Discover the Best Event Planner Invoice Example for Public Relations

Event planner invoice example for Public Relations

time is your most valuable commodity most of us in general no matter what business you're in you can't create more time it's not possible it's just not so you know that's one thing that people really have to take a step back and think about like time and energy what do I want to devote it to most of our users are passionate about their venue they're passionate about their clients they're not super passionate about taking payments or doing collections that's not fun who likes doing that um so we try and you know ease the things that are not fun and allow people to focus on why they got into their business in the first place [Music] you're listening to The Venue RX podcast well what's up everyone Welcome to The Venue RX on this channel we are passionate about documenting and sharing best practices for owning operating and managing world-class wedding venues and that's a very complicated way maybe of saying we want to make wedding venue education available to everyone and we want to make it easy to run your Venue to operate your Venue and do a good job while you're at it right and to kind of eliminate some of the pain points that you might have along the way and so on this show we do all sorts of different types of mini shows we've got the venue owner series that has been so much fun if you're a venue owner listening to this and you want to come on the show send us a message but we also do interviews with you know all sorts of different tools and pieces of technology that you can use to make your your Venue business better and so I am really excited today to have the director of customer operations on the call Jess from planningpod thank you so much for being here Jess thank you for having me I'm glad to be here I feel like I kind of butchered your title so let's just we got to start there director what is your official title so I am the director of customer operations with planning pods so basically that means I oversee um anything that touches our customers so I oversee um the development and the kind of uh product process so what the tools and and the things that we're offering updates those kinds of things but I also oversee our customer support department our customer success department and just onboarding training kind of everything that touches the customer so post sales and marketing it all comes over and my team handles all of that that's so cool okay so I so I didn't totally Butch it butcher it no no you got it exactly right it was perfect okay okay cool well before we hopped on and I had to kind of stop us because we were launching into it we were talking as we got excited yeah yeah as I was getting to know you a bit and we were talking about pain points in the industry and you know we talked about really wanting to start a um more resources for venue owners a mentorship program that we've talked about before on this channel and you were mentioning um and I want to kind of get back there because I feel like what you were saying was really relevant to what we're going to be talking about today uh with planing pod but you were just talking about the lacks the lack rather and the absence of resources uh for this industry and and that there are so many different types of venues right so kind of take me back there yeah absolutely um so and I know you're talking with all sorts of different venues and there are all sorts of different venues listening but you know planning pod is a company we serve everyone from you know people who have big event centers to small you know family-owned wedding Barns and multi-unit restaurants uh just kind of there's barbecue places food truck operations venues can kind of live in a whole different a whole kind of world of different types of venues and what we've found a lot is that but people are they're looking for connections they're looking for people to collaborate with they're looking for people to share best practices with and there has been a pretty significant lack in some of those resources in the past because there's such Variety in the industry um a lot of best practices apply across the board a lot of them really don't so it's you know it's in a whole Adventure someone who does catering is going to have a completely different perspective and completely different set of needs technology wise and also mentorship wise and collaboration wise than someone who um you know maybe just does bar service or doesn't do any food or beverage at all and they're renting out a space but there are some there's a lot of crossover there too so it's it's an interesting adventure to embark on because you do have to fit so many different you have to wear so many different hats when you're supporting the venue industry for sure I think that's a cool place to start the origin story of planning pod you know how do you define a venue you but then how did planning pod get started to serve this very diverse industry yeah absolutely so um planning pod was actually the brainchild of Jeff Kier and Steven feingertz they ran a marketing organization or a marketing company um before they started planning pod and really the origins behind it were they were running into a lot of small businesses who needed business software and specifically event professionals so the original iteration of planning pod was a company called my wedding workbook and it was truly like taking the and so anyone who's an event planner out there has event planners who work for them they'll remember the wedding book the actual like it was a physical binder with lots of pages that you'd flip through and it had all the details that you needed they basically took that and digitized it into tools that were you know comprehensive and would allow you to keep all of that stuff on the cloud so that you always had what you needed at your fingertips um we really served wedding planners for until we still do they're still part of our market for sure but we actually shifted to venues in 2017 2018 when we realized we had a lot of venues that were using our wedding planning or event planning tools to manage their venue and there just wasn't another solution out there that worked for them there wasn't something that could really serve them well because there really wasn't anything that was venue focused there are point of sale systems there are reservation systems there are kitchen Management systems but nothing really bridged the Gap to get all of the things that for example a small wedding venue might need they need all the business processes they need the floor planning tools they need to be able to offer attendee management to their user or to their customers there's so much more that they need than just a point of sale or a catering management system there was not really anything there so we really shifted in um we relaunched our software with venues in mind in early 2019 and that's when we added our catering tools that's when we added our banquet event order tools we added additional CRM functionalities we're constantly improving but that was kind of the first moment when we really targeted and started working with venues because there were so many venues already using us so many that kind of needed those tools so it was it was really an organic shift we didn't really make the decision the venues coming to us kind of made the decision for us and then we looked at it and said okay how can we serve them better how can we do more for them what do they need and so we just reached out and asked he said what do you need what are you missing what what else and that's kind of our mentality as a company is what's next what else can we do to serve you how can we do better how you know where are your pain points what hurts let's see if we can make it feel better totally I'm I'm super excited to talk to you maybe even off air just about some of the things you know we're looking for because we manage multiple properties in in our neck of the woods here in Southern California and we're looking to expand that management to the rest of the country but there are some things and we've kind of created you know some spreadsheets and some tools internally to help us solve some of those pain points that the current CRM that we use doesn't you know give us access to so I'm curious to kind of chat with you a little bit more but let's let's dive into planting pot because I think yeah you know if if the listener or viewer on YouTube walks away uh from this with a really good understanding of you know kind of what you guys do and you know if someone's listening who is your target client who is your ideal client who wins the most by using planning pod as a venue that is a great question I would say that our the majority of our current clients fall in the small to medium venue kind of uh you know small to medium business kind of category if you will um we and I know I've mentioned it several times well and let me interrupt what do you mean by that small to is a small to medium business uh is this like um 20 acres versus 100 acres or is this two employees versus five so break it down that's a great question um some of them are single or two person operator they're doing a lot a lot of they're doing it on a lean staff and a lean budget so that's where like our smaller businesses they're when I say smaller it's going to be usually a single unit kind of venue so they have a single property they might rent it out just and I use the example of wedding barns because that was something that really I'm sure you've seen this but during the pandemic a lot of people they were laid off or they kind of reprioritized their lives and said okay how do I work for myself how do I do more with what I have and be around my family more and do more and they opened wedding barns on their property they had space where they purchased a venue during the pandemic it's actually the way that we continue to grow through the pandemic is that so many people did shift their priorities and they chose to take a risk that they might not have taken if everything hadn't shut down so it was a very fascinating thing to kind of be a part of and watch so small businesses would be those that have you know maybe one or two rooms or locations that they can rent out um they're typically doing a fair amount of volume of events but they are um you know they're kind of new to the industry many of them are very new to the industry which you know feeds right into the Need For Education they have the space they have the vision they have the passion they don't necessarily always have the business know how yet and that's where you know we try and help to kind of remove those barriers um medium I would say are they're going to be our our Hospitality groups that are running multiple locations rest smaller restaurants or even mid-sized restaurants with private event spaces in them um you know we do have a fair number of like music venues that um they have they might rent out their space but they also promote their own events breweries and wineries where they have a single location that they can rent out especially for weddings that's that's the high dollar rental for a lot of those locations is you know they basically shut down for a weekend for a wedding so those those are kind of I mean lots of mom and pop places also many really it's shifted to a lot more restaurants and hotels who do catering and on-site events um usually single location or maybe two to three locations let me ask this question because I think for especially for some of those you know smaller you know single unit maybe owner operator type type businesses there may be a little bit of resistance to say oh well we only do 50 events a year or 30 events a year or even 60 events a year and I and I like it that way it's just me and a couple other people kind of to help facilitate those weddings and we don't really need to grow so why the tools like why you know because a venue has limited inventory in a sense right yes yes why the tools that's a great question um the main reason that people come to us typically is because they are struggling with managing the actual booking process that is I think the most common pain point they may have a ton of inquiries or they may have enough inquiries to book out every weekend that they want to in that year to book out 52 weekends um the problem is it's a ton of follow-up if you're doing all of that via email Things fall through the cracks you're not offering good customer experience um you know you forget to follow up with someone I mean you're basically just leaving money on the table if you don't have good follow-through we have a full leads management system that allows you to kind of customize each step in your sales Pipeline and say okay this person this is a new inquiry and you can set idle lead uh warnings so if they've been sitting in a step too long it's going to say hey you need to talk to this person they need your help it allows you to kind of not set it and forget it because there's always that human contact that's really important in this industry because it is so personal it is so usually these are emotional events they're important events in people's lives that they're having at these locations um so that leads management Pro kind of process that tool and it encompasses multiple things that we have digital con contracts and proposals we have invoicing with integrated payment processing with auto automatic payment reminders and it'll let you know if things are past due we have auto pay associated with that so the actual business portion of the CRM kind of the business and or CRM portion of the software is what a lot brings a lot of those smaller businesses to us because right now they're using maybe and word docs or Google Docs and a spreadsheet and then also you know Google Calendars or iCal or Outlook you know there are like six to eight different pieces of free or inexpensive software that they might have to use but it's just so easy for details to fall through the cracks on there um I'd say the big one is it's kind of one of those you got to spend money to make money a little bit um so one of the other big pain points is missed payments people are making mistakes they're forgetting you know they're not following through they're not collecting the money until you know the day of their their best practices that people follow they're also you know there's no right way necessarily to invoice someone but when you're sending a paper invoice and then having them venmo you or send a Zell payment or pay via cash or check those are all fine options but if you're not tracking it you're risking just throwing money away and that's a big portion there for a lot of people um people who are going or venue owners who are going above and beyond and they're offering you know planning services or some kind of day of coordination or vendor coordination any of those things that is you know that's another separate piece of software and that's separate from like a floor planning software where you can actually seat guests and you know allow your guests to kind of interact with with that information the other big thing is the client portal so our client portal is it's controlled by the user they can decide what tools show up in there but for especially for our Caterers you can actually have your customers select their menu items off of the menu that they've chosen right in the client portal and then submit their selections which you know it's you know they're pressing the button they're saying this is what I want so it does it kind of takes it takes a lot of lift off of these smaller businesses um especially those who are working full-time jobs and running a venue which is pretty common right now yeah absolutely just I want to ask you a question that I've seen so many times asked in different wedding groups on Facebook specifically different owner groups that I've that I that I'm a part of talk to me about refunds how does someone refund payments or actually physically take payments so both sides of that in your in your portal um yeah that is a fantastic question um so we have a variety of payment partners that can integrate with with planning pod our preferred partner is a company called pay simple they're based out of Denver Colorado they're right down the street from us when we still had an office down in Denver but they've been around their subsidiary of um ever Commerce which they're they've dealt with payments for gosh I can't tell you how many years but they're a fantastic partner and they allow us to integrate with both credit card payments and ACH or electronic check payments um that's really not super common across the board those ACH payments save it saves a lot of money in processing fees for our users so that was really important to us the integration is seamless basically as soon as you have your account set up with paste simple it's integrated with your planning pod account and then you can accept payments kind of as a one-off like just process them right there within your system with the client standing there you can send we have a payment reminder schedule um system so you can set your standard payment terms as a template and you just import that into each of your invoices so many of our users they maybe take a 50 deposit and then they might take or 20 deposit whatever it happens to be and then they take you know sixty percent and then they take a final payment at 30 days out you can set that up ahead of time and then you just import that template it calculates the amounts that are due it calculates the dates when they're due based on the invoice due date and then it automatically sends email reminders with a pay now button on it for your customers so there's that option that's great because if they don't pay it on time you get a notification you get an email you get a notification on your home screen dashboard that's just like hey you need this needs attention and you can actually take action right there from the home screen dashboard to say to send a reminder email or to follow up with them via the phone whatever you're kind of your your communication technique is with the organization um in addition to that there's auto pay which is super helpful if you have someone who's like on installments like I want to pay 500 a month for the next 18 months and then I'll just be paid off when it comes to the event um so that's kind of taking payments as far as refunds go this is another great part about integrated Payment Processing you guys can actually refund from the invoice and planning pod if you need to um refunds are one of those kind of I'm sure you've experienced this um but they're a little tricky in the last several years I mean there used to be a hard and fast kind of standard in the industry that like you just didn't get refunds I mean that before 2020 that seemed to be the standard is it's like you pay and if something happens and you cancel bummer like that's how it used to be I I feel like there's been a lot of shift and change in that part of the industry on whether people will offer refunds or how much of a refund that they offer for those types of events um it's you know it's kind of all over the board for us is what we see but it is very easy to refund from planning okay and before we move to refunds I want to ask what about kind of the outliers because I know many different softwares will allow you to do refunds of payments you know right there in the portal um but again going back before we talk about refunds many people will allow you to charge you know there is auto pay there are some of these different things but what happens when I need to charge an additional 300 for some add-on or I need to charge even post event for something that wasn't part they're not gonna the insurance isn't going to cover it it was sixty dollars that need to be covered for you know an incidental how does that happen within planning pod that is a great question yes so um the way that our all of our integrated Payment Processing works is we basically pass the information through to your payment processor so it's a very secure connection so whether it's your customer enters their credit card information in the portal or you enter it in the actual system either way you have the option to save it to your payment processing partner and so in the case of Pay simple basically they enter their information it's fully encrypted and are it actually doesn't even live in our system it's encrypted and sent to their system and you have access then to charge that card as long as you have permission to do so and I'm not an accountant and I'm not a lawyer I have to say that um but in this case you know it's you have their method of payment on file you have their credit card on file um if you need to charge something we do recommend you adjust the invoice to show what you're charging for um we also do have the ability to track damage deposits within the system so there's also that that option where you can track a cash or a check damage deposit and if you need to take a portion of that and apply it towards the final balance of the invoice you have the ability to do that digitally as well oh that's huge the the kind of the damage deposit damage waiver and this I think is a is a beautiful lead-in to talk about refunds but that you know hotels have had it for forever you know they put a 500 or 800 a thousand dollar hold depending on the type of Hotel you're staying at on your card and it's and gas stations even do it right they put a you know couple dollar hold or whatever fifty dollar hold on it and then that drops off you know you know 24 hours or an hour after or something like that how do you guys handle um if the venue client does want to have some sort of damage deposit do you guys have a drop-off system like that so we don't um that is that's a little bit tricky from a technological standpoint and from a payment processor standpoint um most payment processing companies consider that um kind of I'm going to use my air quotes here for giving me kind of high risk behavior um because it is holding and then returning money um I'll be completely honest here with you um I'm not sure how hotels kind of get around those things I'm guessing that they basically pay to be able to do that they have some sort of different relationship with their processors or they might even have their own payment processor that handles those kinds of transactions um our our partners at paysimple have shared with us that they are okay with actually physically taking a payment and then refunding that payment as a deposit so it's you're actually taking the money from their account it's not a credit card hold that is actually processing and then refunding the benefit of our partnership with paysimple is your only charged processing fees on money you keep so unlike you know our other payment processors you know basically any of the standards like square or stripe or QuickBooks payments or um you know almost every other processor and I you know don't quote me on all of them I don't know all of them you know intimately but yeah um most of those they're gonna charge you a percentage of the fee to take the money in and then they're going to charge you that percentage again to return that money to your client our partners at paysimple do not do that you only pay fees on the money you keep um which is you know one of the reasons why well yeah one of the major reasons why they're one of our our key partners for sure absolutely let's shift to refunds then so on on the flip side of that you know if you and and you're totally right I think not only have the buyers changed uh buyer you know per buyer behavior and like consumer Behavior but you know we're used to going to Costco or Sam's Club you know and being able to return stuff you know we are used to getting things very quickly as consumers so then you go to a wedding venue and you're like oh I there's like no possibility of a refund and there and so like it increases the risk and of course at the time of booking you're sure but I'm sure for anybody who's out there writing the checks or swiping the credit cards they're thinking like gosh in the event that this doesn't work out for one reason or another whether it's covid or whether it's something venue related County ordinances you know with zoning have been an issue um all sorts of things like that like how do we how do we process the refund so how do you guys handle when a when a client needs to refund their their client um I mean with a refund like that it's um one of the things that I always share kind of is the best practice is you're going to want to make sure as a venue that you have an ironclad contract and that you're very clear in your Con in your contractual language um in exactly what options are and are not available I've even seen people within planning podcasts so far as to have you know our proposals in planning pods service our contract because they allow you to kind of represent everything that's included in a line item format and then those convert over into invoices so they're just it's cleaner they have all their legal language in there they have kind of a you know a checklist of everything that someone's committing to and paying for um line by line we still have a contract system as well that is um it's just text it's like what you would think of as like you know I call it the wall of legal text which you know no one likes but it's necessary sometimes I've had some people go so far as to have a cancellation policy in a separate contract so they get a separate signature on it so just you know I hate to say it but there there is a little bit of the the covering your back situation as a venue owner because people do expect to be able to return things to be able to get money back um as far as actually processing a refund within planning pod the way that our our refunds work is you can process the same amount that you take in so if I take a thousand dollar deposit I can process right out a planning pod that same thousand dollars right back to my client and it's a click of a button you click refund it goes are you sure you go yep I'm sure and then it just it'll process it through the payment processor so um the only exception to that rule is different payment processors have different windows in which you can process a refund so if it's been more than six months most payment processors won't allow you to process a refund from the original payment but you can process a new refund um so it just depends on what processor you're working with so if you can't do it out of planning pod which you know like I said it's I think it's about six months um you just log into your processor and you can process any amount of a refund through that through that way that's that's huge though because you know a lot of times we're not refunding deposits because most people in their contracts do have something about you know keeping the non-refundable deposit but that second piece there of second third fourth fifth payments regardless of how many or depending on how many times uh how many payments it's broken up into that's huge and likely you will be doing that within a six month window so yeah so let me get this straight planning pod doesn't actually charge you the processing fee the three percent or three point five percent or whatever it is on the funds that you take in if you're returning them is that as long as you are using our partner Pay simple so we partner with multiple like we also have square and stripe and QuickBooks payments and the ability to connect via an authorized.net Gateway um the reason that we love Pay simple so much is they're a more unique Pro they're more traditional Merchant processor than like square or stripe it's not as in instant gratification like you actually go through an approval process um but you get a customer success manager you get like you have personalized service we work with them because they treat our customers the way that we treat our customers um and uh so with them they do not charge initially so let me take a step back here so I'm going to give you a situation so that I make sure that I'm I'm not leading anyone astray if you have someone for example who made a payment of a thousand dollars and it's a refundable deposit that would go and process through to pay simple and pay simples fees um I I try not to speak directly to their fees it's as low as 2.54 for a flat rate but they use variable um they use a variable scale depending on the card that's being used they are significantly lower rates than any of our other partners and then any other car not card in hand transaction so I mean the lowest you're going to get on anyone else is 2.9 to 3.2 percent so they're pretty significantly lower so the way that they work is Pay simple takes all of the pro the payments in you get the full amount in your account and then on a monthly basis they pull out the fees for everything that you processed that month um what would happen basically is you'd get that thousand dollars they'd pull the fees out if you refund it four months later you would refund it and you would get the fees back in your account so they would adjust it on the back end um they're far more traditional it's definitely like for people who are used to using like a square or a stripe where it's just like you they take your money they take their percentage they deposit the rest on a daily basis or on a weekly basis or whatever the Cadence is for them depositing the money um pay simple's a little bit different it's a little bit more um it is more kind of uh set in stone like these are the days that I'm gonna get paid I get paid you know and then these are the days that I'm going to have those funds coming out so they also pay pretty quickly yeah but but that's not a bad thing for venues I mean it's it's not like you are a some sort of Street Merchant where you're selling something at a farmer's market or something like that I mean venues are very people are making large purchases High ticket yeah so I mean that really that's really a cool partner let's I want to talk about the other parts of planning pod and really understand kind of the different features and the different tools that you have built in there you mentioned a floor plan tool can you talk me through that yeah absolutely so um we do have a floor planning software um included in our all of our packages we have three different packages we have the venue management which is what we're focused on today we have our event management package and then we have just the floor plans package so for people who just need floor plans I'll be really honest most of the people who come for just the floor plans go why am I not getting everything else and they end up moving into one of the other packages um I love the floor plans tool um because I mean there's really no none of our competitors have a floor plans tool included with all the other venue and event management tools that's definitely something that makes us unique in the software market for venues and event planners um it's not 3D there are people who have fancier tools it's not necessarily going to be the right tool for someone who is doing event design where they want to have like florals and 3D renderings and all of that however it is to scale it is very accurate it allows you to either build your space or to upload a background image and scale it so that you can build on top of it so if you do have like architectural plans or kind of an outline from another piece of software that can be uploaded scaled and then you can in real time place the tables the chairs the um you know the DJ booths the podiums the the TV screens we have oh gosh I can't even remember how many different elements that we have and then we're always adding them at request too so um beyond that I think the biggest one of the biggest values to that floor plans tool for most of our venues um many of them are not actually managing attendees they're renting the space they're you know they don't for lack of a better term They Don't Really Care where people are sitting but you know who does care are the people having the events you know the bride and the groom or the bride and the bride or the groom in the groom they want to go in and be able to seat their guests and envision what it what's going on so it's a great value add because that floor plans tool shows up if you choose to you can put it in the client portal so you can upload a basic like here is my floor plan it can seat 100 guests you have you know they can go in and they can kind of shift tables around a little bit but beyond that they can upload their attendee list they can track RSVPs and meal choices in that attendee list and then they can go and seat their guests and they can play with it all day until they're happy with it and it kind of keeps your clients engaged from a venue's perspective it's an extra add-on it's a value add for our customers to offer to their clients and it kind of keeps their um it keeps their clients engaged and excited and you know moving forward without having a million calls and emails back and forth so it's kind of like passive engagement for the venue owners um you can also then produce a floor plan with all the meal choices or with priority or you know there's so many different ways you can use it well and I was going to ask on the venue application standpoint do you is it where so that is it set up so that we can you know email out or print out a PDF or you know a a document and then hand it to my on the ground setup team that'll set up all my tables and chairs correctly absolutely um we are on a mission to reduce printing here at planningpod so we recommend using the digital version um because you can also then zoom in and you can use the view filters and all of that but absolutely you can produce a PDF you can print it if your space is you know we're talking an eight and a half by eleven typically so unless you have a like a big printer the bigger the room the smaller the the PDF is um but you don't lose resolution so you can zoom in on a tablet or on a computer very easily and kind of just hand it off to someone to take care of that it can be emailed out we do have a full email communication system within planning pod where basically if you're in an event which our events are kind of a folder it's a it's a digital folder that stores all of the tools the floor plans the um the contracts the proposals the invoices the um food and beverage and the catering management stores everything in that folder but when you're within that event if there's something that can be turned into a PDF you can click a box and email it out um all of these things also not all of them but all of the customer facing tools you have the option to show in the client portal too so they can see exactly what to expect they can see their menus they can see their banquet event orders they can um you know download their attendee lists they can share their we have a timeline tool and itinerary um tool that they can see and interact with and share with other people who are involved in the wedding so or the event um so it's the communication out of the tools is really solid it allows you to really share information very quickly you know downloading and then uploading to an email we don't have to do that okay cool cool that's huge that's it that's one last step which makes a big difference talk to me one more piece about the communication then we'll move on I want to talk about reporting um and how the software facilitates that but for communication are you able to add multiple users and maybe even add you know if it's a blank canvas venue add in the coordinator add in you know maybe a mother of the bride or groom um you know you know whoever whoever else is a relevant participant on that file like you called it are you able to add those add those people in and can they use some of these tools as well or can you select the level of access how does that play out so our client portal the way that the access works is you kind of you set the access for all of your clients it's kind of like a user group where they all have the same access um we did consider the fact that you may have uh you know a couple who is planning their wedding and they want to see everything and they're paying for it so they want to see the invoice and they want to see the proposal and you know they're making decisions um you can set up another client portal for like the mother of the bride as you said or you know another kind of interested party or another stakeholder in that event um the only people who are going to see the financial documents like the business documents or the people assigned to them so you know the mother of the bride or the Mother-in-law might see the floor plan and the attendee list and the itinerary like the kind of more fluffy things they're important but they're you know they're not business documents it's not how much are you paying and how much do you owe and all of that so they'd be able to see that but not necessarily see the business things the contract The Proposal the um the invoice so you do have some control there over what they see um as far as you know collaborating in planning pod um one of the kind of coolest things about it is that we don't limit the number of users you can have in your planning pod account so as long as they're associated with your business we don't charge based on users at all um which you know some people it's like you buy a seat and that person can log in and use it um we're focused on events like actual like Revenue generating booked events that you might have um so that's not as important to us but we have four other access groups within the full application in addition to the client portal that people will use for like vendors so they might be able to they might have a vendor group or someone can they can invite them to collaborate but they can only see and edit very specific tools within that permission group um we'll see the same thing with like you know a super admin is probably going to be someone pretty high up in the organization whereas you might have employees where they just need to be able to print the beos and execute the event right and maybe download a floor plan a couple other things so you have pretty molecular control over exactly what people can and cannot do when they're collaborating with you in your account that is that's huge that's so huge because you're right there's so many and it really speaks back to what we were saying at the very beginning of of this this podcast about the different applications and the different types of venues it could be small you know multi-space like restaurants even with like venue space it could be um you know barns or you know properties that have multiple spaces so that's that's really cool you mentioned molecular and that made me think of data and that made me think of reporting reporting so let's let's get there and then we'll wrap this up with with pricing but um so talk to me about reporting how how do you what do you report on what reports can you generate you I like that word molecular is it molecular I want to know it is so molecular okay okay no I'm actually really excited to talk to you about reporting and I'll tell you that one of the big reasons why I'm so excited to talk to you about reporting is we are about two weeks into a complete and total overhaul of all of our reporting um so you'll hear it here first most of our users also know that we're working on this because we like to reach out to our users when uh when we're working on new things but right now our reporting is there is a ton of data a ton of information you can pull out of it it is truly um you know molecular but it can be a little overwhelming because basically everything we download into CSV files um so our reporting is really robust in that you can pull all the information you need but we made a decision several months ago that we need to take this further and to make it easier and to make it more customizable for our users so I can never promise when a product launch is coming out by any means but we are so excited for this one we're we're probably um still somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks from launching um but that will with the updates that we're making you will be able to really pull any data point that's associated with an event and kind of choose exactly what you want to see so forecasting profit and loss kind of reporting um you know looking at your leads management our leads reporting is awesome right now it's excellent it's the last thing that we redid when we redid our our leads pipeline but just the ability to report on everything from you know how many booked events do I have in this month to saying okay how many potential booked events do I have in my pipeline how much potential Revenue um do I have sitting there and then we even track you can track down to individual lead sources and say okay everyone that I got from for example wedding Pro or you know a specific online lead source that maybe you pay for you could say I got you know a thousand leads this year from this resource and of those thousand leads um 50 of them never move past the first step in my pipeline they never responded and so then you can even take it even further and say okay of the 50 that's left thirty percent of them I lost at pricing I lost at the proposal step and then you know maybe when it really comes down to it so you can even you can hone in on okay I lost these this amount of leads from this lead Source at this step in my pipeline so it really helps you to take a step back and look at like where am I spending my marketing dollars yeah like should I be paying for this advertisement you know lots of leads doesn't mean lots of money it's so true it's so true there's a level of Mastery there that I think is like you know for for a venue owner you know first starting out just get your operations down right like get get your flow learn stuff about your Venue learn stuff about the people that you have working for you get systems and processes in place around like doing the stuff but then once you have that you've got to analyze you've got to step back and as an owner kind of have that you know 30 000 foot view of saying okay what's working what's not how are we allocating our money you know who are we employing like all of those questions and you you can't do that without great data and so I love hearing that um you'll laugh at me because I'm I'm a data nerd I love metrics and um I'm I'm the first person that everyone rolls their eyes at because I'm like we need to make data driven decisions y'all like it has to happen um but it's it's so true um my background is from is really in corporate training and Reporting and so coming into I I was brand new to the the events industry period when I started working for planning pod four and a half years ago um and I learned so much from just talking to venues from you know I started out in customer support and then kind of started our training program and I think they trained me as much as I trained them I taught them how to use the software but there's been so much collection of information and data and where people hurt and where people are confused and where they feel like they have holes and um you know want to grow more and but they don't know how and they're like well everyone told me I needed to pay for this lead source and I'm I'm throwing 10 grand a year into this lead source and I get lots of leads and when you ask them okay how many of those are converting they go huh because it's just you know you're just sometimes marketing at the beginning is you're just throwing stuff at walls right and seeing what sticks um I really pride myself and my team is really proud of the kind of coaching and collaborative um approach that we take to onboarding customers because so many of them do come to planning pod and they're they're overwhelmed like they're learning a new piece of software that's overwhelming period I don't care who you are it's overwhelming um to learn a new piece of software but they're doing that while trying to continue to run their business and then we ask okay what metrics are important to you to track and it's just you can sometimes just watch the glaze over happen and that's where we really take a consultative approach and we say okay let's look at your entire business process we start this from the very first interaction we have with someone when they come and say hey I want to see what you're all about so first thing we do is we say tell us about your business what are you doing what's working really well what hurts what are you not sure about and we take that information and we make sure that that makes it over to our onboarding and training team and try and really get an intimate understanding of exactly where the pain points are and kind of what they're trying to accomplish which allows us to make recommendations on what they should track what should you be tagging what lead sources are important um and then you know helping them our customers success team is there to help them kind of look at that data and say okay what's next how do I take action on this data um and so I I really you know I said this to you before but I really appreciate the approach that you're taking to education because that's that is my background I'm I'm all about the training and education and really there's so many people who they get it but it's just no one's no one's helped guide them through these things yet and when you are you know it's that 30 000 foot overview that you kind of mentioned like it's easy for someone to take a step back and look at your business from 30 000 feet away when they're new to it you when you're working your business you're working in the business not on the business you're totally you're in it yeah yes and so it's it's hard especially when you're a smaller organization to take a step back and work on your business instead of in your business and many people just can't so they need a partner to help them do that and and so and I think that really happens at all levels that's something that I'm experiencing right now we went from managing one venue to managing three venues really quickly and so in doing that we kind of broke a lot of the systems that had worked before at one venue like systems you didn't even need almost but now at scale you started needing those systems and then there was this this feeling that I had of like okay I do need to focus down and in but I wasn't looking up and out to understand okay what are the implications of the this you know at a macro level and then it's easy to get stuck and you feel and you feel like you're hitting the ceiling so that's so relevant to my own experience as well yes I'm right there with you I mean planting pot has grown so quickly um over the last you know especially the last two and a half years three years um where I get 100 I'm guilty of getting in the weeds I've done every job that that in my department the Departments I oversee so there are moments where I will find myself doing things that I'm like I don't need to do this I need to take a step back and work on instead of in um so we can definitely I mean we're a growing business too we work with growing businesses I think the key here is it's what you just touched on is empathy it's you know being able to to take a step back and kind of put yourself in in their shoes and say okay why is this why does this hurt and what can we do to help um it's the way we approach our development process too so it works out it works out across the board like if if we can be empathetic thick and kind like that's that's basically what we've built our business on I'd love that how can we help I love that well just let's talk pricing how do you break pricing down and um and then yeah I mean we're going to include links to to your software and any landing pages or anything so that people can people can check out what you guys do um and maybe everyone if I twist Jess's arms he'll give us some sort of hookup you know for coming off the podcast putting the pressure on her this is I'm not in I'm not in charge of the the pricing hookups but I can guarantee we can hook you up with uh with some uh great training onboarding um support I love it and I'm just cool everyone I'm just cold pitching her on this just live she had no idea that was coming totally unfair very cool well yeah Jess talk to me about pricing oh absolutely okay so our venue which is in our event management packages they are hyper focused um they're they're focused on the the number of events that you have active at a single time so we don't do act you know events per year we do actual active um events on a rolling basis so um our venue packages start at 25 active events and basically once an event is over you can archive that event and it opens up more space um our venue packages start at 149 a month for annual subscriptions but we do have monthly subscriptions available as well um you definitely um end up saving a lot more doing an annual subscription um and so I mean they go up from there um we have starting at venue 25 and we kind of have uh different packages that you can step into so that's the other thing is you can kind of scale with planning pod so if you fit into that 25 or that 50 package to start off with and then you find yourself halfway through the year and you're just kicking ass and booking all of the things um then you just let your customer success manager know and we just up your package to the next level and and get you on your way so it does allow you to kind of scale with the um with the organization that's like that's honestly a great price because I mean I don't know for anyone listening right now I mean we have experience using I'm not going to go through all of the the tools but I love Tech tools and I love I mean even just on this one we're experimenting with this otter AI thing and I I like all the tools and so we've checked out a lot of the tools and maybe at a different on a different video I'll go through a kind of a breakdown of some of our experiences with some of those but you end up spending way more than 150 a month yes way more like more like three to five hundred dollars a month depending on which tools you're using and things like that so that's actually a really reasonable price for everything that you're baking into those those packages absolutely I mean what we've found is a lot of people they may not realize and isn't this everyone whether it's professional or uh whether it's professionally or in our personal lives with our streaming services and subscriptions to everything but you don't realize how quickly those things add up so when you're using a digital signature software a floor planning software a um you know something like uh I guess is still digital signature software but you have all of these different subscriptions I mean Adobe alone to get digital signatures is 49 a month and it requires the annual commitment so you know that gets you a third of the way there to that you know entry level package for a venue so it's definitely um people will say no no it's too expensive but then they come back and they look oh gosh I'm paying for eight different softwares and I'm still having to kind of hack processes together and you know that's really streamlining that's that's what we're all about and the other thing that I would just speak to is it's about time your time is valuable it's especially as someone who's running a venue time is your it is your most valuable commodity most of us in general no matter what business you're in you can't create more time it's not possible it's just not so you know that's one thing that people really have to take a step back and think about like time and energy what do I want to devote it to most of our users are passionate about their venue they're passionate about their clients they're not super passionate about taking payments or doing collections that's not fun who likes doing that um so we try and you know ease the things that are not fun and allow people to focus on why they got into their business in the first place I love that awesome well Jess thank you so much for breaking this down I am really excited to learn more about planing pod and I know that our our viewers and our listeners will be as well where if they want to connect with planing pod learn more about the software that where should they uh be headed for all of our auditory folks who aren't you know absolutely um .planningpod.com will get you right to our our main site from there you have an option to learn more we have a fantastic sales team um they are experts on our product they're passionate about building relationships and the industry they understand what people are going through and are are great at making sure that we're the right fit um that's the other thing I would just share in general with um with anyone who's concerned about like is this the right fit for me if it's not it's not and that's okay we're here to like help you decide if it's going to work for you we we're not hard sales people by any means we want to make sure it's a good partnership and that's really the key it's a collaboration it's a partnership it's consultative um we're not going to sell you anything you don't need I love that Jess thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and it's been it's been really fun here and here absolutely yeah and also we're I'm gonna I'm gonna get in trouble if I don't tell you um we are on base all of the social so we're on Instagram we're on um Facebook uh LinkedIn Twitter YouTube Tick Tock okay cool we'll have all of those things find us follow us we'll give you we'll make sure Hannah will make sure you get links um I love it I love it cool thank you so much Jesse thank you it's great to meet you Jonathan [Music] thank you foreign [Music]