Event layouts
Draw the event to scale, on the real venue.
Outdoors on the satellite photo, indoors on the venue's own floor plan, with your own tents and tables at their real size. Seat the guests, share it with the planner, get it approved and install it, all in the rental software that already knows the order, the stock, the crew and the customer.
Drawing
Every item at its real size, on the lawn or in the ballroom.
Each product carries its size from Inventory: what it draws as, its shape, its width and length, the seats around a table and the clear ground a staked tent needs. A 20×40 tent is 20 by 40 feet, and a 60-inch round set to seat eight draws with its eight chairs. Outdoors, draw on the site's satellite photo, or on a plain grid. Drag, turn, copy and undo, line the drawing up with the yard, and it saves as you go.
Indoors, switch to the grid and upload the floor plan of the ballroom, barn or hall as a PDF or an image (PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 15 MB); a PDF uses its first page. A layout for a site with no map location starts on the grid, ready for its plan. Tap both ends of something you know the length of, like a wall or a doorway, type the real distance, and the plan is to scale, even with tables already drawn over it. Fit drawing to plan sizes the drawing to it, Show plan fades it so your tables read on top, and the plan can be moved, replaced or removed later. It shows wherever the layout does and prints under the drawing on every PDF.
The Check tab warns about overlaps, anything inside a staked tent's clear ground (5 feet unless you change it), and tables closer than 5 feet edge to edge (also yours to set). Capacity comes from the floor area: 12 square feet a guest for banquet, 10 for classroom, 9 for cocktail, 8 for theater, and 3 for each dancer. They're planning guides, not a fire-code check.
Draw faster
Two hundred guests, banquet style. Here's the tent.
Start from the guest count, fill a tent in one step, or start from a drawing you've sold before.
- Plan for guests
- Give the guest count, the seating style and whether there's dancing. It suggests the smallest tent from your own sized products, a dance floor, and the tables and chairs, and says what's missing when a product has no size yet. Add to drawing places it all, Undo takes it back, and nothing is booked.
- Fill
- Select a tent and fill it with tables, lined up inside the walls with their chairs, clear of a dance floor or bar already inside, at your table spacing. An empty 40×60 takes 24 60-inch rounds with eight chairs each. Or fill it with rows of chairs, with or without a center aisle.
- Templates
- Save a drawing you sell often, like a 40×60 wedding for 200, and start the next layout from it, centered on the new venue.
- Tents that stretch
- A tent from a tent system stretches by the square handle on its end and snaps to the lengths its sections can build, with a warning when they're short for the dates.
Every guest at a table, parties kept together.
The guest list lives on the layout, beside the tables it fills.
Bring in the list and seat it
Import a CSV from Excel, Google Sheets or a wedding website, or paste the names, and PortaPro reads the name, party, meal, table and notes columns. Seat everyone fills the empty seats, keeping each party together at the table that fits it best (a party too big for any table is split), or seat guests one at a time. Tables are numbered front row first, with their seats counted from their chairs, and the meal counts add up as you go.
Print the seating chart
One PDF: the plan with table numbers, the meal totals, each table's guests, then everyone A to Z with their table. Turn on Show the seating chart to the customer and they get it beside the layout. Guest names stay in the PDF, never on the page, and seating is never part of approval, so it can change right up to the event.
Customers move tables
They decide where. You decide what.
Turn on Customers can move tables and chairs and they can drag tables, chairs, lounge furniture, bars, buffets, the dance floor, stages, decor, heaters and barricades on the share link, the quote page or the portal, then save their changes or start over. Tents, generators, lighting, restrooms and anything you locked never move, and nothing is added, removed, resized or turned.
You get a notification, each change is listed under Changes by the customer, and Put back returns their items to where they were (the ones nobody has moved since). If the layout was already approved, a move asks them to approve it again.
Customer approval
Approved before the truck is loaded.
Approval is separate from accepting the quote, and you ask for it one layout at a time, on their quote page, in their portal or on the share link. The quote PDF carries the layout as a page. They see your layout terms and an approve-by date 14 days before delivery unless you change it, type their name to approve or ask for changes. You're notified, and a customer's answer is also posted to their conversation in the Inbox. Change the drawing afterward and they're asked again.
- On a quote, a reminder email before the date
- Each answer frozen with the terms they saw
- A copy on the e-sign agreement
Install day
The crew installs from the same drawing.
- Reference marks
- Lettered points that will still be there on setup day, like a house corner or the edge of the driveway. They're for the crew and never appear on the customer's copy.
- Install sheet
- Every rented item numbered, tents first, then dance floors and stages, then the rest. Each tent's size and diagonal for squaring the frame, and every corner measured from the two nearest marks.
- Pull sheet
- With item movement on, the same numbers are on the warehouse pull sheet, so the line that loads chairs says which tables they're for.
- Driver app
- The numbered drawing on the driver's job, a tap for each item's units, and Show where I am on the satellite drawing.
Why it's in your rental software
A drawing app can draw the tent. It can't tell you the tent isn't booked.
A separate diagram tool knows shapes. PortaPro knows your products, the order, the units held for it, the customer and the crew, so the drawing is checked against all of them.
The pieces
The order
The stock
The customer
The agreement
The crew
The record
Questions operators ask
What does the guest list need to look like?
A CSV saved from Excel, Google Sheets or a wedding website, or names pasted in. PortaPro reads a header row with Name (or First and Last), Party (or Group, Household or Family), Meal, Table and Notes (or Dietary or Allergies). With no header row, the first column is the name. A Table column seats a guest when it matches a table's number or label. Up to 2,000 guests a layout.
Does changing the seating undo the customer's approval?
No. The guest list and who sits where are never part of the layout's approval, so seating can change right up to the event. Moving a table is different: once the layout is approved, a moved table reads as changed since approval and the customer is asked to approve it again.
Is the Check tab a fire-code check?
No. It's a planning guide: clear ground around a staked tent and the gap between tables, both numbers you can change, and square feet per guest for the seating style. It catches the drawing that won't fit before anyone loads a truck. Your fire marshal or building department has the final word.
Which plan is it on?
Event layouts are on the Growth plan, and they're off until you turn them on in Settings under Event Layouts.
Can I draw on a phone?
Draw on a computer or a tablet. On a phone, layouts open read-only, which is how drivers use them on the job: the numbered drawing, a tap for each item's units, and Show where I am.
Bring your hardest venue to the demo. We'll draw it.
A tent on a lawn or a ballroom from its floor plan, seated, shared and ready for the customer to approve.
