If you’re running an event company, you’re probably already grappling with a lot of challenges.
The good news? You’re in a growing field. The global event management market is expected to rise at a CAGR of 10% through 2023, edging up to a substantial $8.5 billion by then. The bad news is that event managers may need to be even savvier, more efficient and more creative to maintain steady profits.
The same report shows U.S. event budgets will rise only modestly this year despite demand for more events, longer events and rising costs of airfares, venue rentals, food, beverages and entertainment.
“Shrinking budgets for events will continue to remain a huge concern for events planners and marketers worldwide in 2019 and beyond,” reads the study by event software firm e2m.live. “Low events budgets will also affect attendee experiences. Events planners apprehend that shrinking budgets will force them to make trade-offs between requirements and budget constraints.”
In light of everything else you have to do, the last thing you need is accounting software that makes you sort through endless transactions and jump through multiple hoops just to ensure accurate revenue recognition. Instead, your software of choice should eliminate busywork, compile multi-company data into one dashboard for easy viewing and provide clearly defined analysis tools that help you optimize that data for future strategy.
Switching to Gravity: It's all up from here
That’s where cloud-based Gravity Software® (Gravity) rises to the challenge for event companies. Gravity’s advanced multi-company features can automate multiple accounting tasks on your behalf, eliminating the need for workarounds when adding customers in QuickBooks and simplifying once-grueling month-end reporting. Our Revenue and Expense Recognition module automatically manages FASB standards, recognition templates and deferral schedules as you make monthly entries. And because Gravity is built from scratch on the versatile Microsoft Power Platform (aka Dynamics 365 CRM), it allows you to add on a nearly endless variety of other financial tools that can keep you organized, informed and able to make optimal financial decisions.
For national event planning firm 360 Destination Group, Gravity was the ideal alternate to the less-capable QuickBooks Enterprise (QBE). In the course of managing five companies, the firm’s accounting team was battling inefficiency and redundancy — partly because its CRM couldn’t automatically communicate with its QBE accounting solution and Excel spreadsheets. That meant 360 couldn’t effectively allocate transactions across multiple companies without manually entering transactions into each database.
With Gravity, the company’s multi-company financials are consolidated into one secure database, allowing for automatic inter-company balancing without duplicate entries. As such, the client has been able to eliminate two outside programs it previously needed for reporting. Now, 360 regularly optimizes Gravity features such as its Advanced Financial Reports, Collections Dashboard, Easy Bank Recs and Advanced Find Query application. It also makes great use of Microsoft’s Power BI integration, a rich visual tool that provides real-time insights into various parts of its business.
“We look forward to building upon the Microsoft Power BI dashboard capabilities in Gravity to provide additional analytics and insights into our growing business,” reports Director of Accounting Shawna Bailley. “I would definitely recommend Gravity Software to other businesses in the hospitality industry.”
Schedule an online demo today to learn more about how Gravity Software can fully streamline financial records for your event planning business. Just say GO!
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