Track your expenses, revenue, and actual profit for every convention, anime expo, or artist alley event you attend. Compare events side by side to see which ones are worth going back to.
Works with Google Sheets, Excel, and Numbers. No sign-up required.
Pre-filled with 5 example conventions and built-in formulas that auto-calculate your profit, ROI, and per-day earnings. Replace the sample data with your own events.
The .xlsx version includes formulas, formatting, and conditional colors. Open in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers.
One row per convention. Fill in your expenses, revenue, and product costs. The spreadsheet calculates total expenses, gross profit, net profit, ROI, and per-day profit automatically.
| Convention | Days | Expenses | Revenue | Net Profit | ROI | Per Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anime Midwest Chicago, IL | 3 | $805 | $1,850 | $725 | 64% | $242 |
Local Comic Fest Portland, OR | 1 | $110 | $420 | $225 | 115% | $225 |
FanExpo Seattle Seattle, WA | 3 | $1,300 | $2,200 | $450 | 26% | $150 |
ArtMarket Pop-Up Portland, OR | 1 | $72 | $280 | $148 | 112% | $148 |
Rose City Comic Con Portland, OR | 3 | $450 | $1,950 | $1,120 | 135% | $373 |
The full spreadsheet includes 6 expense columns, COGS, a notes column, and TOTALS/AVERAGES rows. Green/red formatting on profit and ROI columns.
The spreadsheet has 18 columns. Fill in columns A through J, plus Revenue (L), Product Costs (M), and Notes (R). The rest calculate automatically.
Download and open the spreadsheet
Open the file in Google Sheets, Excel, or Numbers. The example data shows you how it works.
Replace with your conventions
Delete the example rows and add your own events. Fill in the convention name, location, dates, and all your expenses.
Add revenue and product costs after each event
After a convention, enter your total sales and the production cost of what you sold. Calculate your net profit.
Compare and decide
Sort by ROI or per-day profit to see which conventions are actually worth your time. Use this data to pick next year's events.
Whether you sell at anime conventions, comic cons, craft fairs, or artist alley events, most artists remember their revenue but few remember their actual profit. A convention where you made $1,500 in sales sounds great until you subtract the $400 booth fee, $300 hotel, $200 in travel, and $250 in product costs. That $1,500 weekend was really $350 in profit.
Without tracking, you end up making decisions based on how a convention felt instead of what it actually earned you. That big convention with the long lines might have a worse ROI than the small local market where your expenses were $70.
Revenue alone does not tell you which conventions are worth attending. These are the numbers that actually matter:
Net profit
Your actual take-home after every expense and product cost. This is the only number that hits your bank account.
ROI %
How efficiently your money worked. A 70% ROI means you got $1.70 back for every dollar you invested. Higher ROI conventions stretch your budget further.
Profit per day
A 3-day convention making $900 in profit sounds better than a 1-day event making $400. But per-day, the 1-day event wins ($400/day vs $300/day). Time is a cost too.
The difference between revenue and profit is often bigger than you think. Here are expenses convention artists commonly forget to track:
Spreadsheets work well when you are doing a handful of conventions a year. But they have limits. You have to manually update revenue and product costs after every event. Inventory does not auto-deduct when you sell something. And comparing conventions means sorting columns yourself.
If you find yourself spending more time updating the spreadsheet than actually using the data, that is usually the sign it is time for a purpose-built tool.
For each product type you sold, multiply the number sold by your per-unit production cost. Add them all up. If you sold 30 prints that cost $3 each to make and 50 stickers at $0.80 each, your COGS is $90 + $40 = $130.
Anything above 50% is solid. Above 100% is excellent. Local artist alley events with low expenses often have the best ROI even if the raw revenue is lower. Big conventions can have impressive revenue but mediocre ROI once you factor in travel and hotel.
Especially those. Knowing which conventions were not worth it is just as valuable as knowing which ones were. Track everything so you can spot patterns over time.
At least 3 to 5 events gives you enough data to see patterns. Even 2 events is useful if one is local and one requires travel, since the expense difference alone reveals a lot.
Conventory does everything this spreadsheet does, plus live sales tracking at the booth, automatic inventory management, and per-product profit breakdowns. No formulas. No manual data entry after every convention.
Try Conventory Free30-day free trial. No credit card required.
Want to estimate profit before a convention?
Use the Convention Profit CalculatorNeed an inventory template too?
Download the free inventory spreadsheetConventory is an inventory and sales tracker built specifically for artist alley vendors and convention artists. Learn more