Most venues have a run sheet. Far fewer have one the floor staff read. The usual version is three pages of everything anyone knew about the booking, printed on the morning, skimmed once and then abandoned in favour of asking the duty manager.
The difference between a document and a working tool comes down to who it is written for. A run sheet is not a record of the booking — that lives in the booking. It is an instruction sheet for people who were not in the planning conversation and who will read it standing up, mid-service, in a hurry.
Write for the person who wasn't in the room
The test for every line: could a casual staff member who has never met this client act on it without asking anyone? If not, either cut it or rewrite it.
"Client is particular about the room setup" fails the test. "Rounds of 10, no head table, gift table by the entrance" passes it. The first is a note to yourself. The second is an instruction.
What belongs on the sheet
The header — five facts, no more
Event name, date, room, guest count, and the one person on site who owns decisions tonight. That last one matters more than people expect: most run sheet failures are escalation failures, where something changed and nobody knew who could approve it.
The timeline — in venue time, not client time
Clients think in event time: ceremony 4pm, speeches 7pm. Staff need venue time, which starts hours earlier and includes things the client never sees.
- Setup start and the time the room must be finished
- Supplier arrivals — florist, band, photographer, cake — each with a contact number
- Doors open
- Food service times, course by course
- Bar open, last drinks, bar close
- Speeches or formalities, and who cues them
- Carriages, pack-down start, and the time the room must be clear
Put the times in the left column and keep them in order. A run sheet sorted by department instead of by time forces every reader to reassemble the evening in their head.
The numbers that drive money and food
Confirmed guest count, dietary requirements broken down by type and quantity, children and supplier meals counted separately. Chefs need "4 GF, 2 vegan, 1 nut allergy (table 6)" — not "some dietaries, see email".
The allergy line should carry the table number. It is the one detail on the sheet where being vague has consequences beyond an awkward conversation.
Setup, in a form someone can execute
Table configuration and count, linen and napkin colour, AV requirements and who is operating them, signage, and anything the client is bringing themselves. That last category causes more day-of confusion than any other — write down what is arriving, when, and who is receiving it.
The money status
One line: is the balance paid, or is something being collected tonight? Staff should never be discovering an outstanding balance at the end of an event. If a bar tab has a limit, the limit and who authorises going over it belong here.
What to leave off
A run sheet gets ignored when it is long, so the cuts matter as much as the contents:
- The negotiation history. How you arrived at the price is irrelevant to service.
- Full contact details for everyone. One on-site contact for the client, one per supplier arriving tonight. The rest lives in the booking.
- Standard operating procedure. If your team always polishes glassware before service, that is training, not a run sheet line. Only put it here if this event differs from normal.
- Anything you would have to update in two places. Duplicated detail goes stale, and a stale run sheet is worse than none because people trust it.
A template you can copy
[Event name] — run sheet
Date [date] · Room [room] · Guests [confirmed number] · On-site lead [name, mobile]
Client contact on the day [name, mobile] — not the person who booked, the person who will be there.
Timeline
[14:00] Setup begins — [who]
[15:30] Room complete and checked by [name]
[15:45] Supplier arrival: [florist, contact]
[16:00] Doors open
[16:30] Bar opens
[18:00] Entrée service
[19:00] Speeches — cued by [name]
[19:30] Main service
[22:30] Last drinks
[23:00] Carriages
[23:15] Pack-down begins — room clear by [time]
Numbers [X] confirmed · [X] children · [X] supplier meals
Dietaries [4 GF (tables 2, 7) · 2 vegan (table 3) · 1 nut allergy (table 6)]
Setup [12 rounds of 10, no head table] · [white linen, navy napkins] · [gift table at entrance] · [cake table beside dance floor]
AV [2 mics, lectern, laptop HDMI] — operated by [name]
Client is bringing [place cards, guest book, cake] — arriving [time], received by [name]
Money [Balance paid in full] / [Bar tab to $X, overage authorised by [name] only]
Notes [Anything genuinely unusual about tonight — one or two lines, not a paragraph.]
Getting it out of the spreadsheet
The reason run sheets go stale is that they are a separate document. Someone copies details out of the booking on Tuesday, the guest count changes on Thursday, and the printed sheet says something different from the system.
Anything already recorded against the booking — guest numbers, the package and its menu choices, charges, the balance — should come from there rather than being retyped. The run sheet is then only the things that are genuinely about the night: the timeline, the setup, the suppliers.
That is also why the final-numbers cut-off matters so much. If the count is still moving the day before, every downstream document is guesswork — which is the subject of getting an accurate headcount. And if the balance status on the sheet is wrong, it usually traces back to a deposit policy that never set a payment deadline.
ezybooked keeps the booking, its package, guest numbers and payment status on one record, so the sheet you print reflects what the system actually knows. See the features page for how bookings, packages and invoicing fit together.
The short version
If you change one thing
Sort the run sheet by time, not by department, and cut every line a new staff member couldn't act on without asking. Length is what stops people reading it.