A spreadsheet can tell you which booths are sold, but your exhibitors can't see it. A live floor plan shows availability to everyone.
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Excel and Google Sheets run a large share of the events industry, and they deserve the credit. They're free or already licensed, everyone on the team knows how to use them, and they bend to any process: one row per booth, a status column with Available / Reserved / Sold, a price, a company name, a "paid?" checkbox and a notes column that grows all season. Google Sheets adds real-time co-editing and comments. For budgeting, reporting and ad-hoc analysis, nothing beats a spreadsheet.
The gap appears when the spreadsheet becomes the system of record for booth sales. It doesn't contain the floor plan, so the map lives in a separate PDF that someone colors by hand to match the status column. It has no booking logic, so if two salespeople promise booth 214 on the same afternoon, nothing stops them. Exhibitors can't see it, so every "what's still available?" turns into an email, a screenshot and a manual hold. Invoices, exhibitor logos and descriptions, and the public exhibitor list all get copied out of the sheet into other places by hand.
This page is for organizers who run a booth sales spreadsheet (often a trade show booth tracking Excel template plus a PDF floor plan) and want to see what changes when the sheet, the map and the booking process become one live system.
| Feature | ExpoFP | Spreadsheet + PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose-built for event floor plans | Yes. Floor plan, booth sales and exhibitor directory in one platform | No. A general spreadsheet plus a separate static map |
| Drawing / editing booths | FP Designer: drag, drop, merge and resize booths; changes go live instantly | Booths are rows; the map is edited in another tool and re-exported |
| Import an existing plan | Upload your current floor plan file/image and the ExpoFP team builds it, or draw it in FP Designer | The PDF stays separate from the sheet; nothing connects booth rows to shapes |
| Live booth availability | Exhibitors see live availability on the map | Status column visible only to people with sheet access; the PDF shows whatever was last colored in |
| Booth reservations | Exhibitors reserve on the map; organizer approves and tracks in one place | Emails and calls, then someone updates a row by hand |
| Double-booking protection | Booth status lives in one place, on the map itself | Relies on people checking the sheet first; formulas can flag duplicates after the fact |
| Online booth payments | Exhibitors can purchase by credit card on the map (payments option; not on Light plan) | Separate invoicing and payment tools; "paid" ticked manually |
| Exhibitor profiles & directory | Booths link to exhibitor logo, description and contacts | Columns in the sheet, copied to the website by hand |
| Exhibitor self-service updates | Personal auto-login link; exhibitors edit their profile and the organizer approves | Exhibitors email changes; staff paste them in |
| Attendee search & filters | Search by company, booth or category; category filters; bookmarks | Not attendee-facing |
| Wayfinding / routes | Turn-by-turn digital wayfinding across floors and buildings | None |
| Mobile experience | Browser-based, mobile-ready; no app or sign-in | Sheets on a phone work for staff, not for exhibitors or attendees |
| Sharing & website embedding | One link (yourevent.expofp.com), embeddable in websites and event apps | Share the sheet internally; export the PDF and exhibitor list for the public |
| Updating after changes | One change updates the map, availability and directory | Update the row, recolor the PDF, re-export, re-send |
| Sponsorship / monetization | Sponsored listings, featured placements, banner ads, logos in booths, booth extras, sponsorship packages | Tracked as rows; nothing visible to attendees |
| Analytics | Searches, booth views, routes, exhibitor activity; included with every plan | Sales totals you build yourself; no attendee data |
| Integrations | Registration, ticketing or CRM (exhibitor data flows both ways); JSON API | Manual imports/exports, or custom scripts |
| Cost | Free 7-day trial; DIY $149/mo; done-for-you from $990 one-time (≤100 booths; scales with booth count) | Free / already licensed. The cost is staff time and errors |
The spreadsheet itself costs nothing. The cost comes from how many places the same fact has to be updated. Take a single booth sale. A salesperson confirms booth 214 with an exhibitor and changes the status cell to "Reserved". Someone opens the floor plan file, colors booth 214, exports a new PDF and uploads it to the website. Someone else creates the invoice, then later ticks "Paid" when the money arrives. The exhibitor emails their logo and description, which get pasted into the sheet and then into the website's exhibitor list. One sale has now been entered four or five times in different places by different people.
Double-bookings come out of exactly this gap. The sheet is only correct if everyone checks it before promising a booth, and the PDF is only correct if someone recolored it after the last change. A COUNTIF formula can flag a duplicate booth number after it has been entered, but it can't stop two people agreeing to the same corner booth on the same phone call. Then you're left choosing which exhibitor to disappoint.
Then the season ends and you start next year's file by copying last year's sheet, clearing the status column and rebuilding the PDF colors from scratch.
| Step | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Exhibitor asks what's available | Check the sheet, screenshot the PDF, email back. | Send the live map link. Availability is always current. |
| Booth reserved | Update the row, recolor the PDF, re-export, re-upload. | The exhibitor reserves on the map, you approve, and the booth shows as taken everywhere. |
| Payment | Create an invoice, chase it, tick "Paid". | The exhibitor can pay by credit card on the map (where payment collection is enabled). |
| Exhibitor details | Copy logos and descriptions from email into the sheet and website. | Exhibitors update their own profile through an auto-login link; you approve. |
| Next year | Duplicate the sheet, clear statuses, recolor the PDF. | Copy last year's map and exhibitors to the new event. |
Exhibitors see what's available, reserve it and pay, and you approve.
The PDF or image you color-code today is enough. Keep your spreadsheet as a reference for booth numbers, prices and current holds.
Upload the plan and have the ExpoFP team build it (Light, Standard and Pro), or draw it yourself in FP Designer on the DIY plan, matching your existing booth numbers.
Connect your registration, ticketing or CRM system so exhibitor data flows both ways, or invite exhibitors to complete their profiles via auto-login links. Ask the ExpoFP team about the best way to bring over the exhibitor list you already have.
Turn on reservations (included on DIY, Standard and Pro) and, if you want, credit card payments, so new sales happen on the map rather than by email.
Publish one link, embed the map on your website, and next season copy the map and exhibitors to the new event instead of rebuilding the spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets remain the best tool for the work around booth sales: budgets, revenue forecasts, board reports, commission calculations and one-off analysis. Your finance team will probably keep a sheet regardless. They also make sense for very small events with a handful of booths, one person in charge and no need for exhibitors or attendees to see a map. The change worth making is to stop using the spreadsheet as the live booking system and the public floor plan, and to let a live map take over that part.
Plenty of templates exist, and most follow the same pattern: one row per booth with columns for size, price, status, company and payment. They work for internal tracking. What a template can't do is show live availability to exhibitors, take reservations or payments, or keep a floor plan in sync, so you still maintain a PDF alongside it.
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Information on this page is based on publicly available product materials and may change over time. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are trademarks of their respective owners. This is ExpoFP's own comparison and reflects our perspective based on publicly available information and user-facing product research.