On October 11 we are putting on the Family Fall Fair x Generation Muslim at the Hazelmere Pumpkin Patch in Surrey. Corn maze, tractor rides, farm animals, halal food, and a row of vendor booths run by small local businesses and charities.
The fun part is the fair. The part nobody posts about is the paperwork behind those booths. This is how I stopped doing most of it by hand.
The job nobody sees
Every booth at a fair like this needs the same chain of small tasks. An agreement written with the right business name, fee and ticket count. A signature. An invoice. A payment. A reminder when the payment does not come. A tracking link so the vendor earns something for every ticket they sell. A description of what they are selling, approved before the day. Then the logistics: setup time, no electricity on site, takedown at 7:30.
One vendor is easy. Thirteen vendors is a second job. Miss one email and somebody shows up on the day with no table, or worse, does not show up at all.
What I handed over
I gave my assistant one thing to start with: a signed agreement from last year and a list of vendors. No templates, no system, no training.
Here is what came back over the following week.
Thirteen vendor agreements, each one built from our template with the right business name, category, fee, ticket allocation and my signature already on it.
Thirteen invoices, numbered in sequence, with our payment terms and the right amount on each.
A vendor tracker that shows, at a glance, who has been sent a packet, who has signed, who has paid, and who still owes a menu description.
Twelve ticket tracking links matched to the right vendor, with an email to each explaining how they earn from it.
Reminder emails drafted and waiting in my drafts folder for the vendors who went quiet.
A social media pack with the graphic, a caption, and a posting plan, so thirteen vendors promote the same event the same way.
None of that went out under the agents name. Every email came from me. That part matters, and I will come back to it.
What it is actually like
The thing I did not expect is how normal it feels. I prompt Fo "new vendor, $250, retail." a few minutes later the agreement and the invoice are in my inbox, correctly numbered, ready to send. The vendor responds and Fo updates the tracker without me having to prompt it.
When a vendor replied that she had already paid and we had no record of it, I did not go digging. I asked, and got back a straight answer: nothing recorded against that invoice, the transfer would have gone to our finance lead, so she is the one who can confirm it. That is the answer I would have spent twenty minutes arriving at myself.
It is not magic, and that is fine
Yesterday I noticed the invoices said Saturday, October 11. The event is on a Sunday. I said so and every document was corrected inside a few minutes, along with the caption in the social pack and a note about which ones had already gone out.
That is the honest version of working this way. It moves fast and it is right most of the time, and I still read things before they go out. The difference is that I am checking work instead of doing it.
The rules I set
Three, and they have held up.
Nothing reaches a vendor without me sending it. Our vendors deal with a person, not an inbox robot.
Money decisions stay with us. It can build the invoice, it does not agree to a discount or a payment method.
Everything lives in one tracker, so when somebody asks where we stand, the answer takes ten seconds.
What is next
The next two weeks are the busy stretch. A logistics email to every vendor with parking, arrival times and the load-in map. Menu and merchandise approvals due October 8. Permits and halal certificates chased from the food vendors. Phone calls to the ones who do not answer email. Then, after the fair, the part I have never once done properly: reconciling the ticket links, paying out what each vendor earned, and writing it all down while it is fresh so next year starts from a finished template instead of a blank page.
Come see it
Family Fall Fair x Generation Muslim. Sunday, October 11, from 11 am at the Hazelmere Pumpkin Patch, 18507 20 Ave, Surrey. Bring the kids, come hungry, and say salam if you see me. I will be the one at the vendor tables with a clipboard I barely need anymore.
