Planning a company fall event in Indianapolis

A company event is not a scaled up birthday party, and the people who get handed one usually find that out somewhere around week two. The budget has to be defensible to somebody who was not in the room. The venue has an insurance requirement nobody mentioned. Finance needs a W9 before a purchase order can be raised. And the fun part, the thing everybody actually remembers, turns out to be the smallest line on the sheet.

This is written for whoever got handed that job: an HR lead, an office manager, an HOA board member, or the person on the social committee who made the mistake of volunteering. It is a planning document rather than a sales page. Every number is a price published on our own product pages, so you can check each one, and where something is not published the article says so rather than guessing.

One decision sets everything else

Indoor or outdoor. Make this call first, because almost every other choice follows from it, and changing your mind in week four is expensive.

The honest framing is not about preference, it is about what happens if the weather turns. Tents, tables, chairs, concessions, arcades and most games are weather tolerant. Inflatables are not, and our limits on them are firm rather than a judgment call on the day: bouncers cannot be used if there are winds of 20 mph or more, and cannot be used in the rain.

So the question to answer is this. If the forecast goes against you three days out, does your event still work? If the answer is yes, outdoors is fine and you should plan the inflatable as a bonus rather than the centerpiece. If the answer is no, and there are plenty of events where it is no, put it indoors and build the whole thing around equipment that does not care what the sky is doing.

If you go outdoors

Four things need deciding, and only one of them is entertainment.

Cover

Our tents run from $100 for a 10x10 up to $700 for a 20x40 Marquee. Cover is worth booking even on a good forecast, because it does as much work for shade and for wind as it does for rain, and because it gives the food and the seating a defined place to be.

Power

Office lawns, fields and parks routinely have no usable outlet, and it is the most common thing discovered too late. Our requirement for an inflatable is that it should be within 100 ft of a 110V outlet, we supply the cord, and we ask that nothing else be plugged into that outlet. Where there is no 110V outlet available we can provide a generator, priced from $250 on its product page.

That is a booked item, not something that rides along on every truck, so it has to be on the order rather than mentioned on the morning. Walk the site, find the outlets, plug something in and confirm they work, then draw your layout around what you actually found.

Restrooms

This is the line most first-time organizers forget entirely, and the one attendees notice fastest. If your site does not have facilities that can absorb your headcount, we rent restroom trailers: a 2 station from $1,320, a 3 station from $1,649, and a 5 station from $2,099. Those are real numbers and they will move a budget, which is exactly why they belong in the first draft rather than the last.

Seating, and the math that makes it easy

Seating prices out more predictably than almost anything else at an event, because it is simply per unit:

• White folding chairs from $3.25 each.
• 6 ft white folding tables from $17.00, 5 ft round folding tables from $16.50.
• Cocktail tables from $25.00, with skirts from $10.00.
• Coolers and Fill N Chill tables from $25.00 each.

Seating for 100 is therefore from $325, and fifteen 6 ft tables to go with it is from $255. Cocktail tables are the cheap trick for a standing event: a dozen of them with skirts, at $25 and $10 apiece, changes how a space feels far more than the same money spent anywhere else.

If you go indoors

Our FAQ confirms we can set up on grass, pavement, or indoors, and a good part of the catalog is built for exactly this. Indoors also removes the weather question entirely, which for a Q4 event is worth more than it sounds.

Casino night is the format that consistently works for an adult company event, and it is one of the few that genuinely scales with headcount rather than fighting it. Our Black Jack, Craps, Poker and Roulette tables are each from $650, and the Cash Cube money machine is from $350.

Arcades suit a mixed or family-inclusive event, because they need no instruction and no queue management. Multicade consoles, including the Galaga and Pac-Man cabinets, are from $350 each, Pop-A-Shot is from $175, and at the top of the range the World's Largest Pac-Man is from $995 and the VR Roller Coaster is from $899.

Competitive games give you the photographs. Single Lane Axe Throwing is from $325 and Dual Lane from $495, Western Shootout is from $495, and Human Foosball and the Ninja Warped Wall are each from $695. Our Mechanical Bull is from $1,500 and is the one people talk about afterwards. We also do wax hands, which are named on our corporate page and are the kind of small thing guests actually take home.

A 15 x 15 dance floor is from $795 if the event has that shape to it.

One caution, and it is the honest limit of what an article can tell you. We do not publish ceiling heights, door widths or indoor clearances for individual units. Check the footprint on the product page, then confirm your venue's door width and ceiling height before you book. It is a five minute call and it prevents the single worst kind of event-day surprise.

Two worked budgets

Both are arithmetic on the published prices above rather than packages we sell, and both exclude delivery, which is charged separately based on the miles to your event location. Setup and takedown are included in the rental price.

An indoor casino night for around 100 people. Four casino tables at $650 is $2,600. Add the Cash Cube at $350, ten cocktail tables at $25 and ten skirts at $10, and you are at $3,300. That is a complete evening with a clear centerpiece, and nothing in it is weather dependent.

An outdoor company picnic for around 150. A 20x40 Marquee tent at $700, 100 chairs at $3.25 for $325, fifteen 6 ft tables at $17 for $255, a generator at $250, and a popcorn popper and cotton candy machine at $115 each for $230. That comes to $1,760, and it leaves room in most budgets to add one large attraction.

The lesson in the two numbers is worth stating plainly: the infrastructure is usually cheaper than people fear and the headline attraction is usually dearer. Price the tent, the seating, the power and the restrooms first. Whatever is left is your entertainment budget, and it will be a more honest one.

Staffing

Our published rate for event attendants is $75 per hour, described on our FAQ as being to manage large events. Four hours of attendant cover is $300, which is not a large line against most corporate budgets and is the difference between an employee running a queue all afternoon and an employee attending their own company event.

Our corporate page also notes that event coordinators are available to plan large events. If the thing you have been handed is genuinely large, that is worth asking about before you build a spreadsheet.

The three documents finance will ask for

Ask your venue for its insurance requirement in writing, early, because it differs by venue and we cannot tell you what yours is. What we can tell you is what is available from our side:

• A W9. Held on file for vendor setup with school district and corporate accounts payable, and downloadable now.
• A certificate of insurance. Proof of our general liability coverage.
• Additional insured status. We can list your venue as additionally insured for an extra $25 charge per event.

On the money side: deposits are 50% of the total order, a credit card is required for the deposit, and the deposit is non-refundable but can be applied to a future event. The balance is due at time of delivery, and we take cash, money orders, certified checks, company checks, Visa, MasterCard and Discover. Pass one line to finance: there is a $35 returned check fee on all returned checks.

Our standard rental is up to 6 hours, with overnight available for an additional charge. If your setup window and your event window fall on different days, price the overnight rather than assuming it.

A sensible order of operations

• First: pick the date, and decide indoor or outdoor using the weather-loss test above.
• Second: get the venue's insurance requirement in writing and start vendor setup with finance. This is the long pole, not the equipment.
• Third: walk the site. Outlets, door widths, ceiling heights, restrooms, and where a truck can actually get to.
• Fourth: book the infrastructure. Tent, seating, power, restrooms.
• Last: spend what remains on the attraction. It is the most fun decision and the least urgent one.

Where to look at the options

Our corporate and group events page is the right starting point. It covers company events, HOA neighborhood parties, sporting events and youth fundraisers, and it is where the coordinator and certificate-of-insurance options are set out.

Common questions