How to use Budgets?

In this section, we will learn how to create your event budget with our event planning software. Budgets keep track of all your event-related expenditures and, if you wish, revenue as well. It also seamlessly integrates within a solid financial plan. So you’ll never miss the mark when it comes to budgeting your event.

Go to “Budgets” in the left pane. At the top, aligned left, you’ll notice that you’re in the same event as when you last took action in the eventplanner.net software. If this is your first time here, the budget will currently show empty. 

Adding a Budget

First things first, click “Add a budget line”.

Then we need to enter a category. You can select from the following options:

• Inspiration
• Event agency
• Catering
• Venue
• Entertainment
• Decoration
• Photo/video
• Rental
• Staff
• Security
• Transport
• Guests
• Software
• Budget
• Marketing

Once you’ve selected the category, insert a description (whatever you deem most appropriate, preferably something that’s distinctive and easy to identify).

You then have the option of selecting either a cost (for example, ticket printing) or revenue (for example, ticket sales). 

In the “Supplier” section, just start typing the name, and a number of results will appear. Select the company, then move on to fill out the remaining credentials. If the supplier isn’t on the eventplanner.net platform, you can simply enter whatever you want in there.

Decide if the cost or revenue is a fixed price or a price per unit. If you need to change the number of units, select the checkbox “Manually edit # units”.

• Important! A unit price will be multiplied by the number of attendees. Remember, this amount is determined when you create a new event – unless you manually change that amount.

If the overall number of attendees changes – for instance, due to cancelations – it’s better to update this in the event settings by selecting “Show info” on any page, then clicking “Edit”. The changes will be cascaded down to all other tools within the eventplanner.net software, including your budget calculations (unless you have selected the checkbox for a manual entry).

When all the fields have been populated, select “Add budget line”.

If you proceed to add more costs under the same category, you will notice they are grouped as such in the main budget screen. At the top, you see the total cost of the event. 

Different Scenarios

The next thing we can do, which is really useful if you’re organising larger events, is create different versions of your budget. You might want visibility of an optimistic and pessimistic scenario of your event.

To do so, you can either:

(a) create a new version of the budget from a blank sheet 

or 

(b) copy the current version, rename, and amend as appropriate.

Just click the drop-down arrow next to the title of the budget and choose one of the options. Then click “Save”.

This is also great for version control. You could periodically save a copy of the budget so that you always have a useful reference to look back on over the history of the project.

VAT Calculations

Another thing to keep in mind is whether you want to include or exclude VAT in your calculations.

Head to the “Show info” button, then click on “Edit”. You’ll see a checkbox about halfway down the page that says “Work with prices ex VAT in Budgets”

As standard, all prices include VAT, which means the tool uses gross prices in its calculations. But let’s say you want to work excluding VAT, you can do so by checking this checkbox. 

• Important! You can change an event budget to be VAT exclusive. But remember, once you do, you can’t go back. It’s a one-way road. If you want to create an event budget without VAT, the best way is to select this checkbox when creating the event.

When selecting the VAT checkbox, you’ll now see another column in your budgets that says “VAT”. At present, the VAT percentage is empty, since we don’t enter that data when creating the budgets. 

If you change the VAT status of the project after creating budget lines, you need to revisit and enter the percentage manually, one by one. Simply click each budget line you wish to amend, enter the correct percentage, then save. 

The result? You can now see that VAT is calculated separately. Prices are shown excluding VAT, the VAT amount, and then the total including VAT.

Remember, when working with multiple versions of the budget, the previous versions don’t change when one has been amended. You’ll need to repeat those steps outlined above for each version of a budget you have. That’s why it’s so important to get this right when creating the event – to avoid duplicating your efforts. 

Don’t forget that you can share your budget with peers too, enabling you to review and collaborate together.

Our next and final stop is “Contacts”, where we’ll learn everything there is to know about users and contacts for your events. See you on the other side!