CAMRA Confidential

Beer Festival Business Plan Form

User Instructions

Release details:

Version: 3.0

Release date: 13 December 2017

Released by: Terry Lock

BP version 3.00 and later

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Background

The purpose of the Beer Festival Business Plan Form is to allow both Beer Festival Organisers and the Beer Festival Assessors to quickly and accurately assess the viability of a beer festival and to authorise it once it is acceptable. Please can you note the following points before using the Business Plan.

THE COMPLETED FORM SHOULD BE SUBMITTED TO YOUR BEER FESTIVAL ASSESSOR FOR APPROVAL AT LEAST 4 MONTHS BEFORE THE DATE OF THE FESTIVAL (6 MONTHS FOR A NEW EVENT OR ANY MAJOR CHANGE) AND BEFORE ANY FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS ARE MADE, UNLESS PRIOR APPROVAL HAS BEEN OBTAINED (REF: VENUE BOOKINGS).

THE SUBMISSION SHOULD BE MADE ON THE BUSINESS PLAN FORM AND NOT USING WORD DOCUMENTS OR PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF SPREADSHEETS (THESE ARE NO LONGER VALID)

THE PREVIOUS FESTIVAL FIGURES MUST BE INCLUDED TO ALLOW THE ASSESSOR TO COMPARE EVENTS.

IN SOME AREAS OF THE FORM FIGURES ARE CALCULATED AND SHOULD BE USED AS A GUIDE FOR YOUR OWN BUSINESS PLAN.

Once they have completed their review the Beer Festival Assessor will inform you of approval and forward it to the necessary CAMRA contacts, allowing you to confirm plans and arrange funding requests as needed.

As well as completing the form you will need to ensure the basic health and safety information and risk assessment are completed and submitted to CAMRA Centre, in order to release your insurance cover. Separate forms and guidance are available on the CAMRA website to help you with this. The best place to find this is in the beer festival hub, which all members of the organising committee should be able to access, under Administration and Operational Planning.

The form asks for last year's actual financials, to help both you and the assessor to review and sense check the budget. Please try to replicate the detailed calculations for admissions and beer sales for last year if you can, but the facility is available to input these at a summary level if need be.Business Plan Form Basic / Global all sheet Instructions

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The business plan form consists of a number of spreadsheet tabs. In all cases the cells where you are required to input information are highlighted as shown below.

Global Information or Input Cell for This Year – Black on yellowHighlighted Input Cell Last Year – Grey

You will also see "hyperlink" cells with writing in the format below – these are links that jump to another part of the file that is relevant to what you are working on (e.g. supporting workings).

This is a hyperlink

If you are not used to Excel please also take note of field formats, Dates numbers etc.

Dates are normally entered as d d /mm/yy and the default year is always the current one.

You will note one major change which is that figures entered for costs as shown in accountancy terms. (numbers in brackets are negatives i.e. costs or liabilities)

These are entered as negative numbers e.g. a hire of a hall at £1200 would be entered as -1200 and appears in the spreadsheet as (£1200)

We have also included a comments set of rows and columns at the foot of Tab 6 – Financials. This is intended to be used to provide additional comments to the assessors but also can be used as working area for your own calculations.

The pull down menu of branches also contains Regions and a final catch all for those branches who run shared festivals – e.g. Manchester branches

We are also developing a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and these will be available via the festivals Hub.

Support and issues reporting:

If you do have any issues or request for changes can you please send them to:

terry.lock@camra.org.uk

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The Business Plan has the following named tabs (the number references may change at some point)

TAB USED FOR

General Information Festival details, contact information, dates, options.

Attendance and Tickets Details of this and previous years attendance figures and prices

Wet Sales data Details of this and previous years wet sales figures and prices

Glasses Details of this and previous years glasses figures and prices

Financials Details of this and previous years financial figures and prices

Sense Checks and Comments Summaries of totals to allow quick sense check on the overall plan

Festival Glass Costs For reference details of the agreed festival glass prices

Version Control (internal use for tracking changes) Reference only.

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CAMRA Confidential

Business Plan Form specific tab Instructions

General Information about your festival (venue, dates etc.).

Enter the basic information here (name, organiser, dates etc.)

If your branch is VAT registered then you must select YES since VAT will then be applied to calculations later.

VAT registered Enter figures as NET, the business plan will then calculate VAT (all based on standard rate) as yet we do not handle multiple rates

Not VAT registered Enter figures as the GROSS amount (include VAT if the supplier is VAT registered)

Dates are entered as DD/MM/YY format and once the start and end date are entered the days will be generated in the rows below.

The times can then be entered in the appropriate date rows e.g.

11:00 - 22:00 or

11 am - 10pm

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Attendance and Tickets

Income is built up in a relatively simple working based on a plan for each session. If you are only planning one daily session then just use “session 1” and leave “session 2” as zero.

The percentage in advance is shown as a percentage of the totals input in admissions. Enter both this year’s and last year’s data. Last year’s data will be automatically used to set this year’s figures, but may be subsequently overwritten.

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Wet Sales Data

Income and Costs are built up from anticipated purchases and sales together with pints per Kil

VAT registered events enter the NET costs.Non VAT registered enter the GROSS costs.

There are 4 variables that determine calculations on available amounts:

Pint per Kil BEER Estimated consumption per Kil

Pints per Kil Key Keg Estimated consumption per Kil

Pints per kil Cider Estimated consumption per Kil

% markup % markup applied to calculate estimated selling price

These must be entered to allow the calculation to be done.(CAMRA normally estimates that 125 pints are sold out of every equivalent kil.)

The default figure in here is based on a benchmark that most festivals should achieve. You may want to review against what was actually achieved in previous years and consider any operational changes that might be needed.

Enter Kils ordered plus the average cost you have been quoted – the sheet will then calculate the suggested price per pint required based on your margin. This is only a guide.In the column headed ”Selling Price” enter your estimated selling Price per PINT.Please be aware of the relationship between beer ordered and attendees (this sheet shows the pints per head) if this looks unreasonable please alter your beer order accordingly.

In the last year price per pint section please overtype your ACTUAL price per pint selling price.

For foreign and bottled beers just input the cost excluding VAT and the estimated income - the %Markup is NOT applied to these items.

The tab calculates the estimated Selling price based on the above figures, number of kils ordered and the estimated AVERAGE price per kil.This CANNOT be overwritten and the branch must provide their Estimated Selling price

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in the column provided

Equally the tab calculates the pints per person available for each type, Beer, Keykeg and Cider and the OVERALL pints per person available . This uses the attendance figures as part of the calculation.

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Last Years Figures are entered slightly differently, your must enter the pints per kil figures as for this year but you also enter the following data for LAST years figures

• Total kills sold• Average price bought at• CASH BANKED by each category (includes VAT)

The system will then calculate the potential income and show the cash variance

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CAMRA Confidential

Glasses

Costs and income are built up from assumptions about the numbers required and costs. The costs can be drawn from the matrix of Festival Glass prices that are included for information, as they are our recommended supplier. Please be aware the costs are per dozen, not per glass.

Please note that the form shows the Calculated UNIT COST per Glass

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Financials

Your costs and income planned estimates. This is in a similar recommended reporting format that CAMRA is using and which has been embedded in the Online Accounting System (COBAS), to make reporting and comparison easier. The majority of the numbers are input directly, but some are drawn from other workings as described above. In these cases a small hyperlink to the side will take you to the relevant workings. We strongly suggest that you start by going to sheet 3, to build up attendance assumptions and then use that in sheets 4 and 5 to complete beer and glass sales and costs.

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Sense check

Shows some useful comparisons against last year including break-even calculations.

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Festival Glass Cost

Again no input needed here just a sheet detailing, Festival Glass’s prices for information. This is maintained centrally by CAMRA. Details of the buying arrangement we have with Festival Glass is available in the Operational Planning section of the festival hub.

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