Event Tech of the Week: @SpanPlan

Today, we’re talking about SpanPlan

Company/Tool Name: SpanPlan
Website: http://www.spanplan.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpanPlan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpanPlan
Mobile App: iPhone or Droid

What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?

The creators of SpanPlan saw a need in the event industry for a program that can handle all of a company’s business needs from start to finish. Rather than wasting time and money learning and paying for 5 different programs, SpanPlan allows you to manage your leads, events, inventory, contracts, finances, vendors, marketing campaigns, and more in one place. More details below.

What is the best audience for this tool? Corporate events? Social? Other? Large? Small?

SpanPlan is for anyone in the event industry to securely manage their entire business online. This includes event planners, wedding planners, photographers, caterers, DJs, bands, venues, florists, make-up artists, etc.

What does your tool help event planners do better?

Everything! Seriously. SpanPlan can help you accomplish all of the following and more in one place:

– Manage your leads in one place – sending emails & booking appointments has never been easier! You can even automatically import leads directly from your own website’s “Contact Us” page.

– Stay on top of your schedule anywhere you go by syncing your SpanPlan calendar with your Google calendar.

– Manage your employees by assigning them to events, inputting their pay/hours, and giving them privileges to generate/sign contracts.

– Easily send pricing to your clients with a few clicks and zero attachments or downloads.

– Quickly gather client information for events using the KYE (Know Your Event) form. With the client entering the information, you save yourself both time and event-day 2nd-guessing.

– Close deals in less time using the secure customizable built-in contract with e-signature.

– Manage your inventory in one place; assign items to an event and check them back in as good, damaged, or lost.

– Generate instant invoices for each event, schedule payment dates, automatically send notifications to your clients, and securely accept payments through PayPal, Google Checkout, and Authorize.net.

– Keep track of your income/expenses with our built-in accounting system. Print your yearly reports at tax time and you are good to go!

How is your tool different from/better than the competition?

No other program offers the quantity and quality of beneficial features that SpanPlan does. We do not charge an arm and a leg for your account nor do we nickel-and-dime you for additional features. SpanPlan provides its entire feature lineup for all subscribers.

SpanPlan is also a true start-to-finish product that requires no double-entering of information. Once you send pricing and the client provides you their event info, all of the data automatically fills down to every other feature. You don’t have to waste time and energy re-typing info into your contracts, inventory list, or invoices. Come tax time, you can generate multiple reports with a few clicks and have all your information ready to go. The amount of time, stress, and frustration that you can avoid with SpanPlan is invaluable.

Finally, we do not stand still as a business. Our programmers are constantly working on new features so that you can do whatever you need to run your business.

What is the single coolest feature of your product?

The KYE (Know Your Event) form is an extremely beneficial feature that only we offer. Gathering client information can be one of the most time-consuming and frustrating aspects of an event professional’s job. Other products require you to enter the same questions over and over for each client, or they have one standard questionnaire that can’t be edited, but the KYE does it all.

With the KYE, you set your standard form and then never retype the questions again. The form can be reused for as many clients as you want without having to clear the form and save it as a new file. “What if I have a client with special requests?” No problem! With a couple clicks, you can add or remove questions from that particular client’s form without affecting the standard form. No accidental saves that lose all your past forms.

Best of all, the client fills in the information, saving you both time and energy. Once you send the form to the client, they open it in their own secure (automatically generated) portal and fill out the information. The saved info will be in your account instantly. You can even set deadlines to when the information can be entered or changed and you can decide which info to automatically include in the contract (again, no wasteful double-entering). By having the client fill out the KYE, you do not have worry about them coming back to you during or after the event saying you go something wrong.

Anything else we need to know?

If you haven’t yet joined the SpanPlan family, start your free 30-day trial now (no credit cards required) and use promo code LIZKING to experience what SpanPlan can do for your business!

Also, you can get to know SpanPlan via our video library.

This weekly series spotlights a new tech tool that is designed to help make planning events much more seamless. Whether it’s using event software to track every detail from start to finish or mobile apps that deliver content to attendees’ fingertips, these technologies allow planners to divert their stress to more critical issues like deciding which napkin color looks best.