When organising a successful conference or event, a key ingredient is your ability to manage and produce a conference cash-flow management plan. However, there are some organisers who are more absorbed in marketing and logistics that they repeatedly fall short in creating and updating their cash-flow management plan.
In order for you to build an accurate plan, you have to make sure that the conference will meet its requirements on time and of course within the allocated budget. Thus, cash-flow planning refers to anticipating cash flow in and out when it comes to organising an event.
Related: Meeting Management: How to Organise a Conference with Roles Defined
For instance, an excellent planning involves paying invoices right on track and in a timely manner when receiving an income. Conference cash-flow management is essential in achieving event goals while anticipating event problems and potential cash shortages.
There are in fact basic steps in considering the most efficient ways in planning your event cash-flow. Be sure to read this guideline before starting the process and committing yourself to a contract to ensure adequate expenditure based on your revenue and income.
Draft your documents
This includes drafting the initial budget for the event while ensuring cash-flow forecast. Such documents should work with one another in order to guarantee effective cash flow in and out. It is also important to develop an accurate timetable for the entire event to create better control as well as awareness of the requirements.
Pre-funding
You need to develop cash-flow forecast, event timeline and budget allocation in order to deeply understand liquid fund amount required to make the event happen. The initial money is important in funding activities including venue deposit, website development, as well as other promotions that should be paid prior to receiving any income. However, such phase can be challenging since associations as well as clients need to effectively minimise initial cash-outlay to reduce financial risks.
In order to help you fund your initial event requirements, here are some of the options you have:
- Bank and other financial institutions providing credit.
- Associations and organisations owning funds — this is actually a commonly used option since most organisations need to have enough fund for their event.
- Professional Conference Organisers — PCO’s are available in order to assist you in pre-funding your conference. Many PCO’s also offer Association Consulting.
- Guaranteed funding offered by tourist, convention and visitor’s bureau, or from city and regional agencies to bring your event to cities or regions.
Related: The Role of the Professional Conference Organiser
Just remember that formal process is normally needed in order to obtain your needed funding. Apparently, conference cash-flow management requires expertise as well as knowledge in making sure that everything is secured prior to the start of the event. Hence, you have to be skilled enough in creating an ideal conference cash-flow management plan to help you achieve your goals without the hassles.
Cash indeed is king when it comes to conferences and other corporate endeavours. If you don’t know how to handle your money, then you will significantly lose what you currently have.
Fore more detailed information please download our White Paper: Conference Cash-Flow Management
