It is so easy to get carried away and give all your effort without checking that you are making the most of it. A barrel of beer left over or burgers which were defrosted but not used could make the difference between poverty and riches. Some readers will find this section dull because they just want to get on with the practical arrangements. Wiser readers may see that this is one section which can make the difference between great success and dismal failure. It can sour the memory of an excellent event with recriminations - so this is how to avoid that.

Records And Bills

Some of your transactions will be done on a goodwill basis, we hope, with local friends giving goods and services at a reduced price. So it might be churlish to ask for a written quotation. In this situation, however, it could help if you have a witness, however informal.

Think about what could happen if the person you deal with is not available when you collect your burgers or pay for your plastic cups. To some extent too, you should be obtaining the best price when buying in bulk and you may need to balance price against not only quality but commitment by local traders. Disagreements can easily arise if your local butcher's burgers are of higher quality but they feel they have been udercut by anfairly un butcher from further afield. The best explanation is to show the bills and quotes.

Legally a contract doesn't have to be written down, but our advice would be this:

• write down everything you agree in your discussions amongst yourselves;
• offer this as minutes so everyone can agree or clarify the record;
• write down all your financial transactions and get bills and agreements wherever possible;
• have a single nominated member to collect all these records and produce a financial report at the end.

This may seem a tiresome business and not in the spirit of good community entertaiment, but you have a duty to demonstrate how you use your money and - perish the thought - if you lose money you will have to explain it.

Confusion over those sausages you ordered may be legitimate, if careless, but giving free drinks to all your pals or "losing" a barrel of beer should be revealed.

You should also want to show that you've made the best profit in the circumstances or that you know how to make things even better next time. Financial records will make this possible.

Stocktaking

Stocktaking is also part of this process. Especially if you're organising several events you need to know how much was eaten, drunk and spent at each event. This way you can buy the right amount next time, reduce waste and maximise profit. In fact your stocktake can provide the best shopping list for next time.

Take note, however, that where there are several events a stocktake can become very difficult to achieve. We think the only way is to count what is left after every event and before re-stocking. Do this on the night of the event, immediately after you close down and while all the details are fresh in your mind. Count what's left and calculate what you think has been sold. Then restock and make a fresh stock list as a starting point for the next event.

We find the most difficult thing is making a check on what extra goods were brought in from our store room. These extras are invariably brought in in haste to replace low stocks and signing a list recording what has been moved will be the last thing on a busy barman's mind. Memory immediately after the event may actually be the most effective record. We've learned that packing up sausages and burgers into packs of ten is easier than calculating what was used from a box of 100. A sticker for each bag of ten could then be stuck on the work top for counting later. Try it.

One further measure is to count the numbers of plastic cups sold then make an allowance for those who return used mugs for refilling. As an overall check of what's being sold it's a rough and ready measure but easy to count if the cups are stored in an organised fashion and used in order.

Burgers are easier to count than sausages; lamb and pork cuts are the most difficult of all. One of the advantages of a ticket system (see Chapter 5 on Food) is that the orders can be written on tickets and spiked for collation later. If it works, an hour's counting will tell you exactly what was ordered and paid for and a final stocktake will tell if there was any waste.

Money Management

This is crucial to your success. I include profit margins and predicted profits in this category. A large or medium sized Feast will need a spreadsheet for this though a small affair can manage on the back of an envelope.

Nevertheless it must be done. Read how "Syd" lost money to see how easily this can happen. It is so easy to assume certain things without checking the data. If your figures suggest a higher profit margin here than there you can push sausages rather than burgers and please customers while making money. Push low profit burgers rather than low profit sausages and you risk working very hard for low returns and having a pile of sausages left at the end. On such small decisions are businesses made!

If you can carefully predict what your profit will be on a given income and this is the profit you make in fact, you really can congratulate yourself. Since predictions can best be made on the basis of experience, recording stocktakes and collecting bills are the only ways of keeping track. You won't get it right the first time but you have no excuse for getting it wrong after two or three attempts.

Banking

A bank account with joint signatories is essential if you're taking your Feast seriously and hoping to repeat it. It is a measure of your confidence that this is not just a one-off event. Negotiate with local banks and discuss charity status if relevant. A local event could be sponsored by a local branch of the bank. They may wish to advertise in your programme or man a stall at the event. At any rate, avoid bank charges on your cheques if at all possible. Point out that the account will be hardly used for most of the year and will be used intensively for only a week or two, after which the profits will sit there for a month while you decide who to give them to. Add the inevitable publicity (many banks offer giant cheques for publicity purposes) and few banks could ignore the enticing prospect of your custom! But don't forget a contingency fund in case of loss; how will you, and they, deal with that possibility?

Even if some bills can be paid instantly using your cash income on the day it will be likely to help your accounting if you pay by cheque. At any rate, you must record what you paid, how much, and preferably get their signature for the transaction. Cash paid out in the tumult of the main event can so easily be forgotten, or even paid twice.

Again a trustworthy named person is the best way to cope with money, if anyone is willing to take on the role. With an assistant he can count the takings and bank them while others cope with the practical arrangements. It is, however an onerous task and not everyone is suitable, so make the decision carefully and try to make that person's job easier in other ways. Remember that security of cash, responsibility, accuracy, honesty (and sobriety!) are vital elements of this job and that an assistant can help all of these aspects if this is built in at the beginning. Adding an assistant later could hint at dishonesty, so be very careful setting up this job.

Collecting

As you may need a "float" to buy things in advance, so do stallholders, and providing them with this initial loose change can be a headache. We use ice cream tubs with lids, a secure label with the name of the stall on each tub and a record made for both stallholder and the organisers. Collecting money from each stall at the end of the event is easiest, with the stallholder counting the "take" and delivering it to the named organiser for checking in his "counting house". Sometimes, however, you may find several collections are necessary so takings can be kept safely. Counting then becomes more complex, with a record kept for both parties so the takings for each stall can be worked out. Collecting the money then is probably best in small plastic money bags with a slip inside identifying the stall and the amount.

Always tell stallholders who will be collecting the money. Never let it be collected by anyone else!

Counting the takings can be time-consuming but need not be done on the day of the Feast. On the other hand security demands banking to be as early as possible and most people want to know what the overall takings are almost immediately. If you can bank it straight away that's probably best, though having a prepared safe store for any late income is also wise. I hardly need emphasise the importance of recording all this cash - by stall, checking all stalls have handed money in, recording any payments out, that the counting has been checked etc.

The Money Man should have cheque book at the ready for paying immediate bills which can be done most conveniently if all parties are together at the event. It is useful also to check beforehand or include with the original float, how the money is to be disbursed and also how (if) the costs of each stall are to be repaid. In other words if the tea tent bought tea, scones and milk, do they hand over all their income on the day and claim costs back from you or do they take it off at source. Different methods can bring about misunderstandings so make it clear from the start.

Syd and his mates lost money because: Syd set the price of burgers too high and sausages too low. Burgers remained unsold while sausages did a roaring trade but hardly broke even.

Syd also failed to notice a level line on the plastic glasses and by filling them to the top instead of to the line in effect gave away 10% free beer. Because he hadn't stored his barrels correctly he also wasted 6 pints per barrel because it came out as sludge.

Finally every pint of beer he awarded himself for all his hard work meant he had to sell 5 pints to compensate. Syd of course, couldn't organise a festival in a brewery ....

Insurance Against Disaster 

One of the questions you were asked at the beginning was "what was the worst that could happen" - if the Feast was cancelled for example. Amongst all the dispirited helpers and dashed expectations the main area of disaster is likely to be financial. The guidelines here should give you the information you need to estimate fixed cost, running costs and a break-even point. Try this calculation, preferably on a miserable day in late winter, so you think realistically.

Ask yourself how much you would lose if you cancelled one month, one week and one day beforehand. Estimate costs such as cancellation fee for the marquee, the band, the entertainment plus the loss of advance payments such as advertising, tickets etc. This could be your total loss one month ahead. These will be your fixed costs at this point.

One week beforehand you may have more losses in addition to the above.The cancellation fees may be greater - or you may have to pay almost the full cost. If you've made a proper agreement with the suppliers you will know this cost; if not, cancellation could be a cause of real argument.

Will you have you bought food and drink by this stage? If so what can be returned, what kept, sold on or wasted. A moment's thought will suggest that you leave your expenditure on perishable goods until the last moment. You may also consider agreeing well in advance to sharing freezable goods (sausages, burgers - but see food hygiene in Chapter 5) between the organisers at cost price.

Cancelling the day beforehand is probably the sure recipe for financial disaster. In most cases you might as well struggle on. Assuming you know what your break even point is (unavoidable fixed costs + expenditure already undertaken must be balanced by profits on sales) you will have to hope that in some way you can raise enough profit in some other way.

With this scenario in mind you might wish you had looked more closely at an insurance policy. Such things exist for cancellation by rain, for example, but only you can say whether they are worthwhile. Our "insurance policy" is in the form of prior ticket sales, spreading events over more than one day, holding events in the middle of summer and paying for a large marquee to which everyone can retire if there's a downpour. We believe this ensures us against reduction in profits as well as catastrophic weather conditions - and we know of no-one personally who has successfully claimed under the conditions of a formal insurance policy. So far we've had no real problems. Touch wood. Bring wellies ....