A festival budget template that does the arithmetic

A budget for a festival has a shape that most generic templates miss: artist fees next to fencing, bar takings next to sponsorship, and a contingency line that nobody wants to spend. This template starts from that shape, so you replace numbers rather than build structure.

It is free, with no email and no sign-up. Download it, change it, share it.

What's in the spreadsheet

• Costs by category. Artists and performers, production, stage and AV, venue and site, marketing, crew, contractors, travel, catering, permits and insurance, and a contingency line.
• Revenue by source. Weekend and day tickets, sponsorship, bar, and merchandise.
• Budget, actual and variance for every line. Fill in the budget before the show and the actuals as invoices and takings arrive. The variance calculates itself.
• Totals and the result. Total costs, total revenue, the net result, and the margin, all as formulas, for the plan and for what actually happened.
• A worked example. The figures describe a two-day festival for 5,000 people, in euros and net of VAT. They are there to show how the sheet behaves, not as benchmarks for what things should cost.

It opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers. Every formula also carries its result, so the numbers show up even in a file preview.

How to use it

1. Keep one copy per event. A festival's P&L only means something on its own; mixing two shows in one file is how totals stop adding up.
2. Replace the example lines with yours. Add rows inside the costs or revenue block and the totals include them.
3. Budget first, actuals as they come. The variance column is the early warning: a line that is already over budget during the build is still worth a conversation.
4. Read the variance the right way round. It is actual minus budget. On a cost line, a positive number is an overspend; on a revenue line, it is money you didn't plan for.

When the spreadsheet stops being enough

For one show with one person holding the numbers, this file may be all you need. It gets harder when several people submit spend, when approvals happen in email, or when fees are paid in more than one currency. We wrote about where that line falls in Cashbox vs spreadsheets.

If you get there, the CSV version of this template is already shaped for Cashbox's budget import. Its categories match Cashbox's defaults, so it comes in as an event budget without remapping a single column.