Seeing the profit on each event
How an organiser tracks profit or loss per event when the ledger has no project field, using event accounts, Z reports, journals and budgets.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Events businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
An events company can have a good year made of three great events, two that broke even and one that quietly lost money. Unless each event's income and costs are kept apart, the year-end figures blend them into one number and the loss-maker gets booked again next season.
Achekam's ledger has no project or job field on a journal line, so it cannot tag a bill to "Winter Jazz Night" the way some job-costing systems do. That does not stop you seeing profit per event. It means you build the separation into the chart of accounts and a couple of journals, and the standard reports do the rest.
Accounts per event, or per event series
Your books open with a standard chart of accounts, and you can add accounts, rename them or switch them off. Use that to give each event its own small group of accounts. A sensible set for one event:
| Account | Type | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
| Jazz Night: ticket and bar income | Income | Takings moved in from the tills, ticket invoices |
| Jazz Night: sponsorship income | Income | Sponsor invoices for this event |
| Jazz Night: venue and production | Expense | Venue hire, staging, sound, lighting |
| Jazz Night: artists and crew | Expense | Fees, travel, accommodation |
| Jazz Night: marketing | Expense | Adverts, printing, social media spend |
For a series of small, similar events, such as a monthly market, one set of accounts for the series is usually enough, with the period telling you which month's market it was. Keep the full set for the big events where a loss would really hurt.
AccountingTools describes the wider idea as job costing: gathering the materials, labour and overhead of each job so costs can be traced to it. Separate accounts are a simple way to do the same in a general ledger.
The discipline is in the coding. Supplier bills are recorded line by line, so every line of every bill must go to the right event's account. A sound company's invoice covering two events gets two lines. Write the coding rule down for whoever captures bills, and check it monthly.
Till takings moved to the event by journal
Bar and door sales arrive through the tills, and every till sale that reaches the server posts to general revenue (4000), not to an event account. Invoiced income such as sponsor and corporate table invoices posts to Professional Services Revenue (4100), because an invoice line cannot name a different account.
So the event's income has to be moved across. The Z report for each till, frozen at cash-up and available as a PDF, gives you the takings for that till's session. Add up the Z reports for the event's tills, then post a manual journal from 4000 to the event's income account. Do the same for the event's invoices out of 4100.
Two habits make this reliable:
- Name tills after the event. "Jazz Night bar 1" is easier to pick out later than "Till 3".
- Keep the Z report PDFs with the journal. Anyone checking the figure can see where it came from.
A journal must balance and cannot be dated in a closed month, so post these before the event's month is closed.
Budgets and committed spend
Each event account can carry a budget for each period, and Achekam compares budget with the actual figures from the ledger. Set the event's budget account by account when you sign off the event plan.
If you raise purchase orders for big costs, approved orders count as committed spend against those budgets. The procurement screen shows budget, spent, committed and available for each expense account and period, and flags lines that are over-committed without blocking a purchase. That warning is most useful weeks before the event, while there is still time to cut the fireworks.
The income statement for the event's period
Management accounts show an income statement for the period you choose, beside the period before, and a balance sheet at period end, both added up from the business's own journals and exportable as PDF or CSV. Choose the period that covers the event, from the first marketing spend to the last bill, and read down the event's accounts: income less costs is the event's result.
For a closer look at a single account, the general ledger lists every posted line, and the trial balance shows each account's balance for a period or at a date. Export to CSV if you want an event summary that groups the event's accounts on one page.
Closing out an event's accounts
Events have long tails. The photographer bills a fortnight later, a sponsor pays late, a damage claim from the venue arrives after a month. Keep the event's accounts open until you are confident the last bill is in, then:
- Check the event's accounts in the general ledger for anything coded there by mistake.
- Read the final income statement for the event period and save the PDF with the event file.
- Switch the event's accounts off, so nobody codes next year's costs to last year's event.
- Close the month in which the last entry posted. A closed month refuses postings from every source.
Accounts switched off keep their history, so last year's event is still there to compare with when you plan the next one.
Start with your next event
Set up the accounts before the first bill arrives, not after the event, because recoding bills afterwards is tedious and easy to get wrong. For keeping each event's spending inside its budget from the start, see keeping vendor spend inside the event budget, and if a venue or promoter takes a share of the bar, see showing takings per till for a revenue split.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
