Organising a staff party: registrations, dietary needs and check-in in one place

A staff party is an event without a till

Whoever organises the staff party or the annual company event usually does it next to their regular job. HR, an office manager or a few colleagues from the party committee find a venue, arrange the catering and send the invitation. Then the real work starts: keeping track of who is coming, who eats vegetarian, who brings a partner and who takes the bus.

A staff party is not about sales, it is about attendance. Yet you need the same things as an organiser who sells tickets: a clear registration, a limit on places, the right details per attendee and an overview at the door. In this article we go through the steps, from planning to the day after the party.

Step 1: start early and pick your date

Good venues and caterers get booked up quickly, especially in December and in wedding season. For a group of a hundred people or more, allow a few months of preparation. Settle these early:

• Purpose and format: a dinner, a reception, a daytime team activity, a party with or without partners.
• Date: avoid school holidays and busy periods in your sector. If in doubt, ask a few teams about their schedules.
• Budget per person: venue, catering, drinks, entertainment and transport. Keep a reserve for last-minute changes in guest numbers.
• Capacity: how many people does the venue hold, seated or standing? That number will become the limit on your registrations.

Then send a short save the date. People who know the date early plan around it. A vague announcement makes it hard for colleagues to plan.

Step 2: an invitation that raises no questions

The real invitation follows a few weeks later. Put together everything colleagues need to know: date, time, address, dress code, whether partners are welcome, how to get there and the registration deadline. End with one clear link to the registration form.

That last point makes the difference. If you work with "reply to this e-mail", you end up with dozens of replies in your inbox, half-completed menu choices and a spreadsheet you maintain by hand. One form with fixed questions gives you one list in which everyone appears the same way.

Step 3: set up the registration form

In ClearTix you create the staff party as a regular event. Under Tickets, tick Free event. €0 tickets never generate a ClearTix fee, on any plan, and for free tickets you do not need to connect a payment provider. Colleagues register with their name and e-mail address and immediately get a confirmation e-mail with their ticket.

Under Questions at checkout, add what you need beyond name and e-mail. For a staff party that is often:

• Menu choice as a drop-down: meat, fish, vegetarian.
• Allergies or other dietary needs as a text field, not required.
• Department or site, handy for the seating plan.
• Are you taking the bus? as radio buttons.

Choose whether the form is filled in once per order or once per ticket. If a colleague comes with a partner, you want both people's menu choice: so choose once per ticket. More about fields and exports in collecting attendee details and dietary needs.

Keep the number of required fields low. Only ask for what you will really use on the day or for the caterer.

Step 4: partners, bus seats and limits

Most questions around a staff party are about exceptions. A few settings handle them:

• Partners: create a second ticket type Partner and set Max. per order to 1. That way each colleague can bring one person. If partners pay a contribution, give that ticket type a price and connect Stripe or Mollie; the employee ticket type stays free.
• Venue capacity: set the event's total capacity to what the venue holds. Once it is reached, registration closes automatically.
• Bus seats: with a capacity pool, several ticket types, for example Employee with bus and Partner with bus, draw from one stock of, say, 50 bus seats.
• Registration deadline: with a sales window you close registrations on the day the caterer wants the final number.

Do you want to keep people outside the company from registering? A published event is publicly visible on your event page. Set the ticket type to hidden and share an access code or unlock link through internal mail. How that works is explained in hidden tickets and access codes. This feature is included in Studio and Pro.

Step 5: dietary needs and privacy

An allergy is more than a preference: it can be health data. So handle it with care. Do not make the field required, state what you use it for ("only to pass on to the caterer") and share with the caterer only the list they need, not the whole attendee list.

ClearTix deletes personal data automatically after fixed retention periods, and you handle data requests (export, correction or erasure) per e-mail address. The rest of the checklist is in GDPR-compliant ticketing. This is not legal advice: if in doubt, check with your data protection officer.

Step 6: the final week

A few days before the party, export the attendees and their answers to CSV. Use it to make the seating plan, give the caterer the number of menus per type and send the bus driver the passenger list.

Is anything still changing, such as the door time, a parking tip or a moved entrance? Send a message to all attendees, filtered by ticket type if needed. That way you reach only the people who registered, not the whole company.

Step 7: check-in at the door

Every attendee gets a ticket with a QR code, as a PDF and for Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. At the entrance you scan it with the ClearTix scanner on a smartphone. You see at once who is already inside, and a ticket that was already scanned stands out.

Got several people at the door? In Studio and Pro you give them the Scanner role: they can check people in, but they do not see orders or settings. You need an internet connection to open the scanner, but scanning keeps working if the connection drops for a moment. Do test the coverage in the venue beforehand. Read more in QR tickets without an app.

After the party: who actually came?

At a free party there are always a few people who register and do not turn up. Under Statistics you see the check-in figures next to the number of registrations. Next year you will know better how many menus to order, and you can give the caterer and the venue a more realistic number.

A short thank-you e-mail to attendees, with a link to the photos or a request for feedback, rounds off the party neatly.

For other company events too

The same approach works for a New Year reception, a family day, a team-building day or a customer event. Inviting external guests who need an invoice, for example for a paid seminar? Then see group bookings and invoices for companies.

Getting started is free with the Free plan (3 events per month). What each plan includes is on the pricing page and the features page.

Read also

• Collecting attendee details and dietary needs with forms
• GDPR-compliant ticketing: the checklist for organisers

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