Keeping an accurate headcount for a gathering of eight to forty

Somewhere between eight and forty guests, a party stops being something you can hold in your head and starts being arithmetic. Below eight, you know everyone’s answer by heart. Above forty, you are running an operation and you want tooling POOK deliberately does not have. In the middle sits the awkward size where a spreadsheet feels excessive but guessing costs money — too much food, too few chairs, a table booked for the wrong number. This guide is about that middle.

The three numbers that matter

Almost every host tracks one number, the count of yeses, and is then surprised on the night. Track three instead.

• Confirmed. Guests whose current answer is attending. This is what you plan against.
• Undecided. Guests whose answer is still deciding. Treat it as a range, not a number, and expect roughly half of it to convert.
• Effective. What POOK actually counts: the answer as read at this moment, with maybes converted to declines once the gathering is under 24 hours away. The dashboard shows both the chosen and the effective response per guest, which is exactly the distinction most spreadsheets lose.

Headcount math, worked

Take a dinner where 26 people were invited, 18 answered attending, 5 are undecided and 3 declined, with two days to go.

The last row is the point of the whole exercise. At 24 hours out the undecided column empties itself, so the number you carry to the shop is not an optimistic one.

What the creator dashboard shows

Per guest, six fields: the nickname they chose, their chosen response, their effective response, their check-in status, the timestamp of the answer, and the optional note if they left one. Above that sit aggregate RSVP counts. During the day you can also moderate — hide a chat message, remove a participant photo, or block an admitted participant, which releases their seat and bars that device.

Two limits to plan around. There is no CSV or spreadsheet export, so if you need the list somewhere else you are reading it off the screen. And participant-level details — nickname, gender, note, chat, photos, per-person game records — are deleted 48 hours after the gathering, leaving you the aggregate recap. If a guest note contains something you need next week, write it down before then.

Capacity arithmetic

Every invitation includes 30 guests on every plan, free included. Additional capacity is sold in blocks of 30 for $0.90 each, bought from Studio on a published invitation and applied immediately after payment. The add-on is bound to that one invitation and cannot be transferred to another.

Buy before you share widely. Once confirmed attendance reaches capacity, further answers are refused with a full reason and nobody is queued, so a popular invitation can lock out the people you most wanted there. Prices are in USD with tax added at checkout, and the full ladder including plan credits is on the pricing page.

On the day

1. Open live entry by reaching the start time; entry runs only between the start and end you set.
2. Put the door QR where people queue, and keep the entry code handy for anyone whose camera is blocked.
3. Mark arrivals as they come in so the check-in column tells you who is still missing.
4. Stop counting once the room is full and switch to hosting; the numbers have done their job.

Who should not use this

If you need an exportable attendee list for accounting, badge printing, plus-one tracking, meal selections, assigned seating, ticket scanning at scale, or an integration with another system, POOK offers none of those and this guide will not get you there. It is written for one host with a phone and a room.

If responses are the problem rather than counting them, read how to get people to RSVP. For the publishing steps themselves see the free invitation walkthrough, and the POOK home page explains how the invitation becomes a live room once everyone is in it.