Invoicing as an Event Planner

An event is a hundred moving parts pretending to be one line on a contract. With Fee-Lion you can quote the whole thing up front, take a deposit to lock the date, bill the rest in stages as milestones land, and keep every vendor and expense pinned to one project so you actually know your margin when the lights come up.

Estimate the whole event

Start in Estimates and price the event the way you actually scope it. Fee-Lion gives you three kinds of line items, and an event usually needs all three:

• Tasks — your planning and on-site coordination, billed as hours × rate.
• Fees / units — qty × rate for the countable stuff: tables, place settings, rentals, staffing hours, vendor coordination per head.
• Discounts & surcharges — a rush surcharge for a six-week timeline, or a goodwill discount for a repeat client.

Add tax where it applies and set a deposit % right on the estimate so the booking deposit is baked in. Send it, and your client opens it in their portal through a magic link — no login, no password. They approve with one click and you get notified the moment the date is theirs.

Tip: Set your usual booking deposit once under Settings → Preferences (deposit defaults) so every new event estimate already asks for the right percentage. No more retyping “50% to hold the date.”

Bill in stages, not all at once

Events rarely settle in a single payment. The natural rhythm is deposit now, progress payment at a milestone, balance after the event. Fee-Lion fits that exactly.

1. When the estimate is approved, click Convert to turn it into an invoice — or convert it to a project if you want to run the event there first.
2. The deposit becomes its own invoice with a Pay button. Your client pays by card and the money lands in your own Stripe account (connect it once under Settings).
3. At each milestone, create the next invoice for that stage. Edit line items as scope shifts — guest count climbs, a vendor gets added — so each bill reflects the real work.
4. Send the final balance after the event. Every payment, card or offline, is recorded against the same client so nothing slips.

If a piece of the event runs on a fixed monthly arrangement — say an ongoing venue retainer — a recurring invoice with auto-pay handles it on autopilot.

Run the event as a project

This is where event work really earns its keep in Fee-Lion. Open Projects and the event becomes one place that holds everything.

• Custom sub-statuses let you mirror your real timeline: Booked → Vendors Confirmed → Final Walkthrough → Event Day → Wrapped.
• Checklists track the goals that have to happen — catering confirmed, rentals ordered, day-of run sheet signed off.
• Expenses attributed to the project capture what you pay vendors, so your margin on the event is honest, not guessed.
• Client discussions keep approvals and “can we add a photo booth?” requests in one thread instead of buried in email.

Because every vendor expense and every staged invoice is tied to the same project, your reports show real profit per event. Drill into revenue, watch invoice aging so a balance never goes cold, and export a clean CSV or PDF when it’s time to reconcile the season.

Tip: Mark vendor expenses as billable when you’re passing a cost straight through to the client, and not-billable when it’s your own overhead. That one toggle keeps your event margin accurate without any spreadsheet gymnastics.

Move at event-day speed

When you’re standing in a loading dock and a client texts “did the balance clear?”, hit ⌘K to open the command palette. Type pay INV-204 or create invoice for Acme and you’re there in a second — no clicking through menus while the florist waits.

What’s next

• Price an estimate with tasks, fees, and units
• Collect a deposit on an estimate
• Estimate to deposit to project to final invoice
• Track project profitability and margin