Balance the Books With Your Own Event Budget Template

Preparing your event budget can feel like drowning in a sea of numbers. Are your estimations right? Should an expense go in this category or that one? And, worst of all…did you forget something?

Don’t worry — we’re here to help. At Eventbrite, we support almost 800,000 event organisers worldwide in planning and operating 5 million events per year, so we know a thing or two about the importance of budgeting.

When it comes to budgeting, simple is best. And the simplest way to start is with a pre-built, customisable event budget template. 

To help you get started, we’ve created this quick guide explaining the basics of event management, budgeting, and a dynamic, easy-to-use budget template.

Download the template, customise it for your event, and take a breath. Step one is done.

Why should you create an event budget?

Hosting a large-scale event can be pretty expensive, and nobody’s expecting costs to go down anytime soon.

According to the 2024 Global Meetings and Events Forecast from American Express, 57% of event planners across Europe say event costs are on the rise — with the average event spend increasing by 2.8%.

Unfortunately, not all event planners have the cash to cope with those rising costs. You can’t afford to lose control of your budget, and a large event can have a lot of unexpected expenses. 

Event budgets help keep your event expenses under control, acting as a guide that dictates how you allocate your event funding. 

But an event budget is also a critical aspect of getting your event off the ground in the first place.

Before you start promoting and organising your event, you’ll need to know how much it’s going to cost so you can source the funding, be it privately or through sponsorship. Having a detailed, realistic, and disciplined event budget demonstrates that you know what you’re doing when it comes to applying for funding or searching for sponsors. 

In a lot of cases, your budget will also inform your ROI projections and act as a baseline to measure the event’s financial success.

For example, if you’re able to achieve your event goals while coming in under budget, you’ll likely be able to demonstrate a solid return on investment (ROI) for your event.

The event budget deconstructed: what should it include?

According to the most recent State of Business Events report from Skift Meetings, decreasing budgets is the number one problem that keeps event organisers up at night. 

But with an ironclad budget plan, you should be able to rest easy knowing you have all the funding you need to create an incredible event experience. 

To help you get started on your plan, we’ve put together a quick breakdown of the key elements an effective event budget needs to include.

Venue costs

Your venue will often be the first big expense you’ll need to budget for. The cost of your venue rental will vary dramatically based on a number of factors, like: 

• Location
• Capacity
• Parking
• Venue facilities
• Venue services
• Layout
• Accessibility

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The key to budgeting your venue costs is ensuring you understand exactly what you need from your venue from the get-go. That’ll ensure you’ve been quoted the right amount. For more tips on venue costs, check out our venue rental costs guide.

Staffing costs

Depending on your event size, staffing costs may take up a good chunk of your budget. Decide how many members of staff you need and work out the event staff pay structure as accurately as possible so that you know exactly what you’ll need to spend on staffing.

After budgeting for the amount, you’ll need to pay your staff and make sure you’re using due diligence to assemble the perfect events team.

Need help with the hiring process? Here are ten things you need to know when hiring event staff.

Catering costs

Catering costs are a considerable element of many event budgets and can fluctuate wildly depending on the type of event you’re setting up. 

For example, an awards ceremony with a three-course plated dinner for 200 will eat up a lot of your event budget. By contrast, it probably wouldn’t set you back too much to rent a few food trucks for an afternoon to park outside your community block party.

If you can’t allocate much of your budget towards catering, don’t stress. Take a look at our 10 pro tips on how to cut your catering costs.

Entertainment costs

Entertainment is a fundamental aspect of most events, if not the entire point of the event! You might want to hire a live band or a DJ to play at your event, a fire eater or dancers to welcome your guests upon arrival, or set up a fireworks display to close out your party.

Your event entertainment should be guided by a number of factors like your:

• Event type
• Event theme
• Event size
• Event location
• Event length

If you’re unsure what type of entertainment you’d like to work into your budget, get some inspiration by looking at our roundup of 11 top corporate event ideas.

Equipment costs

Event equipment can play an integral role in your event budget, too. This will be decided largely by your chosen venue and the entertainment you plan to book.

For example, you might need to rent an A/V system because you’re staging your event at an outdoor venue without any facilities. You might also need a generator to power your facilities or vendors.

Not sure where to go to rent your equipment? Check out this list of Eventbrite’s preferred vendors.

Travel and accommodation costs

If you’re planning an event that will require staff, guests, or vendors to travel, you’ll need to include those travel and accommodation costs in your event budget.

For example, the band or DJ you choose might request a contribution to their travel costs as part of their contract. Likewise, you might need to rent a few mobile homes so that your staff can sleep on-site if you’re hosting a week-long outdoor festival.

By factoring these costs into your budget ahead of time, you shouldn’t face any nasty surprises later.

Marketing and promotion costs

There are plenty of ways to promote your event for free — but you’ll often need to allocate some of your event budget to make sure you’re able to reach your target audience in all the right places to sell tickets.

Your event marketing strategy might include targeted social media ads, print ads, PR, Google Ads, radio space, or anything in between. To ensure you’re allocating your marketing budget correctly, you need to understand your target audience and where to reach them.

For example, see how MAMA’s Nighmarket increased ticket sales by 92% with a creative marketing strategy that included utilising Eventbrite Ads, which helped them get 14x more exposure.

Want to maximise your reach? Eventbrite can help you set up a custom event page, manage social media ads, and coordinate email marketing to boost awareness around your event.

How do you write a budget for an event?

Once you’ve developed a list of all the event costs you need to factor in, it’s time to write your event budget. The best way to do it is by using a detailed event budget template, like the one we’ve provided here, for free.

An event budget template can save you loads of time on data entry. But you need to ensure the budget template you use is fully customisable so you can add and remove sections to fit your needs. You don’t want to end up with a hard-formatted template that takes a professional programmer to modify!

You should also make sure you select an event budget template that’s easy to circulate and update as your event progresses.

Once you’ve taken the template and made it your own, you can keep repurposing the same template for all your future events, saving you tons of time and effort.

Our budget covers all these aspects and more.

Need more event templates? Have a look at our event planning template to save you even more time.

Ready to start budgeting?

At the end of the day, you don’t want to mess around when it comes to budgeting. If you want to put on a successful event, you need to ensure you’ve got enough funding (and have plans on how to spend it correctly), so you need to make your budget as detailed as possible.

One last thing — remember to revisit your budget once your event is over. Seeing where you may have over- or under-budgeted will help you become a budgeting whiz when it’s time to plan your next event. 

Download our free event budget template now and start budgeting for your next big event. 

Get the template