Of course, you want to score an impressive satisfaction rate from your audience with your event or convention. That is the main reason for organising your event or convention, isn’t it? Unfortunately, there are costs involved. Before you know it, costs are skyrocketing. That is why it is very important to set your budget and keep it under control.
How big is your total budget?
The answer to that question forms the basis. Is there a certain budget with which the event should be organised, or do you first determine the agenda and then see how the budget turns out? In both cases you will have to calculate, and you cannot do this without a detailed budget plan.
Budget planning: bring out the bookkeeper in you.
There are many specialized tools and apps, but Excel will take you a long way. Provide at least this info:
- topic: here you list each individual item you want to budget for. With each item we mean absolutely everything: from location and catering to the goodie bags and name badges.
- description: give a short description of each topic. Very handy if someone other than you is using your planning.
- volume: determine the quantities for each topic. Of course, the expected number of attendees plays a major role here.
- estimate the cost: while awaiting quotations, estimate the cost of each topic.
- real cost: keep track of what something has actually cost. If this deviates from the estimated cost, there will be an impact on your budget. It is also useful information for the next event.
Once you have planned all the cost centres, you will try to estimate the costs as realistically as possible. Request quotes and calculate a cost per attendee. During further preparations, you can check this cost per attendee against your budget to see if you need to adjust or not.
Sponsorship or partnerships will boost your budget
Are you facing a strained budget? Then sponsorship or a collaboration with another company might be a solution. Put together a recruiting sponsorship file and contact potentially interested parties. In exchange, you offer them exposure in the form of a goodie bag or advertising space.
By the way, not everything needs to cost money. For example, the fast service of Visit Bruges Convention Bureau is completely free of charge. We offer free professional advice for organisers of conventions, seminars, meetings, incentives, product presentations and training courses in Bruges. We bet that fits into your budget!
