How to Allocate your Annual Event Budget Across your Trade Shows and Sponsorships

ExhibitDay’s new budgeting feature lets you set annual trade show budgets as well as more granular, event-specific budgets across all your trade shows for the year.

In this post, we will cover how you can allocate your annual budget across your events in ExhibitDay.

Your Annual Event Budget

Your total annual budget is pretty straight forward — it’s the total budget you have for exhibiting at trade shows, plus, your sponsorship budget.

Allocating Budget to an Event

Once you’ve entered the events you are considering for the year in ExhibitDay and you’ve set your total annual budget, it’s time to allocate that budget across your events.

Event-Specific Budgets

Under the [Budget] tab for each event, you can enter the planned budget for the event’s booth reservation, services, travel/lodging, shipments, miscellaneous expenses, and sponsorships. As you enter these numbers, the total planned budget for the event is automatically calculated in the summary section.

The Allocation Summary Box

The budget allocation summary box shows the total event budget in relevance to the total annual budget for all trade shows and sponsorships. As you enter the budget for each event, this is where you’ll get a lens into how much of the annual budget remains unallocated (or how over-allocated the annual budget is).

Event Allocation Breakdown 

After you have allocated your annual budget to all your events, you can go to the [Event Allocation Breakdown] tab of the annual budget page to see the details of how the budget has been allocated.



Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking the budgets for your trade shows and exhibits. 

Tracking Speakers, Sales Personnel, Temp Staff and other Resources for your Events

Based on user feedback and popular demand, we just released the ability to add Resources (non-users) to your ExhibitDay workspace.

A Resource is a “non-user” in your ExhibitDay workspace (i.e. no ExhibitDay account / no access to your Events). Essentially, they are people who participate in your trade shows and exhibits, but don’t have the need to log into your ExhibitDay workspace; like: speakers, 1099 sales personnel, contractors, specialists, and temporary staff.

Just like Users, Resources can be added as event attendees (under each event’s [Staff] tab), or they can be assigned to travel reservations
(under each event’s [Travel] tab).

You cannot assign tasks to Resources. And, Resources have no ability to log into your ExhibitDay workspace.

How to Add Resources to your Workspace

In order to add a Resource to your ExhibitDay workspace, click on the “Users & Permission” link in the top settings menu and click the [Add] button under the [User & Permissions] tab. There, you’ll see the option to either invite a new User to join your workspace, or add a Resource (non-user).

Create a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking the speakers, 1099 sales personnel, contractors, specialist, and temporary staff for your events.

Tracking Miscellaneous Expenses in your Annual Events Budget

Based on user feedback, we just released new functionality to track non-event-specific miscellaneous expenses in your annual budgets. These are trade show and exhibit expenses that are incurred against your annual event budget that cannot be attributed to a single event — for example: new booth furniture, or, updated print brochures.

You can manage your miscellaneous annual expenses under the [Other / Miscellaneous Expenses] tab of the Annual Budgets page in ExhibitDay.


Create a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking the budgets for all your trade shows, exhibits and sponsorships.

Trade Show Shipment Tracking

Just Released – ExhibitDay’s Shipment Tracking module.
You can now use the [Shipment] tab of your events in ExhibitDay to track all your shipments (e.g. booth furniture, swag, presentation equipment) for your trade shows and exhibits.

The information that can be tracked for each shipment

  • Shipment Description
  • Courier
  • Tracking Number
  • Pick-up / Drop-off Location
  • Destination
  • Pick-up / Drop-off Date
  • Delivery Date
  • Shipment Cost (used in calculations of actuals in the event budget)
  • Invoice (attachable)
  • Notes/Details about the shipment

Create a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking the shipments for your trade shows and exhibits.

Trade Show Budget Tracking

Just launched — the ability to track budgets and actual costs for your trade shows and sponsorships in ExhibitDay.

This new enhancement helps you get a better lens into your investments in exhibits and event sponsorships and gives you more clarity when planning for future events.

Like most things in life…

“If you can measure it, you can make it better.”

Event-Specific Budgets

Under the Budget tab of each event, you can now enter the planned budget for the exhibit booth, services, travel reservations, shipments, sponsorships, and other/miscellaneous expenses.

Event-Specific Trade Show Budget

Event Budget Summary

The planned and actual sums are automatically calculated in the top summary section:

Planned Budget Summary

Entering Actual Costs

A new “Cost” field has been added for:

  • Booth Reservation (under the event [Booth] tab)
  • Booth Services (under the event [Booth] tab)
  • Travel Reservations (under the event [Travel] tab)
  • Sponsorships (under the event [Sponsorships] tab)
  • Other Expenses (under the event [Other/Misc. Expenses] tab
Cost Field

Use the newly added “Cost” field to specify the actual cost for each expense. The costs that you enter get aggregated into the actuals under the event Budget tab.

Annual Budgets

We also added the ability to track annual budgets (for all your trade shows).

Annual Trade Show Budgets

Under the annual budgets tab, you can set your overall annual budget for your Exhibits as well as your event Sponsorships. The actual costs are automatically aggregated from the values you enter in the “Cost” fields of all your events for the year.

Access Control

You have the ability to control which users in your ExhibitDay workspace have access to view and update costs as well as budgets.

Budget Access Control

Sign up for an ExhibitDay account and start tracking the budgets for your trade shows and exhibits.