Whether you're a professional or volunteer event organizer, everyone wants to know the bottom line at a glance. Some organizations think about it in terms of cars, others in terms of entries and some groups have more complex formulas for what constitutes break even. While we can't intuit your revenue model, we can make it easy to apply our numbers quickly to whatever model you use.

We have long had the event financial report (a breakdown of who paid and how much) and an ordered inventory report (what people bought). The former shows each and every transaction for an event (both online, like credit cards, as well as offline, like cash and check), while the latter shows a summarized tally of what each attendee ordered. The confusion occurs when organizers combine these two data sets, because one reports a summarized total by attendee while the other shows a per-transaction level of detail. If you combine them, you're likely to get duplicate inventory lines and the totals don't match.

A better financial summary was in order, but we heard loud and clear that organizers didn't want to look at multiple reports so we built a new "Event Revenue, Packages, & Inventory" financial report. By attendee, it shows (1) payment totals by type, (2) total revenue and fees, (3) packages ordered and (4, not shown) inventory items those packages contain. From the simplest to most complex event, this report now tells you everything you need to know about the financial and logistical aspects of your event.

As a bonus, if you run this report for a specific time frame e.g., one pay period, you'll be able to get a more discrete breakdown of that two-week window. For example, if Joe registers on the 4th and pays $250, then returns on the 18th and adds a t-shirt for $20, the report run by pay period would show you the original registration fee and $250 charge in the first period and just the t-shirt and $20 charge in the second. For larger groups using more sophisticated financial tools or a general ledger system, this new level of reporting detail makes imports and reconciliation much easier.

The report is live and under the "Financials" section. Give it a drive and let us know what you think!