An event is almost never one room. It is the hall, the foyer people arrive into and the green room somebody gets changed in, and a venue loses money the day one of those is let separately by mistake. Hold them together as one booking, put your open evening on the page with a real number of places, and keep the planning appointments in the same diary as the date itself.
Blu VenueBook online
Main hallHolds 300 · Fri$1,200.00
FoyerHeld with the hall$200.00
Open eveningThu · 12 places leftBook
Next freeTue 10:00 AMWed 2:00 PMSat 9:00 AM
Hall and foyer
Held together
Against the one event
Deposit
$300.00
25% on the main hall
Build and strike
Blocked
Thursday stops looking free
Four things a venue does between the first enquiry and the invoice, none of which a single date in a wall planner can hold.
The hall, the mezzanine, the studio and the foyer each carry their capacity, their hours and their price. Somebody planning a launch for sixty can see which of them is the right size without asking.
Showing forty planners round one at a time is forty afternoons. Put an open evening on the page with the number of places you can genuinely walk round, and it fills to that number and stops. A waiting list behind it is on the paid plans.
A walk-through, a supplier visit, a final numbers call, each one an appointment the organiser books into your real hours, rather than four emails proposing Tuesdays.
Take the deposit as the date comes off the board, then raise the balance as an invoice off the same booking. What is still unpaid or overdue is one list rather than a search through sent mail.
A conference in the main hall also has the foyer for registration and the studio for breakouts, and the expensive mistake is letting one of those to somebody else on the same afternoon. Book the spaces together and they are all held against the one event, so none of them is offered again while it is on. Each still keeps its own hours, so the mezzanine that is only lettable after six is only ever offered after six, and a changeover you need between two events is simply the block you set aside for it.
An event week is not one entry. It is a set-up on Thursday, a client walk-through on Friday morning, the event itself, and a strike that has to finish before the next booking arrives. Put all of it in one calendar by day or by week and the venue is readable at a glance: who is in, which spaces are gone, and where the genuinely free afternoons are. Drag a booking to move it and the spaces move with it, so a build day that shifts does not leave the hall looking available.
Half five on a Wednesday, ten days out. A conference has the main hall on the Friday, and somebody has just taken a booking for a drinks reception in the foyer on the same afternoon, because the foyer was never written down as part of the conference, only the hall was.
Nobody did anything wrong. The wall planner has one line per date, the deposit for the conference is in a spreadsheet, and the second booking came through an enquiry form that goes to a shared address.
Picktime holds every space an event uses against that event, shows the whole week including the build and the strike, and raises the balance off the same booking the deposit came from.
Hall, mezzanine, studio, foyer, green room, each with what it holds, the hours it can be let and its price. Add the kit that moves between them so it can be held with a booking rather than remembered.
Work out which spaces a standard event actually uses, so a hall booking takes the foyer with it. Set the block you need for a build or a strike as part of the hire rather than as a note.
Put the booking link on your site and in the reply your team already sends, and publish the next open evening with the number of places you can genuinely walk round in one go.
The free plan does not expire and asks for no card. A single-space venue can run on it indefinitely and be asked for nothing.
Bookings land in the calendar your team already has open, and a change made there comes back here. Put the booking widget on your own hire page so an enquiry becomes a walk-through on the page it started on rather than in an inbox.
Picktime runs in a phone browser, which is what somebody carrying a radio round a build actually has. iOS and Android apps are there if you want one, and organisers can move their own appointments from theirs.
The question worth asking is whether it can hold every space one event uses as a single booking, because that is where a venue actually loses money. Picktime does, and is free for a single space. If what you need is seating plans and floor layouts, that is a different category of tool and you will want one of those alongside.
Yes. A booking page for the spaces you let, organisers booking their own appointments, a deposit taken through PayPal and email notifications are all on the free plan, which has no end date and no card. The questions you ask before a viewing and a waiting list behind a full open evening are on the paid plans.
Yes. Every space can be held exactly once, so once the hall is taken for a Friday it is not offered again. Book the foyer and the green room with it and all three are held against the same event.
Yes. Take a deposit or the full hire fee as the booking is made, and the date only comes off the board once the payment has gone through. The balance can be raised as an invoice off the same booking later.
Yes. Put the evening on as a session with the number of places you can genuinely walk round. It sells to that number and stops, so nobody turns up to an evening that is already full. The waiting list that takes a place somebody gives back is on the paid plans.
Yes. A walk-through, a supplier visit and a final numbers call are appointments they book into the hours you are genuinely free, instead of four emails proposing times.
Yes. The time either side of an event is part of what you are holding, so book it against the space the same way. Thursday stops looking available because Thursday is not available.
Event management software and venue booking software are two different purchases, and treating them as one is how a venue ends up with a tool that does neither job properly. Event management covers the run of the day: registration, staffing, catering orders and the run sheet. Picktime sits on the other side of that line, holding the spaces, the dates and the deposits, so a venue already running an event management tool still needs the room itself booked somewhere the calendar can see.
It depends which end of the event you are booking. Letting the venue means holding the hall, the foyer and the green room as one thing and taking a deposit against a date. Selling places at the event means a number on the door and people booking themselves in, and Picktime does both from the same calendar, which is the argument for one tool rather than two. Numbered seats are a third thing again, and that is ticketing.
Not this one, and not a booking system of any kind. A floor plan is a drawing job, so what you want is a diagramming tool that lays out tables, staging and sightlines to scale, or a CAD plan from the venue itself. Picktime answers the question the drawing cannot, which is whether the space is free on that date and what else has been held with it.
Viewings and hire Show-rounds people book, and a date held against a deposit.
See venue booking software
Delegates Delegates registering themselves, and the organisation invoiced afterwards.
See business event scheduling
Doors and capacity Nights that stop selling at the number the room is allowed to take.
See live event schedulingFree forever for a single space. No card, no trial clock, and every room in the building can be on one diary today.
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