Live event budget dashboard with natural-language spend queries
Problem
Event budgets live in a spreadsheet tab that one person updates from memory after each committee meeting, usually weekly during buildup and not at all once the event starts. Purchase orders raised through the procurement system and invoices posted in the finance system sit in two other places entirely, so the spreadsheet total is really only a guess at what has been committed. When someone on site asks whether there is room in the budget for another security shift or a late catering order, the honest answer is that nobody knows without ringing the finance manager, who is usually in the office rather than at the venue and has to open three files to answer.
Product idea
A dashboard that pulls the event budget, purchase order commitments and posted invoices into a single line-item view, so committed and actual spend sit next to the plan instead of in three separate files. Each line shows a status: on track, committed close to budget, or over. A plain-language query box lets a budget holder ask something like 'how much is left on catering' or 'which lines are over budget' and get an answer straight from that data, without opening the spreadsheet or waiting for a reply. It does not raise purchase orders, approve spend or write back to any finance system: it only reads and summarises what has already been committed elsewhere.
Who it is for
Budget holders running an event, the finance manager who currently answers these questions by phone, and procurement leads who want visibility into committed spend without pulling reports themselves.
Possible first version
A web app that takes manually uploaded exports: a budget spreadsheet, a purchase order list and an invoice list, and merges them into one line-item table with an over or under flag per line. A query box answers questions from that uploaded data in plain language. Refresh happens by re-uploading the exports, not automatically. Out of scope for version one: any live connection to the finance or procurement system, write-back of any kind, and multi-event roll-up reporting; each event gets its own upload set.
- Build classification
- Micro-tool
- Rough effort
- 1-2 week prototype
- Roles involved
- Budget holder, Finance manager, Procurement lead
- Relevant to
- Professional club, League office, Venue & stadium operator, Collegiate athletics
- Systems in play
- Spreadsheets, Procurement and purchase order systems, Finance and ERP systems
- Product framing
- Analyse data
Questions we get asked
What do we need to have ready before we can try this?
Three exports: the budget spreadsheet as it stands, the current purchase order list, and posted invoices for the event, each as a simple file. No integration is needed to start; version one runs entirely on files someone already has to hand. The output is only as current as those exports, so it is worth agreeing up front who re-uploads them and how often.
Does this replace our finance and ERP system or our procurement system?
No. It reads from them, it does not touch them. All commitments and payments still happen exactly where they happen now; this only pulls the numbers into one place so a budget holder is not waiting on someone else to open three systems. If it disappeared tomorrow, the underlying finance records would be untouched.
Our spreadsheet already tells us the budget position, why add a tool?
The spreadsheet tells you the position as of whenever it was last updated, which for most events is before the event started. This does not replace that spreadsheet, it is built to sit alongside it: the difference is that purchase order and invoice data appear next to it instead of needing a separate check with finance. If your spreadsheet is genuinely kept current hour by hour during an event, you do not need this.
What happens if nobody re-uploads the exports during the event itself?
The view is only as current as the last upload, and it says so on each line rather than pretending otherwise. Version one has no live connection and no automatic refresh of its own; it is only as good as the discipline behind feeding it. Whether that discipline holds up on the day is worth testing before assuming this solves the problem on its own.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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