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It’s 11:52. The opener thinks they play until 12:30, the headliner was told midnight, and the person on the door wants to know whether the guest list closes at 11 or stays open all evening. Nobody did anything wrong. The answers lived in four different text threads.

A run of show puts them in one place: a single page with every time, every person and every handoff for the event. Writing one takes about 20 minutes, and it means you aren’t making decisions at the loudest point of the evening.

Start with the times you don’t control

Some times come from the venue, not from you. Write those down first:

• Load-in: the earliest you, the DJs and any gear can get into the room.
• Doors: when guests can start coming in.
• Music off: when the sound has to stop, which usually tracks the venue’s last call.
• Room clear: when everyone, including your team, has to be out.

Everything else fits between those lines. If you don’t know one of them, ask the venue before you announce anything.

Build the set times around when the room fills

Here’s a hypothetical schedule for a party that runs from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. with three DJs:

• 9:00: load-in and sound check
• 9:45: door team briefed, scanner open
• 10:00: doors open, opener starts
• 11:30: second DJ
• 12:45: headliner
• 1:55: last song
• 2:00: music off, lights up

A few choices behind those times:

• Give the opener a real job. The first set plays to a room that’s still filling. Ninety minutes gives them time to build it, and saying so up front means nobody feels slotted in as filler.
• Put the headliner where the room is fullest. If you’ve run this party before, ask your door team when the line was longest and work back from there.
• Write the changeovers into the schedule. Two DJs on the same setup can hand off in a few minutes. A live act needs time to plug in and line check. Add those minutes as their own line so they don’t come out of someone’s set.
• Set a last-song time, not only an end time. If the music stops at 2:00, the headliner needs to know the last track starts by about 1:55.

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Put a name next to every job

A run of show says who as well as when. For a small party, one person can cover two of these:

• Door lead: runs check-in and owns the guest list.
• Artist contact: the person DJs text when they arrive, need water or are running late. Often that’s you.
• Sound and floor: watches levels and talks to the venue’s sound tech.
• Close-out: handles music off, lights up and getting the room cleared on time.

Add a phone number next to each name. On Beatmatch you can add your team to the event as co-hosts with their own logins. A Door Manager can see the attendee list and check guests in but can’t edit the event or change ticket prices, and a Collaborator can help manage the event and send updates to attendees.

Settle the door rules before doors open

The door is where an improvised call costs the most, because there’s a line waiting while you decide. Write down:

• When the guest list closes, and what happens to a listed name that shows up after.
• How many guests each artist can add, and who keeps that list.
• What the door says once you reach capacity.
• Whether re-entry is allowed.

Then make the check-in plan concrete. With Beatmatch, your door team scans each guest’s ticket QR code from the Beatmatch mobile app, and anyone whose phone dies can be found by name or email in the Orders tab and checked in by hand (Check In Guests). Open the scanner before the first guests reach the door.

Share the full version with your team and the public part with guests

Send the full run of show to the artists, the door team and the venue the day before, in one message, so everyone works from the same version. If anything changes, send the new version to the same thread instead of texting people one at a time.

Then publish the parts guests care about. Door time and set times go in the event description, because people plan their arrival around the act they came for. On the event page, the lineup can be reordered to match the set times, and you can update it at any time after publishing. If times move after people have bought, a text blast sends the change by SMS to guests tied to your event.

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Mark up what happened the next morning

The day after, write the real times next to the planned ones: when the line was longest, when the floor filled, who ran long and how late the room cleared. That marked-up page is the first draft of your next run of show, and after two or three events you’ll know your crowd’s timing better than any rule of thumb.

Planning your next one? Create the event on Beatmatch with its start and end times, add your artists to the lineup, and give your door team the Door Manager role so they can check guests in from their own phones.