Eventing is known for involving a fair amount of paperwork – pre, during and post-event. To be honest, I detest paperwork with a passion, and for this reason, I make sure that I have a team who are brilliant at it. This frees me to get involved in the aspects of the process which really resonate with me.
Pre-event paperwork usually involves things such as venue contracts and payment invoices, audiovisual quotes and invoices, event running orders and staffing lists.
I would advise keeping a file with all your invoices and contracts. Initially I had one file with dividers for each client, but as we grew, each client got their own file. As you continue to grow, accounts departments will start taking over the invoices and filing under suppliers or projects in Due, Pending and Paid categories for their ease of reference. Nowadays I do everything on Dropbox. I prefer to keep things cloud-based, so that if anything should happen to a file (or worse, your laptop!), you have it saved somewhere really safe.
Any speaker or multi-speaker event always comes with a lot of administrative paperwork while the event is running.
It is advisable to complete all events-related administration on-site if possible, if you have enough manpower. There can be nothing worse than spending the day after an event, absolutely exhausted, doing paperwork and trying to avoid errors in your capturing.
Registration lists need to be consolidated into one generic master list. This list then needs to be captured onto your database system to keep track of various registration-related logistics, such as being able to tag people on the list as having attended the event.
Sales forms also need to be consolidated onto one master spreadsheet. This will outline information such as what products were purchased by whom, how much was paid, what is still outstanding, dates for debit orders to run, what products were given to them, and which products still need to be delivered. This will become a very important document for your accounts manager to track payments and follow up with individuals.
Post-event paperwork usually involves follow up communication with people regarding payments, products to be couriered, and ensuring that all invoices are paid and captured.
In my experience, we have found that different clients have different ways of managing their administration, and most prefer to do it themselves, which is understandable. However, being able to assist with basic admin tasks on site will make you indispensable to an inevitably, already stressed events manager.
