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There is a reason the importance of adequate budgeting skills has been emphasised so much. One must have a rough budget of the planned event before we even decide whether or not to hold the event. It might easily turn out that we barely make any profit.
There are some specific needs that certain event types require; here I have tried to cover most common costs that can occur at events such as seminars, conferences, dinners and others.
The two general categories of an event budget are the expenses and income. If your expenses seem to be beyond your income, we’ll have to ask ourself, is it worth it?
Expenses cover every expense that we may encounter during planning, and do not forget to predict a contingency of at least10-20% of the budget. Income will come mainly from registrations and tickets, sponsorships and product sales.
In order to project our expenses, we will have to categorise all possible expenses.
Let’s start with venue costs. Here we may want to include:
- venue rental fees- cloak room staff fees- housekeeping staff fees
For the equipment consider:
- audio hire + staff fees- visuals rental + staff fees- lighting rental + staff fees- set design and stage rental + any additional setup fees- supplies - transport
- food cost- beverages cost- staff fees- tips if you wish to give any
- entertainers - security- photographers- filming
- fees- transport costs- gifts
- centerpieces - flowers- balloons - carpets- chairs
The decorations category is highly individual, so I won’t go into much details here.
If it is necessary you have to print out something, consider these:
- schedules - you always need some- invitations- tickets - posters- flyers
- an extra pen is never useless - paper, always have paper ready- and duct tape, it fixes almost anyhitng
- bus hire fee- driver fee- number of hours of engagement - gas- deposit
- list team members and their respective salaries
- highly individual, depends on whether you already have an insurance, type of event, event location and others
- gift bags if you provide them
Miscellaneous is probably everyone's nightmare category. Various and usually unpredictable things can be included here
- plastic cups
Bear in mind, you might be asked for a deposit in almost every single category mentioned above. Actually, it’s not a bad idea to add a category “deposit” to keep track.
Lastly, do not forget to include marketing budget!
Budgets can be a real headache both for small and big teams. Make sure everyone in the team accounts for their expenses and payments so that we always have the most accurate statistics. Once you have an estimate of our expenses we can calculate it against an income to get an overview of the profit we will make at the end.
- paid registrations- sponsorships- product sales
Be prepared to act if your sponsorships are coming through as expected. We should always have an emergency plan of who to contact in such cases. Estimate paid registrations and product sales according to previsous event statistics, however, do take into consideration attendance may differ from event to event
