The Event Planning Checklist That Doesn't Skip the Australian Bits

An event planning checklist is meant to stop you forgetting the venue deposit at 11pm the night before doors. Most of them online do the opposite: they're 4,000-word corporate-conference monsters written for a US expo team of twelve, and they quietly assume you have a US expo team of twelve. You don't. You have a spreadsheet, a group chat, and a nagging feeling you've booked the room but not paid for it.

So here's the checklist I actually use, working backwards from doors. It covers the ticketing bits the overseas guides skip, and the Australian bits (GST, who really pays the booking fee, when your money lands) that they skip harder.

I've run events for over a decade and I still call the check-in scanner "the beepy thing" more often than not. There's no co-founder to tell me that's not the technical term, so as of this morning, it is. Point being: you don't need to be organised to run a good event. You need a list. Here's the list. And if this is the first one you've ever run, the list pairs with our guide on how to become an event organiser: that's the mindset, this is the checklist.

Before anything else: what does "done" look like?

Every checklist online starts with "set your goals" and then never mentions them again. Do it properly and it saves you money later. Write down one number and one sentence.

The number is your break-even: what has to come in for you to not lose money. The sentence is what a good night looks like ("120 people, room feels full, everyone leaves happy"). If those two fight each other, you've found your problem before it costs you anything. Charging $15 for a 300-capacity room with a $4,000 band isn't optimism, it's a maths error wearing a party hat.

If you're stuck on the number, we wrote a whole thing on how to price event tickets so I won't relitigate it here. Get the break-even, then move on.

8 to 12 weeks out: date, venue, budget

This is the foundation, and it's boring, which is exactly why people rush it.

• Pick the date, then sanity-check it. Long weekends, the Boxing Day Test, the school holidays, the other big thing on in your suburb. My extended family will still arrive at the interval regardless, but the rest of your crowd checks the calendar.
• Book the venue and read the contract. Deposit amount, cancellation terms, what "capacity" legally means for the fire marshal, whether they take a cut of the bar. Get it in writing.
• Build the budget as a real spreadsheet. Venue, talent, staff, insurance, marketing, and a 10% "something will go wrong" line, because something will.
• Confirm your talent or speakers in writing. A verbal yes three months out has a way of becoming a "sorry, mate, double-booked" three days out.

One thing the overseas checklists breeze past: check when your money actually lands before you pick a ticketing platform. Some platforms hold all your funds until the event ends, which is no help if the venue deposit is due in three weeks. It's the plumbing you don't check until it backs up. On Ticketted the money moves via Stripe on its standard payout schedule as sales come in, with the first payout typically 2 to 3 days after your first sale, on business days, rather than held until after the event. Exact timing follows Stripe's schedule, but the point is the cash flow starts early instead of being locked up.

6 weeks out: build the page, then test your own checkout

Here's where the generic checklists go quiet and the ticketing-specific work actually lives.

• Build the event page. Clear title, doors and start time listed separately (your run sheet is not when people show up), a real address, a refund policy linked at checkout.
• Write your refund policy before you sell ticket one. "We'll figure it out" is a great way to spend a Sunday arguing over email. Write it, publish it, link it.
• Set a clear bank descriptor. This is the single cheapest way to prevent chargebacks. Most disputes are just a buyer not recognising a business name on their statement three weeks later, so they dispute on reflex. Make the charge read as your event.
• Then buy a real ticket on your own phone and refund yourself.

That last one isn't optional, and I say that because of the number of times it's saved someone. An organiser was convinced their ticketing was broken. "No one's buying, something's wrong." I asked one question: had they bought a ticket themselves? They hadn't. The event was still in draft. Ninety seconds to publish it, and sales started that afternoon. Testing your own checkout catches about half the "why isn't this working" panics before they happen, and it costs nothing. The features that run this all look fine in the dashboard; the only real test is a card and your own thumb.

3 to 4 weeks out: go on sale, and decide who covers the fee

On-sale day. Announce, and watch your presale sit at zero for slightly longer than is good for your blood pressure. That's normal. It always starts slow.

The one decision people default into by accident: who covers the booking fee. Buyer, organiser, or split. It's a per-event toggle, and you should set it on purpose.

Here's the honest maths so it's a real decision, not a bumper sticker. On Ticketted, paid events are 3.95% + 95c per ticket, all-in and shown before checkout. On a $50 ticket that's about $2.90. Absorb it yourself across 300 sales and you've spent roughly $870 of your event budget on fees nobody asked you to eat. Most buyers expect to cover the fee and won't blink, so buyer-covers is usually the right default. Absorbing it can make sense for a members' night. Just decide; don't let the toggle decide for you.

Full breakdown lives on the pricing page. No monthly subscription, no setup fee, same rate whether you sell 50 tickets or 5,000.

While you're here: turn on a waitlist before you even think about discounting. Slashing the price in week three trains people to wait for the discount. A waitlist tells you what demand actually is without torching your margin.

The week of: reminders, run sheet, and the door

The week of is where a no-show problem is quietly decided.

• Send a reminder email 24 hours out. No-shows drop hard when people are nudged the day before. People buy three weeks out, life fills the calendar, and nobody reminds them. It's free, and almost nobody does it. (More on that in reducing no-shows.)
• Write the run sheet. Who's on the door, who's running sound, who has the venue's phone number, what happens if the headliner is late.
• Sort check-in. Scan tickets in on a phone, not off a printed list. One person working down a printed page is how you get a bottleneck at the door and a queue to the car park; QR scanning turns each check-in into a beep and clears it. One change, fixed once.
• Brief your door staff. Comps and the guest list live in one place, not a side spreadsheet, or the same seat gets sold and gifted.

On the day and after: doors, payouts, thank-yous

The event mostly runs itself if the week-of work is done. Your job on the day is to be reachable and to not touch anything that's working.

After doors close: pay the invoices you promised (payouts arrive as sales come in, not held until after the event), export your attendee list while you're thinking about it, and send a thank-you. The thank-you is the cheapest marketing for your next event, and the export is yours. If a platform makes leaving with your own data hard, that tells you what they think of you staying.

The Australian bits the overseas checklists skip

This is the ground the US and UK guides never cover, and it's the stuff that quietly costs you.

• GST and your ABN. If you're registered for GST, your ticket prices include it and you'll remit it. If you're not sure whether you need to be, the ATO's threshold guidance on GST registration is the source of truth, not a US blog.
• All-in pricing is the law's expectation, not a nicety. The ACCC has been circling drip pricing (a $30 ticket that's $38.20 by the time the card form loads) for years. Show the total on the first screen. Their guidance on displaying prices is worth two minutes of your time.
• Payouts to an Australian bank, in AUD. A US-first platform with currency conversion and a foreign payout schedule quietly costs you on every sale. Ticketted pays out via Stripe's standard schedule direct to your Australian account.

None of that appears on a Guidebook or WildApricot checklist, because they weren't written for you. That's not a knock on them. It's just why you needed a local list.

When you might not need any of this

Here's the part no ticketing company is supposed to say. If you're running one free trivia night a year for 40 mates, you do not need a platform, a checklist this long, or me. A Google Form and a spreadsheet will genuinely do it. Save the real checklist for the night you're charging money, or the room's big enough that a queue to the car park is a real risk.

Ticketted earns its keep when there's money moving, a door to manage, or a payout that needs to land before the venue invoice does. For 40 people and a jar of raffle tickets, keep your $0 and your Sunday.

Event planning checklist FAQ

What should an event planning checklist include? Working backwards from doors: your goal and break-even number, the date and venue, the budget, the event page and a tested checkout, the on-sale and fee decision, a 24-hour reminder, a run sheet, door check-in, and the post-event payouts and thank-yous.

How far in advance should I start planning an event? For most small-to-mid Australian events, 8 to 12 weeks is comfortable. Bigger or highly seasonal events (think fete season or a festival) want more. The venue and any headline talent are the two things to lock first, because everything else bends around them.

How do I plan an event on a tight budget? Start from break-even, not from what you'd love to spend. Pick a venue that doesn't need much dressing, keep the talent cost proportional to the room, pass the booking fee to the buyer, and use a platform with no monthly subscription so you're not renting a seat for events you run three weekends a year.

Who should pay the booking fee, me or the buyer? Usually the buyer. Most expect to cover it and won't blink. Absorbing roughly $2.90 a ticket across 300 sales is about $870 out of your budget, so absorb it deliberately (say, a members' night), not by forgetting the toggle exists.

How do I stop people not turning up? Send a reminder 24 hours out. That single nudge does more than anything else, because most no-shows are just people who bought weeks ago and forgot. Deposits and waitlists help too, but the reminder is free.

How do I check people in at the door quickly? Scan tickets on a phone rather than hunting names down a printed list. It turns check-in from a bottleneck into a beep and keeps the queue off the footpath.

When will I get paid? On Ticketted, funds move via Stripe's standard payout schedule as sales come in, with your first payout typically landing 2 to 3 days after your first sale, on business days, direct to your Australian bank account in AUD. Exact timing depends on Stripe's schedule, and your money isn't held until after the event.

Do I even need a ticketing platform for a small free event? Often not. For 40 people and no money changing hands, a form and a spreadsheet are enough. Reach for a platform once you're charging, managing a real door, or need the payout to arrive before the venue invoice does.

Still stuck? Give us a call

If it's the night before doors and something on this list has come undone, don't wrestle it alone. I'm owner-operated, so you get a person who knows the system, not a ticket number and a queue. Email support@ticketted.com or call 0452 590 455, any hour, any day.

And if you've read this far, your event is either going great or very much not. Either way, welcome. We'll help you sort the door list. We'll also, probably, tell you a joke my daughter has legally disowned. Consider that a bonus, not a warning.