TEAM and ten on BUSINESS. Every invoice, bill and expense is tagged to a profile, so the numbers stay apart.
Quote it once, collect the deposit, raise each stage on time, and keep the supplier bills next to the fees they were spent against.
