Alternatives
PowerPoint draws rectangles with no scale: nothing stops you putting fourteen tables where ten fit, because the program doesn’t know how big the room is or how much space a chair takes. A spreadsheet holds the guest list but doesn’t know where anyone sits. MisePlan puts the two together on the room’s real plan, checks the service clearances while you drag, and produces the kitchen sheet and the set-up sheet from that.
No card. When it ends the account turns read-only: nothing is lost.
Product
| What | Excel + PowerPoint | MisePlan |
|---|---|---|
| Scale of the drawing | None. A rectangle is whatever size you stretch it to | Real millimetres. The room is drawn once, at its own size |
| Service clearance | Judged by eye, or discovered on the day of the set-up | 1.50 m checked as you drag, configurable per venue |
| Space per diner | Not calculated | 0.60 m minimum per chair; warns below that |
| Columns and doors | Drawn if somebody remembers | Real obstacles: no table can end up on top of one |
| Guest list | In another file, reconciled by hand | The same list, seated on the plan |
| Menu counts | Counted by hand every time something changes | Comes out of the plan itself, with allergies and children separate |
| Last-minute changes | Redo the count and send the file round again | Move the chair and the sheets redo themselves |
| The couple | You send them a PDF and they answer on WhatsApp | A link with no sign-up: they place their people and can’t break the set-up |
| Who can touch what | Whoever has the file can change all of it | Owner, staff and client, each with their own |
| The good version | «plan_final_v3_FINAL.pptx» | One, with the date it was signed off |
A plan in slides can be made to look good in half an hour. What it can’t be is trusted: with no scale, the gap between two tables is however big it looks on screen. On the day of the set-up the real problem shows up — the trolley won’t pass between tables 6 and 7 — and by then there’s no room to move anything.
The list in a spreadsheet, the plan in a slide deck and the changes in a WhatsApp thread. Every change has to be made three times, and the mistake appears when one of the three falls behind: the kitchen counts 118 and there are 121 chairs laid in the room.
The kitchen sheet and the set-up sheet are generated from what’s on the plan at that moment. Moving a guest to another table on the Thursday redoes both sheets without anyone having to remember.
Method
The guest list can still be built in your usual spreadsheet: it’s imported from there, with a template you download and upload filled in. There’s no need to change how you work with the couple, only where the list ends up.
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