Preparing the Budget for an Special Event

Preparing the Budget for an Special Event:

Planning is a vital part of any model of management of the organization and within any business operating under modern schemes.
   Today, the preparation of a budget is basic part in the planning of investment and operation of any business. The preparation of well-planned budget is a basic tool to control the Planning and execution of all activities related to organizing an Special Event.

Budget is a vital tool in the process of planning because a well-developed budget will be the best tool in order to evaluate the Event feasibility, associated risks, mitigation measures, resources to be employed and associated costs.

A budget is a living document that help management to compare planned expenses with actual expenses. It helps the event manager in having control of the event costs, enabling the decision making process in order to perform any modification or change in the original plan when necessary while still maintaining the integrity of the event.

            In preparing a budget for a special event, the event promoter should focus in the generation of an operations/production budget focused in expenses and associated costs in order to allow event producer to operate.  On the other hand, a revenue budget has to be put in place in order to evaluate marketing strategies as well as sales, publicity and income to be generated. Consequently, the task of the producer it is to spend in an efficient way the operational portion of the budget.

            The event producer normally works on the entire life cycle of the budget. The planning usually begins with the proposal phase. Promoter asks the company to generate the proposal to produce the event. It is the time when initial budget is created and all the required quotes are obtained. The quotes will be used to create a preliminary production budget.  Moreover, a producer may be involved as member of the event manager’s staff. Therefore, the producer works on preparing the budget since the beginning of the planning to the final execution of the event.  

            I would like to conclude this brief summary mentioning five key items to establishing and maintaining an accurate production budget: developing a system to track expenses, developing a significant list of production expense categories, researching and categorizing expenses, tracking and updating expenses, and handling contingencies, associated risks and unexpected expenses.

Summaries from:

Mathew, Doug. Special Event Production. Elsevier. 2008