How to build a seating chart for an event

When you need numbered seats

Not every event needs numbered seats. At a standing concert or an outdoor event numbering is both unnecessary and slows the door down. At theatre, staged shows, conferences and seated dinners it is required.

The test is simple: if the guest needs to know their place in advance, you need numbered seating; if not, capacity is enough.

Block, row, seat

A floor plan has three layers. The block is a section of the hall (left, centre, balcony); the row is a horizontal line inside that block; the seat is a single place in a row.

This structure also drives pricing. If the front block and the balcony are priced differently in the same hall, the price attaches to the block, not the seat. Sales cannot open until blocks are linked to ticket types.

The venue's own numbering

This is where it most often goes wrong. The venue's seats already carry numbers: what is printed on the seat, the signage at the entrance and what the staff know. If the ticket shows a different number, the guest cannot find their seat.

The plan has to follow the venue's own chart. If the hall is sold on more than one platform, the numbering must match exactly; otherwise the same seat gets sold twice, or seats go unsold that nobody is sitting in.

Blocked and reserved seats

Not every seat is for sale. Technical crew, press, artist guests and restricted-view seats are taken out of the inventory. Doing this after sales open is hard: a sold seat cannot be taken back.

The right order is to finish the plan before sales. If the plan changes after sales begin, sold seats collide with the new plan and that collision has no clean fix.

If the plan changes after sales open

When a change is unavoidable, the rule is that sold seats are not touched. Adding a block, closing an unsold seat and changing a price are generally safe; moving or deleting a sold seat is not.

When a seat is deleted, the ticket for it is left with nowhere to go and the guest arrives at a door with no seat. That is why changing a plan on a live event is an operations decision, not a product one.

How innclude does it

The floor plan is drawn in the panel: add a block, set rows and seats per row, with curve and tiered layouts supported. Seat codes can follow the venue's own numbering, so the label shown can match the venue's without changing the ticket's identity. A plan is built once and used across several events, each event taking its own seat inventory. Operations that would change the plan after sales begin are rejected by the API.