After 5 EventsTwelve weeks: the approval window
Start here if you need sign-off from a country head, procurement, or a tender process. Most finance events die in this window — not because the budget was wrong, but because the date moved twice and the venue you showed in the first brief is gone by the time you get the nod.
Lock the date first. Not the format, not the venue, not the guest count — the date. Everything else can bend; the date cannot, and the approval chain will burn four of your twelve weeks.
Decide whether partners are invited before you quote anything. A hundred-person event and a hundred-and-sixty-person event price differently, and the question will be asked once the deposit is paid if you do not ask it now.
Ten weeks: the venue decides the evening
The venue is not the backdrop. It sets the noise floor, the sight lines for the speech, whether you can seat everyone, and whether the bar can be staffed to pour for a hundred people in twenty minutes without a queue that kills the room.
You need a seated dinner if there is a formal programme. Standing formats work for a drinks reception with no speech longer than three minutes; anything else and half the room cannot hear and the other half resents standing through it.
Ask three questions before you tour anywhere: can the country head be heard from every seat without a microphone feeding back, can the venue invoice split cost centres without manual reconciliation, and is there a private entrance if your guest list includes people whose presence is not for publication. The third question matters more often than HR is usually told.
Eight weeks: the brief that gets priced
Two kinds of production company will quote you. One plans the event and then sends the brief out to lighting subcontractors, audio suppliers, staffing agencies and caterers it may never have worked alongside — earning a margin on every line and carrying no responsibility when the rigger is late or the bartender is someone else's problem.
The other kind quotes with the people who will build the room and pour the drinks, because they are the same crew. The price is higher up front and lower by the time the invoice comes. After 5 Events is the second kind — the production and staffing side of a company whose other arms are the band and the DJ roster, which means the person who says yes to the rider is the person on site when the rider becomes a problem.
The brief that gets priced accurately includes: guest count as a range, not a single number; whether there is a programme and how long; the venue's technical constraints if you already have one; and the cost centres the invoice must split. Leave any of those out and the first quote will be followed by a revision once the actual constraints surface.
Six weeks: the part nobody wants to own
The alcohol policy, the accessibility requirements, the dietary matrix, and what happens with the person who does not drink or does not dance and is standing alone by the wall at nine.
Compliance governs the first one — you cannot delegate it and you cannot ignore it. If your firm has a gifts and hospitality register, this evening is on it, and the audit wants to know who attended and what the per-head cost was. Build that reporting into the contract now, not the week before the auditor asks.
Accessibility is not a checklist; it is a conversation with the three people on your list who will not tell you what they need unless you ask directly. Ramps, sight lines, seating near exits, dietary needs that are medical not preferential — ask now, because solving it the morning of the event means someone is excluded in front of everyone they work with.
The person standing alone is not a production problem, but it becomes one if the room is too loud for conversation or the programme leaves no gap for it. A seated dinner solves it structurally; a standing reception does not, and no amount of lighting will fix that.
Four weeks: the point at which the price is real
Deposits are paid, suppliers are booked, and the number you showed finance is now the number you are held to. Two things change costs after this point: a guest count revision of more than ten per cent, and a venue change. Everything else — the flowers, the print, the extra cocktail hour — is inside the tolerance.
Purchase orders must be issued now if your procurement process requires them. The invoice will come the week after the event, and if the PO is not in the system the payment stalls and you are the one explaining it.
Two weeks: the run sheet and the tech rider
The programme must be timed to the minute — not because the evening will follow it, but because the venue, the caterer and the crew need to know when service stops and when the country head expects a microphone that works.
If someone is speaking, they need a microphone test the afternoon of the event. Not optional. The number of finance events ruined by a director reading from notes into a microphone placed for someone a foot taller is higher than the number ruined by bad food.
The decision you face now
You can plan this internally and hire suppliers piecemeal, or you can brief a production company that owns the outcome because it is their crew on the floor. The first costs less until something is wrong and there is no single number to call. The second costs more and breaks even the moment the bartender is late or the speech cannot be heard in the back third of the room.
Settle the date, the partner question, and the approval chain before you brief anyone. Everything else can be priced; those three things cannot.