How to write an event planner invoice

What goes on a event planner invoice

Six things, in the order they belong on the page. The invoice generator opens a event planner document with the lines already in place, so most of this is checking rather than typing.

1. Separate your fee from vendor costs. Florists, caterers and rentals are the client money passing through you. Never on the same line as your coordination fee.
2. Put the event date and venue on it. It is how both of you find the invoice again, and how a venue or a parent matches a payment.
3. Bill the planning fee and the day separately. Coordination over months and management on the day are different work with different risk.
4. Set a deposit schedule against the date. Money at booking, at a milestone, and before the event. Not one invoice afterwards.
5. State the cancellation and postponement terms. Postponement is the common case in events and the one most agreements forget.
6. Say what is not included. Overtime, extra guests, additional vendors. Events grow, and what is unpriced is assumed to be covered.

The lines a event planner invoice usually carries

These are the lines the generator opens with when you pick Event planner. The figures are a starting point to type over rather than a going rate: this site runs no pricing survey, and the number on your invoice should be the one you charge.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $3,700 before tax.

A worked event planner invoice, filled in

This is the same job as the table above, written out the way it would leave your phone. Every figure on it is a starting point rather than a going rate, and the tax line is shown at ten per cent purely so the arithmetic is visible: set your own rate, or none, per line.

Subtotal $3,700, tax $370, total $4,070. The parts worth copying are the structure rather than the numbers: the job reference next to the client, every line separately priced with its count showing, the tax on its own line, and terms that name a number of days instead of saying on receipt.

Deposits staged against the date, not the work

Event planning is unusual in that your exposure is highest before anything visible has happened. Months of sourcing and coordination can precede a single deliverable, and a single invoice at the end puts all of it on one payment.

Stage it against the calendar: a booking deposit that secures your time, a payment at a milestone such as vendor confirmation, and the balance before the event rather than after it. Collecting the final payment after the event is how planners end up chasing people who have already had the day they were paying for.

Where vendors need paying before the event, your schedule has to sit ahead of theirs. A planner funding a caterer out of their own account because the client payment lands late is carrying a risk they were never paid to carry.

Vendor costs, and money that is passing through you

If you book vendors on the client behalf, that money is not yours. Mixing it with your fee makes your fee look enormous and makes the vendor cost look padded.

Show each vendor cost at cost on its own line, and your fee separately, whether that is a flat coordination fee or a percentage. If you take a percentage on vendor spend, show the percentage and the base.

Decide too whether the client pays vendors directly or through you, and put it on the invoice. Both arrangements work; what does not work is the client assuming one while you are operating the other.

Cancellation, postponement and the date that moves

Events get postponed far more often than they get canceled, and most agreements only cover cancellation.

Write both. What is retained on cancellation at different distances from the date, and what happens if the date moves: whether the deposit transfers, whether it transfers only within a window, and whether a rescheduling fee applies. Your time has already been spent either way.

Vendor terms flow through this too. If your caterer keeps a deposit on a postponement, the client needs to know that before it happens, which means it belongs on the document at booking rather than in a phone call afterwards.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how event planners price the work

Event planning is priced as a coordination fee, a percentage of budget, or a package, and the perennial problem is the same in all three: the client cannot tell your fee apart from the money that passes through you to venues, caterers and suppliers.

Separate your fee from vendor pass-through on every invoice, with each supplier named. It protects the perceived value of your work and it gives the client a document they can reconcile against their own budget, which is what they are doing at eleven at night in the month before.

Working out what to charge

This guide is about what goes on the document, not what the number should be, and nobody should hand you a rate for your own market. What the site can do is the arithmetic: the freelance rate calculator works back from what you need to earn, the service price calculator prices a service against your costs, and the profit margin calculator checks what is left once the job is done.

Writing it on your phone, in five steps

Most event planners write the invoice standing next to the work rather than at a desk a week later, and the week later version is the one that gets details wrong. The generator is built for the first case.

1. Open it with your trade already chosen. The event planner invoice loads with planning and coordination fee and the rest of the lines already on the page.
2. Put the client and the job reference in first. It is the part you will not remember accurately in three days, and on agent, landlord or contractor work it is the reason the invoice gets paid at all.
3. Edit the lines rather than starting from empty. Change the quantities and the rates, delete what you did not do, add what you did. Keeping the descriptions means the wording stays consistent from one job to the next.
4. Set the terms to 7 days and add a payment link. A due date that is an actual date gets chased. A link and a QR code means it can be settled before you have packed up.
5. Send it before you leave. The clock on your terms starts when the invoice arrives, not when the work finished, so every day it sits unsent is a day added to getting paid.

Getting paid once it is sent

Put a due date and your terms on the document, because an invoice without them is hard to chase. Add a payment link and a QR so settling up is a tap rather than a transfer somebody has to set up. When part of it lands, the receipt maker records it as a part payment and prints the balance still due. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your own terms allow and writes the chasing letter to go with it.

Five dates decide whether a event planner gets paid on time, and four of them are set before the work starts.

Mistakes that cost event planners money

• Vendor costs on your fee line. Your fee looks enormous and the vendor cost looks padded. Split them.
• One invoice after the event. You are chasing someone who has already had the day they were paying for.
• No postponement terms. Postponement is the common case and the one most agreements forget.
• Funding vendors from your own account. Carrying a cash risk nobody paid you to carry.
• Overtime unpriced. Events run long. What is unpriced is assumed to be included.

Event planner invoice questions

Free event planner invoice template

The free event planner invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 200 designs, and exports a print-ready PDF with no signup and nothing saved to a server. If you would rather edit a file offline, there are 72 Word templates, 72 Excel templates with the totals already calculating, and 72 fillable PDFs.

Invoicing guides for related trades

The same billing questions come up next door. These four guides cover the trades closest to event planners, and each one sits alongside its own free template.

Every trade has one: see all 46 invoicing guides, or go straight to the 46 free invoice templates they describe.

Everything on this site, set up for event planners

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to event planners rather than in general. The five marked links open with event planner already selected.

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