It is the week before your festival, and you are digging through your inbox for one vendor's paperwork. They swear they sent it. You finally find it in a reply to a reply, attached to a thread about tent sizes.

Every event, market, and membership program runs on documents. Here is how to collect them in one place, attached to the business they belong to, so your inbox stops being the filing cabinet.

What Documents Do You Need From Vendors?

Start by writing down what you chase each season. The list is different for every organization, but it usually includes some mix of these:

• Certificates of insurance for festival, street fair, and market vendors.
• Permits and licenses, like health permits for food trucks or a state sales tax certificate.
• Tax forms such as W-9s for performers and contractors you pay.
• Signed agreements for vendor rules, participation, or sponsorship terms.
• Brand files, like sponsor logos for printed maps and banners.
• Application materials for grant programs, such as quotes and photos.

None of these belong on a public map. All of them belong next to the business that sent them.

How to Collect Vendor Documents in One Place

Proxi has a PDF field type, and any field can be set to internal. That means a document can live on a vendor's listing where only your team sees it, while the public still sees the booth, the photo, and the description. Admins can open the file later from the listing or from the collection.

Take the certificate of insurance, the document most event organizers chase hardest. Here is how the setup works for it, and the same steps apply to any other document on your list.

1. Add an internal PDF field to your vendor collection. Call it "Certificate of Insurance." Use one field per document type, so a missing permit and a missing agreement show up separately.

2. Put the field on your vendor application. Vendors upload the certificate when they apply, not after you approve them. Nobody has to remember to send it later.

3. Review and approve in one place. When an application comes in, the certificate is already attached. Open it, check the dates and coverage, and approve the listing.

4. Drop in the stragglers yourself. If a document still shows up by email, upload it to the listing so it stops living in your inbox.

How to Follow Up on Missing Vendor Paperwork

Some vendors will still miss the deadline. The difference is that now you can see exactly who.

Look down the document columns in your collection. Anyone with a blank field is your follow-up list. Since your vendors already live in Proxi, you can email or text that group straight from the platform: "Your certificate of insurance is due Friday. Upload it here." One message to the right people, with no spreadsheet export.

Set two deadlines and put both in your acceptance message: an early one that gets you most of the paperwork, and a final one with a real consequence. Send one reminder before each.

Using Document Fields for Members, Sponsors, and Grants

The same setup works well beyond festival vendors.

• Memberships. Keep each member's signed agreement on their listing next to their membership level.
• Sponsorships. Collect logo files and signed sponsor terms on the sponsor's listing, so every logo is in one place at print time.
• Vendor fees. Pair a booth fee with your document fields, and you can see who has paid and who is cleared to set up on the same screen.
• Grant programs. Businesses applying for a facade grant can attach quotes and signed forms to their application.

Public and Internal Files on the Same Listing

One listing can hold both. A farmers market vendor can share a public price list that shoppers open from the map, while the vendor's insurance certificate stays visible only to your staff. You manage one listing per business instead of one map for the public and a separate folder for paperwork.

Start Next Season Ahead

Next year, every returning vendor already has a listing with last season's documents attached. You can see whose paperwork has expired and send a renewal request to just that group. Your rosters, fees, and files sit together, which makes the year-end report to your board much easier to pull.

Pick the one document you chase hardest, add a field for it before your next event, and put it on the application. The week before setup gets a lot quieter.