Everything the party needs, in one place

Collect RSVPs and keep one headcount

Staff answer once, from a link. You get a running count that updates as people reply, so the number you give the caterer is the number in front of you rather than something you assembled from a form and an inbox.

• One yes-or-no per person, attached to their name
• A live total instead of a stale copy in a spreadsheet
• See who has not answered yet, so reminders go to them and not to everyone

The gap between who says yes and who turns up is the most useful number you can hand to next year's budget conversation, and it only exists if the RSVP list and the door list are the same list.

Ask about dietary needs with the RSVP

The dietary question sits next to the RSVP question, in the same form, at the same moment. That is the whole trick: people answer while they are already answering you, so you hear from everyone instead of from whoever saw the follow-up.

• Answers stay attached to the person who gave them
• Counts by group, so you can send the caterer numbers rather than a pile of replies
• Nothing to reconcile between two lists

More on how to word the question and what a caterer actually needs:collecting dietary restrictions for a work party.

Take song requests from everyone, not just the group chat

Ask for a song in the same form as the RSVP and you get requests from across the whole company, not from the handful of people who were watching the chat that afternoon. The playlist ends up built from what the room asked for.

• One request per person, collected with everything else
• A single list to hand to whoever runs the music
• Requests that came up more than once are the safest bets of the night

How to turn the requests into an actual running order:building an office party playlist everyone likes.

Check people in at the door

Attendance is tracked before, during and after the event, on the same list that collected the RSVPs. Whoever is on the door marks people in as they arrive — no printed sheet, no marking up a clipboard and typing it back in later.

• Before: who has said yes
• During: who has actually arrived
• After: what the real attendance was

Run the raffle and hand out prizes

Draw for prizes and year-end awards from inside the app, off the attendance list, so the draw comes from the people who are actually in the room. No tickets in a hat, no scraps of paper, no arguments about how the winner was picked.

• Draw from the people checked in that night
• Keep it quick — a long draw empties a room
• A record of who won what, for the recap and for next year

Collect the photos in a shared album

Everyone takes photos at the party and almost nobody sends them. A shared album gives people somewhere to put them while the night is still happening, which is the only time you will reliably get them.

• One album per event, not twenty camera rolls
• Photos land while people still have them, not two weeks later
• A ready-made source for the recap video or the slide deck

This is the part committees are most surprised by. The recap is usually a week of chasing people; here it is already assembled by the time the lights come up.

Set the event up and change it later

Create the event with its date, time and place, choose what you want to ask people, and send one link. When something moves — and something always moves — you change it in one place instead of sending a correction and hoping.

• Event dates and details in one record
• Settings for what you ask and what you collect
• One link that stays the same when the details change

For where each of these lands in the run-up to the night, see theoffice holiday party checklist.