Understanding Your Event Budget
Read and use the AI-generated budget plan in Planner mode.
What you'll learn
- ✓Reading the plan by section, and renaming the sections yourself
- ✓Reading the budget overview with low-high range
- ✓Understanding crew recommendations and roles
- ✓Using the event timeline for planning
- ✓Applying pro tips when working with AV vendors
- ✓Understanding inclusions and exclusions
- ✓Costing setup and strike days the way an organizer pays for them
- ✓Resolving the planning notes in the editor and spotting when they are out of date
- ✓Reading the market price check and the list of unmet scope
Generate a budget plan
Switch to Planner mode and describe your event — include the venue, attendee count, and what you need (presentations, live music, branding, simultaneous interpretation, etc.). Click "Generate" and the AI produces a full budget plan with market-rate pricing.
Review the budget overview
The top section shows your total estimated budget as a range — for example €12,500 — €18,200. The low end reflects a lean, standard-grade setup; the high end reflects premium equipment and full-service crew. Your actual vendor quotes will typically land within this range.
Pro tip: Use the budget range when setting client expectations before going to market. If a client's budget is below the low end, discuss scope reduction before requesting quotes.
Check crew recommendations
Scroll to the Crew Recommendations section. The AI lists the technical roles you'll need (FOH Engineer, Lighting Operator, Video Tech, etc.), how many people per role, and a typical daily rate range for each. Use this when reviewing crew line items from vendor quotes.
Review the event timeline
The Event Timeline section shows a suggested schedule — setup day(s), show day(s), and strike. It includes time estimates for each phase and key technical milestones. Share this with vendors when requesting quotes so they can factor in the correct number of labor days.
Read pro tips and inclusions/exclusions
The Pro Tips section gives practical advice specific to your event type — things to watch out for, questions to ask vendors, and common cost drivers. The Inclusions/Exclusions section clarifies what the budget estimate covers and what is not included (e.g., venue fees, content creation, customs duties for international events).
Tell the plan how long you have to build and clear
On the new-proposal form, Setup days and Strike days are the days the venue is yours before and after the event. In Planner mode they are priced where an organizer actually pays — venue occupancy and crew time — rather than as extra days of equipment rental, which is why there is no equipment-rate option beside them. If the event realistically cannot be cleared on the final night and you have left strike at zero, the plan says so.
Pro tip: Ask the venue for the load-in and load-out windows before filling these in. A room you only get at 6am on show day is a very different budget from one you have the night before.
Read the plan by section, and name the sections yourself
Open the proposal and the Plan tab groups your lines the way an organizer thinks about a budget — Venue, Catering, Production, Staffing, Transport and so on, in that order, with Other last. Click any section title to rename it: “Catering” becomes “Food & Beverage” if that is what your client calls it. The names you choose carry through to the PDF and to the link you share with the client.
Pro tip: Rename sections before you send, not after. The client reads your wording, and matching the language of their own budget sheet saves a round of questions.
Keep the planning notes working while you edit
Open the proposal and the planning notes sit above your line items on the Plan tab, as things to resolve rather than text to scroll past. Tick one off once you have confirmed it, or mark it not applicable. If you then change the headcount, the number of days, the budget or the event date, the panel names exactly what moved — so you know the advice was written against different numbers.
Pro tip: The notes are the questions the AI could not answer for you: power supply, load-in window, permits. Resolving them is usually where an estimate turns into a real budget.
Check the flagged prices and the scope gaps
The same panel raises two other things. A price check compares each line with what that item usually costs in your event's region, judging equipment rates and crew rates separately, so a day rate typed as an hourly one stands out. A scope list shows anything your attached brief asked for that the plan does not yet cover — catering, permits, photography, guest transport — and each entry disappears as soon as you add the line that fills it.
Pro tip: The price bands are deliberately wide. They catch a missing zero, not a 15% difference of opinion — read a flag as “look again”, not “this is wrong”.