A gala seating chart is a ledger with a floor plan attached. Hold the tables that were bought, seat the guests each sponsor named, and see the empty seats while you can still sell them.
Free for up to 20 guests and 4 tables. No credit card required.
The floor plan comes first at a gala, because the tables are the thing being sold.
Place the tables where the venue will actually put them, with the stage, the podium and the auction in the right relation to the room. Tables near the front are worth more, so the plan has to show which ones they are.
Who bought the table, who they want at it, and which seats are still open.
Tag a table with the sponsor who bought it and the tier, so a whole table stays theirs while you move everything around it.
Colour tables by sponsorship level and see the tiers laid out in the ballroom instead of reading them off a list.
Head table, podium, stage and auction are placed on the plan, so proximity to them is something you can allocate rather than guess at.
Sponsors send their guest names days out and change them on the day. Seat a table before it has names, then fill it in as they arrive.
Import attendees from a spreadsheet exported out of your CRM or ticketing platform. Names, a category for each guest, meal choices and dietary notes come in together.
Record each guest’s meal and dietary needs, then export the list as a spreadsheet with every table, ready for the kitchen.
Share a live link with the development team, the board and the venue so nobody is working from last week’s seating.
Print the chart for the entrance, table numbers for the room, and a floor plan the venue can set from.
It goes wrong in the gap between the sales spreadsheet and the room. A table is sold in March, the sponsor names their guests in September, and by then the layout has changed twice. The chart that goes to the venue is a different document from the one development has been updating.
The fix is to make the sold table and the table in the room the same object. Tag it with the sponsor when it sells, and it stays theirs through every rearrangement of the floor plan.
Leave the unsold seats visible rather than tidying them away. An empty seat is the most useful thing on a gala chart six weeks out, because it is still sellable, and it stops being sellable the moment nobody can see it.
Decide early who sits near the podium and the stage, because everything else moves around that. At a benefit, proximity is part of what was bought.
The ballroom, the tables and the people who paid for them in one plan.
When a sponsor upgrades, a table moves, or a guest cancels the night before, you change it in the room rather than reconciling two files.
Your fundraising or ticketing platform sells the tables, takes the money and holds the donor records. It should keep doing that. What it usually gives you for seating is a list of table numbers and a text field.
PlanSeats takes that list and puts it in the room: the real ballroom, the real table sizes, and every seat either filled, held or visibly empty.
Export the attendee list from the platform you already pay for, and do the seating here.
Yes. Tag the table with the sponsor and the tier, and leave the seats empty until the names arrive. The table stays theirs while the rest of the room moves.
Colour the tables by tier. Platinum, gold and the rest read as a pattern across the ballroom, which is faster than checking a list table by table.
Empty seats stay visible in the plan and in the seat counts, so you can see the gaps while there is still time to fill them.
Export it to a spreadsheet and import that. Names, meal choices and dietary notes come across together, and a column such as the sponsor can become each guest’s category.
Can I import my guest list from a spreadsheet?Share a link and they see the current version. The venue does not need an account to look at it.
What is the difference between a viewer and an editor?Record each guest’s meal choice and dietary needs as you go. Export the guest list as a spreadsheet and every row carries its table, so the kitchen can plan from it.
What is in the catering report?One event fits the Planner plan. Running several a year, with saved venue layouts you can start each one from, is what PlanSeats Pro is for.
Sponsor tables, tiers, dietary counts and the ballroom itself, in one plan the committee and the venue can both work from.
Free for up to 20 guests and 4 tables. No credit card required.