A host on Plan My Do breaks their event into requirements - a photographer, a marquee, catering - and asks for suppliers against each one separately. Every supplier working in that category is scored against that specific brief, and the host gets a ranked list with the reasons attached. Nobody bids for position here - the order comes out of how well each supplier fits the brief in front of them. What you can do is give the matcher something to work with. This is what it looks at, and what each part of your profile actually changes.
Category is the only hard filter
Exactly one thing decides whether you are in the running: whether you have a service in the requirement's category. Everything after that is scoring, not filtering. A supplier who fits the brief poorly still appears - lower down, with the reasons why - and nobody is ever excluded for a blank field.
- Add a service for every category you genuinely work in. A category you have no service in is one you will never appear in, however good the rest of your profile is.
- Do not pad the list. Appearing against briefs you would turn down costs you nothing in score, but it costs you in enquiries you have to decline.
- Two services in the same category collapse to whichever one fits the brief best, so you never appear twice in one list - splitting a category into variants gains you nothing.
The six things every match is scored on
The same six criteria are applied to every candidate. They are not equally weighted - the first two below carry considerably more than the last two - and each produces a plain-English reason or concern that the host reads next to the percentage, so the number is never bare.
- Event type - the single biggest factor. Does the service list the kind of event the host is planning? Listing "Other" scores partially; listing the actual type scores in full.
- Budget fit - your starting price against the host's estimate for that requirement. Being over their estimate is not a zero; the score falls away with the distance.
- Location - strongest when the event is in your town or city, weaker for your wider region, weaker again when the place only appears in your service-area description.
- Guest numbers - can you handle an event this size? Scored against the guest range on the service, and softened rather than zeroed just outside it.
- Preferred days - whether the event falls on the kind of day, weekday or weekend, you have said you prefer to work. Answer it honestly: claiming to prefer both when you do not just buys you enquiries you turn down.
- Preferred event size - taste rather than capability: the size of event you would rather work, kept separate from the size you are able to work.
Hosts read these as sentences, not scores - "Works on weddings", "£900-£1,400 fits your £1,200 budget", "Based in Truro", "Usually serves 20-150 guests". The concerns are shown too, which is deliberate. A host who can see exactly why you came out at 80% rather than 95% can judge whether the gap matters to them, and quite often it does not.
A blank field does not lower your score - it thins your evidence
This is the part most often misunderstood, so it is worth being exact. When a criterion cannot be checked - no price on the service, no guest range, no stated day preference - it is left out of the average entirely rather than counted as a zero. A half-filled profile does not score worse than a complete one.
What it gets is a thinner score. Next to every percentage the host sees how many of the six criteria you were scored on, and where two suppliers land on the same percentage, the one scored on more criteria ranks above the one scored on fewer. So the real cost of a blank field is not the number. It is that your number rests on less, that you lose the ties, and that a host comparing two 85% suppliers can see which of them was actually checked.
Your profile page already tells you which ones are missing
The completeness panel on your own profile names the criteria we cannot yet score you on, and links straight to the field that unlocks each one. It covers four of the six - the four a profile can settle on its own - so it is the fastest place to start.
Why a starting price earns more than any other field
A "from £" figure is the one entry that does three jobs at once, which is why it is worth doing first if you only do one thing.
- It is what the budget criterion is scored on, and that criterion is one of the heaviest. A maximum on its own does nothing here: with no starting figure there is nothing to compare a host's budget against, and the criterion goes unscored.
- It puts you into the Cheapest and Best value views described below, both of which have nothing to rank you by without one.
- It is public - it shows on your profile and on your directory card - so publishing it is a real decision, not just a form field. Why event suppliers should show their prices online makes the case for making it.
Five ways a host can sort the same list
The set of suppliers never changes between views - only the order does. A host gets five tabs: Best match, Best value, Most experienced, Cheapest and Closest. Each awards a badge to a clear winner, and withholds it when the top two are genuinely tied, so a badge always means something a host can check.
A supplier with no basis to be ranked in a particular view - no price in Cheapest, no recorded history in Most experienced - sinks to the bottom of that view rather than vanishing from it. Which is the practical point: each field you fill in is another tab you become sortable in. A price gets you into two of them, featured events into a third, a precise location into a fourth.
Featured events, and how many is enough
Events you record on your profile add points on top of your match score. They only ever add: there is no penalty for having none, and no way for honest history to count against you. How much each one adds depends on how relevant it is.
- Recent work counts for more than work from years ago.
- An event roughly the size of the host's, in roughly their area, counts for more than one that is neither.
- Events of the same type count for more than events of a different type - but a different type still counts. A dozen village fetes does not make you a blank slate against a wedding brief.
- It saturates. A handful of well-chosen events gets you most of what is on offer, and the tenth of the same kind adds very little. Three or four is plenty.
They do a second job that has nothing to do with scoring. They order the Most experienced view, and the host sees them written out - "Has featured 3 weddings, most recently in 2025". That is the argument for choosing them deliberately: feature events across the types and sizes you want more of, rather than whichever four you happened to work last.
Tags, blocked dates and profile status
- Tags. A host can attach tags to a requirement. Covering the ones they asked for adds a smaller nudge than recorded history does, missing them never counts against you, and a requirement with no tags affects nobody. So tick everything genuinely true of you and nothing that is not - a tag that wins an enquiry you cannot deliver is worse than no tag.
- Blocked dates. Marking dates you cannot work never removes you from a list; the host still sees you, flagged. What it does is sort you below every available supplier in that same view for that date. Keep the list honest and keep it current - a stale block quietly costs you appearances you could have taken.
- Claimed and verified. Status is a tiebreak, not a multiplier: verified sits above claimed, claimed above unclaimed, but only once everything above has already tied. Claiming your profile is worth the ten minutes; it is not a shortcut past a better match.
What none of this scores
Matching gets you onto the list and up it. It does not get you the message. Your photos, your description and how quickly you reply are what a host weighs once they are looking at you, and none of them enter the match score at all - see what an event supplier should put on their profile for that half. Matching well and converting badly is a common way to conclude, wrongly, that the matching is not working.
How much detail is actually enough
| What to fill in | What it changes | How much is enough |
|---|---|---|
| A service per category | Whether you appear at all | One for every category you genuinely work in |
| Event types on each service | One of the heaviest criteria | Every type you would take. "Other" only scores partially |
| Starting price ("from £") | Budget scoring, plus the Cheapest and Best value views | One realistic figure per service. A maximum alone does nothing |
| Guest range | Guest-number scoring | One end will do ("20+", "up to 150"); both is better |
| Preferred days and event size | The two smallest criteria - unscored until set | Thirty seconds each, once - answered honestly, not broadly |
| Town, region, service area | Location scoring, in that order of strength | Name the town, not just "Cornwall", and list the places you will travel to |
| Featured events | Experience points, and the Most experienced view | Three or four, spread across the types you want more of |
| Tags | A small uplift when a host asks for them | Only the ones genuinely true |
| Blocked dates | Demotion on that date only | Real commitments, kept current |
The twenty-minute version
If you do nothing else: put a starting price and a guest range on every service, tick your preferred days and event size, and feature three past events. That is one sitting, and it takes you from being scored on two of the six criteria to all six.
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