How to Plan a Successful Event: Free Checklist Templates

Event planning can be a stressful business—whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned event planner with years of experience under your belt. You’ve got a lot of logistics to manage, details to keep up with, and guests to wow.

That’s why it’s so important to have a solid plan and process in place.

Learn what goes into a good event planning process and how to create an effective event planning checklist, with free templates and examples to help you get started.

Example of an event planning checklist in gantt chart format

Rearrange timelines easily with drag and drop scheduling

Plans change, but you shouldn’t have to spend hours making and communicating schedule updates. In TeamGantt, adjusting your timeline is as simple as dragging and dropping tasks into their new rightful place. If anyone’s assigned to a task that gets moved, they’ll automatically get notified of the change.

Ask your team to update progress along the way

This saves you from having to constantly chase down updates. Encourage team members to make updating the percent complete a daily habit so everyone always has a current picture of how much work’s been done. Tasks that are 100% complete can be officially checked off your team’s to-do list!

Add dependencies to connect related event tasks

Sometimes one task needs to happen before the next can begin (like hiring a caterer before deciding on a menu). Dependencies ensure tasks always happen in the right order, even if you move things around.

Adding project milestones to your event planning gantt chart

Use task checklists to break event to-dos down even further

Want to get granular with tasks without cluttering up your gantt chart? Task checklists enable you to account for the tiniest to-do and make sure it gets crossed off your list. This is a great way to capture all your event-day tasks and mark them as complete as you go.

Using task checklists to track smaller to-dos in your event plan

Store team conversations and event files directly in your plan

With TeamGantt, your important files and conversations can live in a single place. Attach documents such as quotes, proposals, budget spreadsheets, vendor contact info, and more! Use comments to communicate updates and collaborate with team members on all the hard work that goes into an event.

Using TeamGantt's discussion feature to share files and collaborate on event planning tasks

Review the status of your event plan in meetings with List view

At TeamGantt, we’re a little biased toward gantt charts—but we know they’re not for everyone. That’s where our List view comes in handy. Viewing your project as a simple list may be helpful for status meetings with your team, boss, or other stakeholders.

Using List view in TeamGantt to review the status of your event plan

Identify potential project bottlenecks in Calendar view

Calendar view enables you to turn your event checklist into a calendar in one click. That makes it easy to see what’s coming down the pike and evaluate how tasks are stacking up on any particular day, week, or month. Use this view to get ahead of task conflicts before they put you in a time crunch.

Using Calendar view to identify bottlenecks in your event plan

Manage your daily event to-do list in My Tasks view

This simple view makes it clear to see what you need to work on each day. It pulls in all the tasks you’re assigned to across projects, which can be super-helpful if you’re running multiple events. No more digging through emails or Excel spreadsheets to plan your daily to-do list!

Managing your daily event to-do list with TeamGantt's My Tasks view

Create a free & flexible plan for your event!

Ready to start planning your next event? Use our event plan template or event planning checklist in TeamGantt, and save time on project setup!

Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on activities in real time.