The cost sheet
The profit and loss on the program, calculated from inventory you have actually picked up rather than what you hoped to sell.
At the top of every program sits the cost sheet. It describes itself plainly: realized program P&L on picked-up inventory.
Picked up, not planned
That phrase is the important part. The cost sheet counts what has actually been committed and used, not what you budgeted or hoped for.
A new program says "No committed inventory yet", and that is correct. Nothing has been picked up, so there is nothing to report.
Why it works that way
Group business moves. You block a hundred rooms and eighty-two get taken. You budget for four hundred lunches and serve three hundred and sixty.
A cost sheet based on the budget would tell you what you hoped would happen. This one tells you what did.
Reading it
As the program moves through Contracted and Operating, committed inventory appears here and the figures fill in. Compare that against the Budget you set when creating the program.
The gap between the two is your margin, and watching it during the event is better than discovering it afterwards.
Attrition
The difference between what you blocked and what was taken has a cost, because most hotel contracts make you pay for a share of unsold rooms.
That is why Est. pax and Conf. pax matter, and why chasing unconfirmed delegates is worth real money rather than being administrative tidiness.
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