This article is about budgeting for conferences which is pretty rich (no pun intended) coming from me. My idea of budgeting is to take my lunch into work all week, then buy two glossy magazines on Friday night as compensation for having eaten ham sandwiches for the past five days. Hopeless.

However, our ability to handle other people’s money forms part of our professional reputation. And making the budget stretch for conferences is particularly vital - as we all know, no matter how much money you have to play with, it’s never enough.

So let's take a look at a conference budget, and see how we can eke out those pounds for maximum effect. For the purposes of this article, I'm assuming you've been asked to plan a one-day, non-residential conference for which delegates are not being charged. With any luck, you'll have been given more than a week's notice, too!

Getting started
My first budget tip is: network. No matter the size of your event, talk to your colleagues and peers. You can pick up lots of good advice and personal reviews of venues, outside event companies and speakers from your contemporaries. People are usually very willing to offer their opinions and wisdom.

Secondly: shop around for your venue. This can be an area of enormous saving. If you have a tried and tested venue, can you negotiate a discount due to the amount of business you give them? If there are other conferences coming up, could you agree to give them the business for a block discount across all bookings? Do you have a local university that has conference and banqueting facilities? (Try checking out www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/ukinfo/alpha.html). Is there a large football club nearby? They often have conferencing facilities and you may also get tours of the ground thrown in. (Look at www.nationwide.co.uk/football/; www.premierleague.com/fapl.rac?command=forwardOnly&nextPage=enCompLeagueTable).

Do you have any professional associations' HQs available to you? (For example, the Institute of Directors at http: www.iod.com will give you information about their premises across the UK.) Union head offices? (Look here for a listing of all Unions with contact details: www.tuc.org.uk/tuc/unions_main.cfm or at www.stuc.org.uk/ for Scotland.) In London, Royal Medical Colleges have excellent conference venues with experienced in-house teams. (Try www.rcp.org.uk or www.rcog.org.uk).

• Delegate fees can vary enormously between venues but they should all include catering (on arrival, two-course lunch, mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshment breaks) and AV support including a technician. Check what AV is covered: microphones? Laptops for breakout rooms? If you are charged for the latter, ask people to bring their own. OHPs? Do you need projectors if there’s a whiteboard?

• Photocopying and spare name badges are the type of service that will cost you a fortune once at the venue itself. If you work with a group of people who are notorious for just turning up rather than booking, make sure you take plenty of extra delegate packs, badges, labels and sticky shapes if you are using colour coding for group organisation.

• Ask for jugs of tap water with ice for breaks and during meetings. Bottled water will be at restaurant prices.

Check with the team how many conferences of your size they have done before and see if they will give you the names of other clients who may be willing to talk to you (they may say no as this is commercially confidential but you can ask). Ask for a discount. Always ask for a discount. We don’t do it enough in this country.

Finding your star turn
What about speakers? Industry insiders will cost you less financially, but may not be a good investment, even if it is just their bus fare. Unless you know for sure that they are good public speakers, do not go down this route. If there are industry experts who can present in public, you’ll need to budget for a fee, expenses and possibly accommodation. Does your field have its own journal? Who are the people writing and having papers published in there? Do you have any journalistic contacts who could give you an overview of which academics can speak well and which can’t?

If there isn’t anyone who springs to mind, then a speaker bureau will be able to provide you with relevant and accomplished speakers (www.professionalspeakers.org; Speakers for Business www.sfb.co.uk; or the London Speaker Bureau at www.londonspeakerbureau.com). Bear in mind that these are highly regarded public speakers who make all or part of their living from talking at public events, so be prepared to pay in the thousands.

You'll need to consider publicity. Email is a real boon at this time. You can design your own material and compile your own distribution list to those who you think may be interested in attending, and handle the whole initial registration process on-line. This can save you a considerable amount of money. If you design flyers or posters, ask your peers in other organisations if they can display them for you.

Internal costing is more tricky. Apart from needing to order shedloads of stationery, you have to factor in your time. Again, you won’t be charging internally for the hours you spend on your conference but your workload will not diminish because you have an external event to organise. The increase in pressure as you approach the big day may mean you have to hire a temp to cover the basics while you concentrate on the conference. Although this won’t come from your conference budget, you really should factor it in to get a true picture of what the day has cost (you don’t need to recharge it, just be aware of the figures).

May your day be a great and thrifty success!