Calculating Ticket Prices for Home Educating Events
As organisers of events for the home education, home schooled and unschooled community, you’re creating valuable opportunities for learning, socialisation, and strengthening community. However, planning these events involves careful budgeting to ensure they remain sustainable while staying affordable for families. This guide will help you plan and price your events effectively.
The 75% Rule and Risk Management
A common practice is to base your ticket price on selling 75% of available spots. This buffer helps protect against financial loss while keeping prices reasonable. Here’s how to apply this principle:
- Calculate your total costs
- Determine maximum capacity
- Multiply capacity by 0.75 to get your expected attendance
- Divide total costs by expected attendance to get your break-even price
Example:
- Venue costs £200, maximum capacity is 40 children
- Expected attendance (75%) = 30 children
- Break-even price = £200 ÷ 30 = £6.67 per child
- Consider rounding up to £7 to provide additional buffer
Accounting for Payment Processing Fees
When setting your final ticket price, remember to account for the platform fee (5% + 20p per ticket) to ensure you receive your target amount per ticket.
Fee Calculation Example:
Using our earlier example, if you need to receive £7.00 per ticket to cover your costs:
To calculate what to charge:
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- Let x be the ticket price
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- After fees, you need: x – (0.05x + 0.20) = £7.00
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- Solving for x: 0.95x – 0.20 = £7.00
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- Therefore: 0.95x = £7.20
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- Final ticket price: x = £7.58 (round up to £7.60)
By charging £7.60, after the 5% + 20p fee, you’ll receive £7.02 per ticket, which covers your break-even amount of £7.00.
Want an easier way to calculate this? Use our calculator below!
Consider an Early Bird Discount
On our platform you can create several tickets for the same event and choose the dates when ticket starts and stops being sold. This means you can set up an early bird ticket that is a reduced price until a certain date and when that date passes the full price ticket is available.
Early bookings not only help you to pay for advance purchases for your event but Early Bird pricing encourages bookings.
Real-Life Examples
Museum Trip Example:
- Group booking: £450 for up to 60 children
- Based on 75% attendance (45 children)
- Break-even price needed: £10.00 per ticket
- Price to charge accounting for fees: £10.74 (round to £10.75)
- After platform fees, you receive: £10.01 per ticket
Weekly Lego Club Example:
- Venue hire: £40 for 2 hours
- Lego supplies: £10 amortised cost
- Target of 15 children at 75% capacity (expecting 11)
- Break-even price needed: £4.55 per ticket
- Price to charge accounting for fees: £5.00
- After platform fees, you receive: £4.55 per ticket
By carefully planning your event finances and accounting for platform fees, you can create sustainable, enriching experiences that benefit the home education community while ensuring your efforts are fairly compensated.
