Race Budgetting

Part 3: Building Your Budget

 

In part one and two of our series on budgets, we dealt with what to look out for and how to avoid common pitfalls when creating a budget. Now we are going to go into more detail on how to build a budget.

The easiest way to start building a budget is to create a budget spreadsheet. This is a good way to organize and track your financial data in a clear and consistent format.  You can use Excel, Google Sheets, or an online template to create your budget spreadsheet. This spreadsheet should include:

An EXPENSE sheet listing all costs associated with planning, producing and running your sports event, such as venue rental, equipment, staff, security, marketing, insurance, taxes, and contingency. You can use quotes, invoices, and contracts from your vendors and suppliers to estimate your expenses accurately.

An INCOME sheet where you estimate how much money you can expect to generate from your sports event. This includes all the possible income sources, such entry fees, sponsorships, donations, merchandise, concessions, and media rights. You can use historical data, market research, and industry benchmarks to make realistic projections based on your event type, size, location, and audience. If you have different pricing periods for your registration, these need to be set up in your budget. For example if you have an early bird entry fee, a standard entry fee and a late entry fee, these all need to be added to your budget with projected entrants for those periods.

A CASH FLOW sheet that displays when your income and expenses occur and their effect on your balance.

A VARIANCE sheet that displays actual and projected income and expenses and shows the difference between the two.

A SUMMARY sheet with total income, total expenses and net profit or loss.

Once you have completed your budget, this is not the end of the process. A budget is a living document and needs to be updated and adjusted regularly as the planning for you sports event progresses. This means updating your spreadsheet with the actual income and expenses that occur, reviewing your variance sheet to identify any gaps or discrepancies, and making changes to your income or expense projections as needed. You also need to communicate your budget status and issues to your stakeholders, such as sponsors, partners, staff, and volunteers.

Then, after the event it is important to review your budget and evaluate and learn from it. You should analyse your final income and expense statements which will give you insight into your events profitability and help you make better financial decisions in future about your race.
 

What do you need help with as an event organiser? If there is an area of organising you would like to know more about, send a mail to tim@finishtime.co.za and we will see if we can find some info for you.

Words To Live By ...

“Expect the best, plan for the worst,
and prepare to be surprised.”

– Denis Waitley

Toolkit's Safety Feature

As an event organisers you know that safety at an event is paramount. If you have ever been in a position where an entrant simply “disappears”, you will appreciate the benefit of FinishTime’s Racetec Toolkit App.

Besides the outstanding timing aspect of this app, one of its key features is that it can be used to improve safety at an event. This is because it can help safety officers track the whereabouts of participants. At any point during the event the safety officer can get a full break down of the total number of entries, the non-starters, the DNFs, the disqualifications and the number of competitors still out on the course, including their last recorded position, and approximately where they are. In this way, each entrant can be accounted for at any time.

If the situation arises that the sweeps are in and the course is "clear", but the App says there are still be people unaccounted for, the safety officer will have access to their names and race numbers. From that information, he will then be able to get hold of their contact details and check what has happened to them.

There is also the option of having a chip reader at the entrance to the medical tent or any other key area. The safety officer can then track how many competitors are in the medical tent at any one time and who they are.

The safety feature of the Racetec Toolkit App is used by both Comrades and IronMan to ensure the safety of their competitors.

"When a phone is worth more than its value"

Organising a sports event in South Africa comes with its own very specific problems, but the outcome of the following incident is worthy of an urban legend.

The adventure-type event took place in a remote area surrounded by bush, with only trails, dirt tracks and very potholed roads as a means of access for vehicles. Because of this, our photographer, in order to get the shots he needed to accurately capture the event, was on the back of an off-road motorbike, being driven by a "unique" character – let’s call our maverick Tom.

Tom had dropped our photographer off and was waiting for him to get his shots when a man stepped out of the bush and pointed a gun at him and demanded Tom's phone and wallet. Now Tom has spent his life riding through the bush and he doesn’t scare easily, so instead of just quickly handing them over (like most of us sane individuals would), he took a moment to think through the situation.

According to him he looked at the gun and thought: “Now I know guns, and that one looks old … like possibly pre-war. What are the chances of 1) the gun firing, and 2) the shot actually hitting me?”

With that optimism, and the ability to fluently speak the local language, Tom opted to try and negotiate a deal.

His wallet (yup, one of those old canvas ones with velcro) was of no concern to him, but his phone (equally old, but with all his contacts), was another story.

So he held up his ancient phone with its cracked screen and tape, and told the mugger that as he could see, he definitely wasn’t going to get much for it. However, Tom said he had R260 in his wallet and he would happily give him R200 (and even throw in the wallet for good measure – something Tom's wife later celebrated). But, Tom insisted he wanted to keep R60 for petrol so he would make it home, and of course wanted his precious phone.

Incredibly the man looked at the phone, took the wallet with R200 in it, and disappeared back into the bush. If I hadn’t heard this story from Tom himself, I would definitely think it was an urban legend. Whether you consider Tom brave or incredibly stupid, you have to admire his epic negotiating skills.
 

Do you have an unusual, wild, whacky or funny story about event organising? If so, send it to tim@finishtime.co.za (max 300 words please).