Why Are We Still Managing Multi-Million-Dollar Events on Spreadsheets?

I’ve had the privilege of working on some of the world’s most prominent exhibitions, conferences and global brand launches.

Let’s be honest, the event industry is broken when it comes to budgeting and financial management.

We’re an industry built on creativity, innovation, and the relentless pursuit of unforgettable experiences. Yet when it comes to managing the financial side of these experiences, we’re still operating like it’s 2005.

One Event. Twelve Files.

This is the reality for most teams running large-scale events:

• Each department submits their budget separately (Ops, Marketing, Sales, Production...) +5 files

• All budgets are consolidated into a master budget +1 file

• Senior leadership requests reforecasts quarterly +3 files

• Finance closes out the project post-event, then again once all invoices are reconciled +2 files

• And if the event gets repurposed or repeated next year, someone must trace back through all those versions to make sense of what changed and why +1 file (at least)

Twelve disconnected versions.

Twelve moments where someone on the team asks, “Wait, which version is the right one?”

And we’ve accepted this. We’ve normalised it.

But Here's the Problem

When forecasting is off, margins suffer.

When data is fragmented, decision making slows.

When files live on personal drives or emails, security and version control vanish.

And what should be a single, unified process ends up being a fragmented mess, costing time, clarity, and money.

We Needed Better

We’ve reached a point where the scale and complexity of modern events demand more than spreadsheets and endless email chains.

What we need now is infrastructure.

A system that’s as agile, intuitive, and collaborative as the teams behind today’s most ambitious events.

We need to stop patching over problems with manual workarounds and start designing for the way we work:

·        Multi-team collaboration across time zones and departments.

·        Constantly shifting forecasts, stakeholder demands, and commercial pressures.

·        A need for speed without sacrificing accuracy, visibility, or control.

After two years dedicated to solving these challenges, we’ve built a solution that places financial management at the core of event operations.

A space where teams can collaborate without duplicating files.

A structure where every version of a budget is saved, compared, and fully traceable.

A system that respects access rights and data integrity, without slowing things down.

We wanted to help fix a culture of inefficiency that’s been holding back some of the most creative professionals I know.

Conclusion

We are the minds behind the world’s most unforgettable experiences, yet too often, the systems supporting us feel like they belong to another era.

It’s time we bring the financial backbone of events into the modern day, not just to work smarter, but to lead smarter.

Because great experiences shouldn’t start at the show floor.

They should start within the teams that bring them to life.

If you're still managing your events with scattered spreadsheets and reactive processes, maybe it’s time to rethink the foundation.

Let’s give ourselves the tools we need to deliver our best work.

We owe it to our teams.

We owe it to our clients.

We owe it to the industry.

Written by Bruno Marcal

Co-Founder at Procast