Event Planner — Methodology Handbook

The Event Planner is one planner for the things in life that come with a date and a bill — a trip, a wedding, the holidays, a renovation, a party, a baby. Each plan carries a budget, a countdown, a checklist with due dates and the lists that kind of event needs. This handbook explains what a plan stores, how every figure on the page is computed, how the lists count progress, and what the planner deliberately does not do.

👉 Open the tracker: calculatorai.app/event-planner

What a plan is here

One plan is one event. It carries:

• Kind — trip, wedding, holidays, renovation, party, baby, or other. The kind is a starting point, not a cage: it picks the default glyph, the budget categories offered first, which lists the Lists tab shows, and the starter checklist. Every one of those can be changed on the plan afterwards; the kind itself can be changed too.
• Name and glyph — the glyph is chosen from a grid of twenty; there are no brand logos, because an event is not a merchant.
• Date — the event day. A trip or a renovation is a span and has an end date too; a wedding, a party or the holidays are one day. The date is optional: without one the plan works, but there is no countdown and the starter checklist carries no due dates.
• Budget and currency — what you want to stay under, in the currency you are paying in. Every line under the plan is in that currency.
• Status — planning, in progress, done, or archived. A done or archived plan keeps everything and drops to the bottom of the switcher; only planning and in-progress plans count toward the free limit.
• Location and notes.

Nothing is derived from a bank feed or a calendar. What is in a plan is what you put there.

Budget lines — planned, actual, paid

Each line has a category, a name, a planned amount, an optional actual amount, a payment state (not paid, a deposit or part-payment with the amount handed over so far, or paid in full), an optional paid-on date, its own currency (the plan's unless you change it — a trip planned in dollars pays hotels in euros), an optional vendor and an optional due date.

The one rule everything else depends on: a line's cost is its actual amount when you have entered one, and its planned amount until then.

cost(line)   = actual ?? planned
paid(line)   = cost, once ticked paid in full
             = min(paid_amount, cost), for a deposit or a part-payment
             = 0 otherwise

From that, per plan:

• planned = Σ planned over every line;
• actual = Σ actual over the lines that have one;
• expected = Σ cost — the honest total: real where the bill is known, estimated where it is not;
• paid = Σ paid(line) — deposits count for what they are, a settled line for its whole cost;
• unpaid = expected − paid, what is still to be handed over;
• left = budget − expected. Negative means the plan is over budget by that much, and the overview says "over budget by" instead of "left to spend";
• used % = expected ÷ budget (the ring on the overview);
• over lines = the count of lines whose actual is above their planned;
• settled = the count of lines with an actual amount, shown as "n of m lines have a real cost" so you can see how much of the total is still an estimate.

The same sums are computed per category for the "Where the money goes" bars: one bar per category, planned against expected, sorted by expected. A bar past its mark is over plan.

Why "expected" rather than "actual so far". Summing only the bills you have already received tells you how much you have spent, which is not the question while an event is being planned. The question is whether the plan still fits the budget; the plan fits if the sum of what is known plus what is still estimated fits. That is expected.

Marking a line paid does not change its cost. Paid moves money from unpaid to paid; it does not settle the estimate. A line paid at its planned amount whose real price differs still wants its actual entered. A deposit is recorded as a part-payment: the line stays open, "still to pay" shrinks by the deposit, and the calendar keeps its due date until it is settled.

A line in another currency is converted into the plan's currency for every total at the day's rate; the line itself keeps the amount you typed.

Budget › Analytics

Four figures over the same lines, all from the sums above:

• Where the money goes — a donut of each category's share of expected.
• Planned vs actual by category — two bars per category (planned, expected); a category whose expected exceeds its plan, with at least one real cost in it, is drawn in red.
• Biggest lines — the ten lines with the highest cost so far.
• Spend over time — running totals by week or month on each line's paid-on date, or its due date when it has not been paid: cumulative planned, expected and paid. Lines with neither date are left out and the card says how many.
• By category — the table: lines, planned, expected, paid, and the difference planned − expected (negative = over plan).

The Lines sub-tab filters by text, category, payment state (not paid, part-paid, paid, over estimate) and vendor, and sorts by category, due date or amount; the totals bar above it always shows the whole plan.

The countdown

Every countdown figure is a whole-day difference between today and the event day, computed in your local calendar, not in hours.

• days to go = event day − today. Positive before, zero on the day, negative after.
• For a span (trip, renovation): days left = end day − today, and the plan is under way from the event day to the end day inclusive.
• Phase: upcoming (days to go > 0), today (a one-day event on its day), ongoing (a span between start and end), past (negative), undated (no date).
• Span length = end − start + 1, so a Monday-to-Friday trip is five days.

The checklist

A task has a title, an optional due date, an optional person and a done tick. The starter checklist offered when a plan is created is a template per kind — a trip's has "check passports and visas 90 days before", "book flights 60 days before", "pack 2 days before"; a wedding's runs from "agree the budget" a year out to "give the final head count" a week out; a renovation's ends with a "final walkthrough" the day after. Each template task carries a number of days before the event day, and the due date is:

due = event day − days before

so the same template gives the right dates for any event. Without an event date the tasks are created undated. The template is applied once, at creation; editing the plan's date later does not move tasks you already have.

On the Tasks tab the checklist is grouped by when: overdue (due before today, not done), next 7 days (today through today + 7), later, no date, and done (collapsed). The progress line counts done ÷ total, and turns red while anything is overdue.

Tapping a task opens it for editing — title, due date, who it is for — and the same sheet deletes it. A budget line and a list row open the same way, and every edit sheet carries its delete button, so nothing on a phone depends on a hover or a swipe.

Tasks › Calendar

One month grid with everything that has a date: the event day (every day of a span), each task on its due date (overdue in red, done struck through), each budget line not yet settled on its due date with what is still to pay, each itinerary row and each gift on its day. The grid opens on the event's month while the event is ahead. The panel beside it reads the picked day, or the next fourteen days when nothing is picked. Tapping a payment opens the Budget tab; an itinerary row or a gift opens the Lists tab.

The lists

A plan has the lists its kind uses — a trip keeps a packing list and an itinerary, a wedding keeps guests and vendors, the holidays keep gifts and guests, a renovation keeps vendors, a baby keeps gifts — plus a free "other" list on every plan. Each list has its own status vocabulary, and one tap moves a row to the next status:

The progress line on each list is done of total. Three details:

• A declined guest is excluded from the total, so "8 of 10 confirmed" means eight confirmed out of ten who might come, not out of twelve who were asked. The declined count is shown beside it.
• Party size sums into the head count — a row for a family of four is one row and four guests — so the guest list gives you the number the caterer asks for.
• A gift counts as done from bought on: wrapped and given come later, and the budget question is answered at the till.

The guest line and the seating board

Above the guest list: people (head count over everyone who has not declined), adults and children, how many people have confirmed and how many are still to answer, invitations still to send, thank-yous still to send (a gift received without one), and one chip per dietary need and per meal choice with its head count — the caterer's questions, answered from the rows.

Seating is the second view of the same list. A table is a row of its own (name, number of seats); a guest sits at a table through the table label on the row, so the board and the list are one truth. Each table card shows seats taken of seats available (party size counts), goes red when overfull, and lists its parties with a picker to move them; the unassigned column holds everyone without a table. Renaming a table takes its guests with it. Removing one leaves the guests' labels as they are until you move them.

Gifts by recipient

When gifts carry a recipient, the list opens with one line per person: how many of their gifts are bought, the budget you set for them against what the gifts cost, red when over.

Rows with an amount (gifts, vendors, itinerary) sum into a list total shown beside the progress; it is informational and is not added to the budget. A vendor's price belongs in a budget line, where it has a planned amount, an actual and a paid tick; the vendor list is for who you are talking to.

The overview — what it computes

• Countdown — as above, with the date or the span under it.
• Budget ring — used % (expected ÷ budget), with left to spend or over budget by, and expected of budget in plain money. When the plan's currency is not the one you view the site in, the card says the figures are converted at today's rate.
• Budget / Paid / Tasks done / Lines over plan — the four figures from the sections above.
• Where the money goes — the per-category bars.
• Coming up — every task not done that is due within 14 days, and every unpaid budget line with a due date within 14 days, overdue ones first.
• Lists — one card per list with its progress and, where it has one, its total.

Importing and hand-offs

• The calculators — the Vacation Budget, Wedding Budget, Gift Budget and Baby Cost calculators each hand their result here: the plan form opens with the kind, the name, the budget and, where the calculator had one, the location filled in, and the breakdown you built there ready to be added — one budget line per cost for a trip or a wedding (with the actual where you typed one), one gift row per gift for the holidays, one line per first-year cost for a baby (a weekly or monthly cost becomes its first-year total, named so). A switch on the form, on by default, adds those rows when you press Create; untick it to start with the plan alone. Nothing is created before you press Create.
• To the Expenses tracker — a line that is paid or part-paid has a wallet button: what has been handed over, in the line's own currency, opens the Expenses add form prefilled (the planner's category mapped onto the ledger's — flights and lodging are travel, catering is food, materials are housing) for you to confirm. The planner never writes into the ledger by itself.
• The assistant — "plan a trip to Lisbon in November, 2,500" said to the site assistant becomes a one-tap card that opens the plan form pre-filled (kind, name, budget, dates, location); you still press save — the assistant never creates a plan by itself.
• The pages — the per-kind pages (wedding, trip, Christmas, renovation) open the planner with that kind chosen and the starter checklist shown up front; the comparison page sets the planner beside spreadsheets and the dedicated apps.
• Reminders — when a plan has an overdue task, or a payment due within a week that is not settled, the assistant's daily reminder says so once a week; the weekly digest carries the nearest open plan's countdown, budget and what is slipping, and the Workspace board draws a tile for it.

Export

Every plan with every field the form collects, every budget line (with its currency, paid amount and paid-on date), every task, every list row (its extra fields as key=value pairs) and every table, as one CSV file — free on every plan, always.

Multi-currency

Each plan is stored in its own currency; a line under it is in that currency unless it carries its own. Totals across plans convert into the currency selected in the site header at the day's rates, and the overview says so when the plan's currency differs. The forms hand you the stored values, so a converted figure is never written back as if it were native.

Setup

The Setup tab holds the two things that are about the planner rather than a plan: the default currency a new plan starts in (each plan and each line keep their own; totals across plans convert into the currency you view the site in) and export — every plan with its lines, tasks, lists and tables as CSV, always free. The "Clear sample" button lives here too while the example plans are still around. Inside a shared plan the currency is the administrator's to set.

Sample data

A new account opens on two example plans — a trip and a wedding — so the tabs are not empty on day one. They are marked as examples, count toward nothing, and go away by themselves the moment you save a plan of your own; "Clear sample" removes them sooner. Visitors without an account see the same two plans in read-only form.

The shared plan

A plan can be kept by more than one person — a couple planning the wedding, a family doing the holidays, friends on a trip. A shared plan is a separate list of plans: everybody in it sees the same lines, tasks and lists; editors add and tick; an administrator sets the currency; a viewer sees everything and changes nothing. Your personal plans stay private and are never mixed into a shared one. Rows inside a shared plan show who added them. Export of a whole shared plan is free for every member. Nothing is shared automatically: a plan lands in a shared space only when it is created there.

How it works in practice:

• Starting one. "Shared plan" in the sidebar (or the switcher beside the title) creates a shared space for the planner. Members are invited by e-mail; each invitation also has a link you can copy and send yourself. The person who creates it is its administrator.
• Roles. A viewer reads everything and changes nothing. An editor adds and edits lines, tasks, guests and the other lists, ticks tasks, records payments. An administrator also sets the shared currency, invites and removes members, and can delete the shared plan. Roles are changed on the "Shared" tab that appears inside a shared space.
• Switching. The sidebar lists "Personal" and every shared space you belong to; the one you are in is ticked. Everything on the page — the switcher, the tabs, the export — is scoped to that space. The assistant's reminders and the weekly digest are about your personal plans only; a shared plan is described to the assistant under its own heading, marked as joint, so it never gets summed into your own numbers.
• Pro. Creating a shared plan and writing into one needs Pro; a member whose Pro has lapsed keeps reading everything and loses the edit controls until it is back. Reading and exporting never need Pro.
• Leaving. A member who leaves keeps nothing from the shared plan and loses nothing of their own. The administrator who owns the space hands it over to another member before leaving, or deletes it — which deletes the shared plans with it; every member's personal plans are untouched.

Free and Pro

The free plan keeps one open plan (planning or in progress) with everything above: the budget with planned and actual, the checklist, every list, CSV export. Pro removes the limit and adds the shared plan. Existing plans never disappear when a plan ends; the limit applies to new ones.

What the planner does not do

• It does not connect to a bank, a card or a calendar. A line's actual is what you type, and a task is done when you tick it.
• It does not move money or book anything. A vendor marked booked is a note to yourself.
• It does not add list amounts to the budget. The budget is the budget lines; a gift's price or a vendor's quote on a list is a reminder, not a bill.
• It does not re-date the checklist when the event moves. Tasks keep the dates they were given; change the ones that matter.
• It does not tell you what an event should cost. There is no benchmark or average behind the budget field — the number is yours.