Free Tour Budget Template

Start with the artist income you can support: contracted show fees, a separate merch sales estimate, and any confirmed support. Then cost the whole run, including the travel day before the first show and the trip home. Six shows can require eight days of vehicle rental, crew pay and per diems. Hotel nights are a separate count.

The workbook has two tabs: Your budget starts with empty input amounts, and Worked example shows the calculations filled in. Both have budget and actual columns. Blue cells are editable. Enter zero for an unused budget line so it is deliberately excluded. Leave actuals blank until you know them; a blank actual is different from a verified zero.

This invented USD example uses four people, two rooms and seven hotel nights. The fees, prices and commission rate are teaching assumptions, not market benchmarks. Change them to your own signed terms and current quotes.

The example assumes a booking commission of 10% on the $9,000 show fees only: $900. Management commission is set to zero for this example. Support and merch are excluded from this commission base. The amount remaining is $11,200 − $5,790 − $900 = $4,510, before taxes and artist pay. That is a planning result, not cash already in the bank.

1. Set the run length. Enter calendar days, party size, hotel nights, rooms and show count. Per-day and per-person cost quantities follow those inputs. Use the actual inclusive travel span, not just the number of performances.
2. Replace the income assumptions. The show line assumes one average fee. For different guarantees, enter the show count and your average contracted fee, or use quantity one and the total contracted artist fees. Keep ticket gross out of this number.
3. Price the costs. Each budget line is quantity × periods × unit rate. A flat cost uses quantity one and periods one. Replace the sample categories where necessary and keep the same line meaning in the actual column.
4. Check commission terms. The supplied commission formulas use show fees only. Set your agreed rates. If your agreement uses a different base, change the base cell explicitly. Do not assume grants, buyouts, merch or reimbursements are commissionable.
5. Close the actuals. Enter the full actual total for each line, including zero where applicable. Actual minus budget shows the difference. A positive cost variance means you spent more; a positive income variance means you earned more.

Counting a deposit twice. A $500 deposit against a $1,500 fee leaves $1,000 to collect. The income is still $1,500. Track collections separately using the show settlement template.

Mixing currencies. This workbook uses one currency at a time. Keep a separate copy for each currency. Adding €1,000 to $1,000 does not produce a meaningful $2,000 total. This template does not calculate exchange rates.

Treating every line as complete. A budget without fuel or the final hotel night can look profitable for the wrong reason. The headline totals stay blank until every supplied amount is entered. A reserve, tax provision or extra payment obligation belongs in your plan when it applies; it is not included in this example.

In OCTVE Touring & Events, tour budgets support flat, per-day, per-person and per-day-per-person costs. You can track additional revenue, flag commissionable lines, compare estimates with actuals per currency and export a Tour Profitability PDF. Financials connects the run to your wider artist business. The spreadsheet is a standalone planning aid; uploading it does not automatically create an OCTVE tour budget.