5 FREE Google Sheets Event Budget Template -2024 (How To Create One)

Are you planning an event and don’t know where to start?

Google Sheets is the best spreadsheet tool to plan and launch an event. It boasts powerful tools that let you monitor and optimize various things related to your event, from budget to run of show.

When it comes to expenses for any type of event, you need to consider the following things:

Venue
Decoration
Signage
Catering
So on…

The list is huge and depends upon whether it’s a small fundraising event or an extensive trade show.

This is a quick guide about Google Sheets Event Budget templates. Let us discuss top spreadsheet templates to track expenditures and income from various events, including annual conferences, festivals, fundraisers, trade shows, parties, etc.

We will discuss the complete instructions to use those templates and the steps to create a new one from scratch. So, make sure to read the article till the end.

Why is an Event Budget Template created using Google Sheets a must-try?

Google Sheets is a cloud-based spreadsheet program offering powerful tools for budget tracking and team collaboration.

Organizing and analyzing huge datasets in tabular form is a breeze.

Here are a few of the benefits of using the Google Sheets Event Budget template:

Affordable – The program is free for everyone with a Google account. With Google Sheets, you don’t need to rely on third-party software that may break your bank just to calculate and display overall expenses and income from your event.
Ease of Use – Google Sheets is a decade-old spreadsheet software perfectly optimized for beginners and advanced corporate people. You may hardly take a few hours to learn to add and edit the information. In contrast to rivals like Microsoft Excel, it provides access to powerful functions and features right from the main menu.
Real-time Collaboration – When it comes to team collaboration, Google Sheets is the top choice. It can be shared with unlimited users. You can assign specific roles to each user as editor, commenter, or viewer. Everyone can see who is online and what they are editing. The file owners can quickly overview all the changes made by the users using the pre-built Version history tool.
Robust Reporting – Hundreds of arithmetic, conditional, and statistical calculation functions exist. Additionally, you will surely fall in love with the program’s decent selection of charts and graphs to take your presentation or spreadsheet aesthetics to the next level.
Customization – You can easily change the font styles, colors, background, and much more. Adding your brand logo is also pretty straightforward. In short, Google Sheets templates can be customized to your taste.

Besides the above, Google Sheets are optimized for mobile and desktop devices. You can access your Event Budget template from anywhere worldwide with an active internet connection.

Top 5 FREE Google Sheets Event Budget Template of 2024

We have compiled a list of the best event budget templates available online to let you strategically and effectively launch your event.

Managing expenses and smartly planning income are crucial aspects of event management success.

Here are a few event budgeting templates worth trying.

1. Event Budget (Expense & Income) Template by SoftwareAccountant

FREE Google Sheets Event Budget Template [SoftwareAccountant]

Click Here To Use This Template!

This template by SoftwareAccountant is designed for event organizers looking for a fully automated and professional-looking budgeting spreadsheet.

It includes lots of standard components related to event expenses and income. You can easily remove unnecessary components and add more rows or columns to include specific details related to your event.

There are three different sheets in the template:

Expenses – All of your event expenses would go here. The template includes many standard components such as venue, decoration, catering, and marketing to give you a quick kickstart.
Income – In this sheet, you need to enter revenue generated by things like event admissions, ads displayed, vendors, etc.
Dashboard – It summarizes your expenses and income from the event. It gives you a quick overview of the estimated versus actual expenses and income using bar graphs.

The Expenses and Income sheet includes a variety of tables for the respective categories. Note that the template uses formulas at the end of each table to add numbers. You should avoid editing those cells containing formulas for the template to work correctly.

The template has a very short learning curve. Anyone from beginners to advanced Google Sheets users can leverage this template for the success of their event.

2. Budget For Event Template by TheGooDocs

Click Here To Use This Template!

Yet another aesthetically pleasing event budgeting template on this list.

This template allows you to track your event expenses only compared to our top pick. So, it includes only one sheet for managing expenses.

At the top, you need to enter your event budget and date. Remaining things like total cost, already paid, remaining to pay, days left, etc., are automatically calculated using built-in formulas.

The template is fully automated. It has highlighted most of the cells containing the formulas with a light blue color.

Each table is divided into six columns as follows:

Expenses Type
Estimated Budget
Actual Spend
Difference
Already Paid
Due

Keeping track of all these things will help you stay organized throughout the event lifecycle.

A beautiful graph at the end of the template gives you a bird’s-eye view of the due and already paid amount for each expense category.

You can download and customize this template for free by changing font styles and color schemes and adding logos.

3. Party Budget Template by Spreadsheetpoint

Click Here To Use This Template!

This Spreadsheetpoint template focuses on managing the budget for your upcoming party.

It comes with a short learning curve thanks to its intuitive design.

There are various pre-built tables for managing expenses related to venue, food and drinks, decorations, entertainment, and more. Each table is divided into several columns: expense type, quantity, unit cost, total amount, and notes.

Here are the two sheets in this budgeting template:

Details – As discussed above, you need to enter the event expenses details in this sheet.
Dashboard – This sheet includes an expenses summary table and a pie chart to give you a quick idea of the amount consumed by each category.

All you need to do is enter the quantity and unit cost for each expense type, the template takes care of the rest.

Users can also put specific notes for each expense for more clarity.

Make sure to add the personal touch by customizing the template before sharing it with family members and friends.

4. Event Budget Template by Smartsheet

Click Here To Use This Template!

It is one of the comprehensive templates for large events.

The template includes intuitive and easy-to-use tables for tracking expenses and income. Additionally, most things are automated using formulas.

Here are the three different sheets in the template:

Event Budget – This sheet is for tracking your event expenses. By default, it includes expense categories such as venue, travel, public relations, etc. You can add more expense types as per your requirements.
Event Revenue – In this sheet, you can specify your event income sources, such as vendors, sponsors, program ads, and more. You need to enter the quantity and cost.
Event Profit Summary – It is a dashboard of your profit and loss from the vent. The sheet displays projected and actual budget and revenue at the top using tables. For a quick profit overview, it uses a stacked bar graph.

The template is pretty straightforward. I would suggest spending a few minutes learning the template’s flow and then adding your event information.

5. Simple Event Budget Template by Peerspace

Click Here To Use This Template!

This is our final pick on the list of best event budget templates for 2024.

If you are looking for a basic template for small events, then look no further because this is your best fit.

The template has a short learning curve, and you can start working within a few seconds.

There is a range of tables for each expense category. You can remove or add more categories as per your requirements.

The template was missing the formulas, so we added them to calculate each category’s subtotal automatically.

How to Create an Event Budget Template from Scratch in Google Sheets

If you are not impressed by the fantastic templates discussed above, here are the steps to create one independently.

As shown in the above image, we will create a basic event budget template. It will include different tables for each expense category and automatically calculate the subtotal and total budget required for the event.

STEP #1 – Create the Header

Let us start by creating a header where we can put our event name or company details.

Open a new Google Sheet by clicking here
Select the entire first row
Increase the height of the row
Select all the cells from A1 to F1
Go to the toolbar section and press the Merge Cells icon
Type “Event Name“
Increase the font to 20
Make the font bold
Change the font alignment to the middle
Change the cell background color to green (Hex Code – #00ac46)
Change the font color to white

Here’s how our header looks after following the above steps.

STEP #2 – Create Expense Category Tables

Now, we will create tables for various expense categories such as venue, catering, promotion, etc.

The process is pretty straightforward.

Select the cell “A3“
Type “Venue“
Next, click on the cell “A4” and type “Venue Rental“
Complete the table as shown below
Add column headers as shown below
Finally, at the end, we need to add a row to find the subtotal. Let us select the cell “A11” and type “Subtotal”
Make the font bold for the headers

Our table for the first expense category is ready.

You can repeat the steps as often as required to include more expense categories.

For the demonstration purpose, I will add two more expense categories: Catering and Promotion. Refer to the following image.

STEP #3 – Automate Calculations using Built-in Functions

Now that our tables are ready let us use built-in functions to find the subtotal at the end of each table.

Here are the steps:

Click the cell “C11“
Type “=sum”
Select the first option from the popup
Provide the cell reference as “C4:C10“
Complete the parentheses using “)“
Press “Enter” on your keyboard

The formula should look like below,

=SUM(C4:C10)

Next, to apply this formula to the rest of the cells of the Subtotal row, you need to follow the steps below.

Select the cell “C11“
Hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell until you see the “+” symbol

(It is known as the Fill Handle)
Click on it and drag the formula till the “E11“

Make sure to follow the steps for all tables created by you. Refer to the following image, where we have applied formulas to all tables.

STEP #4 – Calculate Overall Event Budget

In this step, we will add all the expenses to find the budget required for successfully launching our event.

Let’s begin,

Add a table at the end, as shown in the following image
Select the desired cell where you wish to find the total budget
Type “=sum”
Choose the first option from the popup
Next, replace the value1 argument with the cell reference representing the Expected expense subtotal for the first category. In our case, the cell “C11” includes the subtotal of the Venue category. Refer to the following image
Press “,” to move to the following argument of the SUM function
Now, you need to replace the value2 argument with the cell reference representing the expected expenses subtotal of the following category. In our case, it’s the cell “C18“
Repeat the above steps and include the subtotal of all the expected expenses from each category
Complete the parentheses using “)“
Press “Enter“