A spreadsheet is enough for exhibitor and sponsor management when one person owns it, the floor plan is simple and the contracts are few enough to hold in your head. Software earns its cost when several people edit at once, when booth sales need a live floor plan, or when sponsor deliverables start being missed.
What is being tracked
Before choosing a tool, list the records. For an exhibition or a sponsored conference they are:
- Booth inventory and the floor plan: which stands exist, their size, price and status (available, held, sold)
- Contracts: who signed, for what, on which terms
- Invoices and payments: deposit, balance, due dates, what is overdue
- Sponsor deliverables: logo placements, speaking slots, emails, signage and passes, each with an owner and a deadline
- Exhibitor staff badges: allocation per booth, names submitted, extras charged
- The exhibitor manual and its deadlines: stand design approval, electrical orders, insurance documents, freight
- Contacts: the person who signed is seldom the person who turns up to build the stand
These are seven linked lists. The linking is where the difficulty lies.
Where a spreadsheet is genuinely enough
One workbook with a tab per list, shared online, handles a lot. It suits an event where one person sells and manages exhibitors, the floor plan changes rarely, sponsors are few with packages you can remember, and invoicing happens in your accounting software anyway.
Make it sturdier with a few habits. Give every exhibitor an ID used on every tab. Use fixed status values from a drop-down. Keep one row per deliverable, not one cell per sponsor with everything typed into it. Add a column for the date each row was last checked. Keep last year's file untouched as a reference.
Signs it no longer is
- Two people sold the same booth, or nearly did
- The floor plan image and the booth tab disagree
- A sponsor asked where a promised item was and nobody could answer quickly
- Chasing manual deadlines means writing individual emails from a filtered list
- Exhibitors email asking for things they could look up themselves, such as badge allocation or balance due
- Finance and the event team keep separate versions of who has paid
- The person who built the sheet is the only one who dares edit it
One of these is an irritation. Several together mean the spreadsheet is now costing staff time, and an exhibitor portal with a live floor plan would earn its keep.
What to check when you look at software
Exhibitor management platforms are priced in different ways: per event, per exhibitor, as a share of booth sales, or as a yearly licence. Model each against your own numbers for the next three editions. Our software bill calculator is a free calculator for exactly that sum. Ask whether you can export contracts, floor plan data and exhibitor contacts after the event, and whether last year's data stays accessible if you stop paying.
Rented platforms are a sound choice for plenty of shows, especially those with a complex floor. Our guide to renting versus owning business software sets out when building your own makes sense and when it clearly does not.
The middle ground is an organiser who has outgrown the spreadsheet but uses a small part of a large platform. That is where Hiro works: we rebuild the parts you use around the way your team already runs the show, and you own the code and the data. There is more on the page for conference and trade show organisers.