Annual Planning Tips To Budget For 2025 Offsites (And Get CFO Approval!)
Careful planning and collaboration with your finance team over the coming months will ensure high ROI, easier-to-plan team retreats next year.
Planning offsites for 2025 starts with creating thoughtful budgets that aligns with your company’s business objectives and financial goals for the coming year.
Whether you’re organizing one All-Hands Meeting, or dozens of offsites across a wide variety of teams, careful planning and collaboration with your finance team over the coming months will ensure high ROI, easier-to-plan team retreats next year.
In this article, we’ll walk through key tips for budgeting your 2025 offsites, presenting a strong case to your CFO, and maximizing ROI from these investments.
Before you start, download our free budgeting template!
1. Start Early and Align with Company Goals
Pro Tip: Work with department heads to ensure that the offsite aligns with their objectives for the year. When multiple leaders champion the value of the event, you’ll have a stronger case for your CFO.
To secure a budget for 2025 offsites, it's essential to start early (now!) and align the goals of various team retreats you’ll plan throughout 2025 with your company’s strategic objectives.
Different offsites may call for focus areas around strategic planning, team-building, aligning cross-functional teams, training and ramping up the year’s sales and GTM teams, product development, brainstorms for the marketing team, and so forth.
As a smaller company, you may only budget for an All-Hands Meeting and attempt to accomplish many of these objectives in one offsite.
For larger companies, you might have multiple All-Hands Meetings, or department-level offsites, for which you can plan more specific objectives.
For example, quarterly leadership team offsites or board meetings may have more strategic planning benefits, whereas for sales teams, your Sales Kickoff will have much different objectives compared to President’s Clubs outings.
For whatever offsites you have in mind next year, make sure you clearly articulate how each offsite supports various business objectives, as well as how each offsite will increase employee engagement, retention, and alignment at your company.
READ MORE: Reasons To Plan Offsites: Strategic Planning, Teambuilding, Cross-Department Collaboration, and More
2. Build a Detailed Budget Estimate
Pro Tip: Use historical data from previous offsites or research industry benchmarks to estimate costs accurately. Include both per-attendee costs and overall figures.
When budgeting for offsites in your 2025 annual planning efforts, break down the projected costs by offsite to show a clear, detailed view of how much each team retreat will cost.
Include categories such as:
Venue and accommodation costs (e.g., hotel room blocks)
Travel expenses (flights, ground transportation)
Food and beverage (meals, catering, and refreshments)
Activities and entertainment (team-building events, excursions, guest speakers)
Swag and materials (custom gifts, branded items)
Technology (AV equipment, virtual collaboration tools)
When setting your budget, plan for contingencies!
Unexpected costs are common during offsite planning, whether it’s last-minute travel changes or additional requests from the team. Set aside 10-15% of the total budget as a contingency to ensure you’re covered for any surprises.
Demonstrating to your CFO that you’ve accounted for unforeseen expenses shows financial responsibility and strengthens your budget request. When you come in under budget for the first offsite(s) in 2025, it will make it even easier to plan the remaining team retreats in your schedule and get budget approval in years to come.
We’ve discussed budgeting at length on The Offsite Blog, so check out the budgeting template at the top of this guide or click into the “Read More” article below for more resources on the budgeting exercise.
READ MORE: How To Budget For An Offsite, Company Retreat, or Conference (Template Included)
3. Research Group Discounts and Potential Vendors
Pro Tip: Offsite.com can save you up to 40% on room blocks, meeting space, F&B and more at curated offsite venues around the world.
Strengthen your budget request(s) by getting actual real-time rates for the dates, group sizes, and locations you’re planning for your offsites.
With Offsite, for example, you can receive detailed quotes within 48 hours from when you submit booking requests, which you can do in a few minutes after making a free account with us.
You can also leverage our network of curated vendors to negotiate favorable rates for flights, activities, and more.
Click here to let us know what type of flight options, speakers, facilitators, swag, on the ground travel, photographers, videographers, entertainers, and other vendors you’d like quotes for as you make your 2025 budgets, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
4. Present the ROI of Your Offsites
Pro Tip: Include post-offsite feedback form data, testimonials, and top takeaways from past retreats to show how offsites have driven measurable outcomes. If your company hosted an offsite before, present the budget and highlight potential savings you can generate by planning ahead even more so than previous years.
CFOs (and finance teams generally) are focused on returns, so it’s important to demonstrate the tangible and intangible benefits of your offsite.
Highlight how the event will:
Boost productivity by providing space for focused strategy sessions.
Improve employee retention through team bonding and engagement.
Enhance collaboration across departments to drive innovation.
Align teams on key objectives, ensuring faster execution and fewer roadblocks.
For example, employee engagement and well-being has become a top priority for many organizations, and offsites play a vital role in reducing burnout, promoting mental health, and improving morale.
A well-planned offsite shows that the company is invested in employees' happiness and development, and can be leveraged for employer branding efforts when hiring new talent.
READ MORE: 16 Proven Reasons To Plan An Offsite
5. Create a Compelling Proposal Initially, And Then Collaborate with your Finance Team To Get Approval
Pro Tip: Getting your CFO’s buy-in is easier if you bring the finance team into the planning process early. Work with them to understand the company’s budgeting cycle and priorities for 2025, and incorporate their feedback into your budget proposal.
Anticipate questions or objections and be ready to address them with data and examples. Prepare a concise, data-driven proposal including:
An executive summary describing the purpose of each offsite planned for 2025 and their alignment with company-wide and department-specific objectives.
A detailed budget breakdown with justifications for each expense.
ROI projections that highlight both tangible and intangible benefits.
Multiple budget scenarios to provide flexibility.
Case studies or testimonials to back up the value of offsites.
Position each offsite as an investment in long-term growth and employee performance. Then, listen closely to the feedback from your finance team and collaborate with them to secure budget for offsites that stay within budget.
The worst case scenario is NOT getting approval for offsites because your finance team doesn’t understand the importance of each team retreat. If you take the time to collaborate now, it should be smooth sailing later on (and you’ll save your company even more money by planning ahead!).
READ MORE: The Cadence: How To Plan Offsites Throughout The Year
Conclusion: Make 2025 Offsites a Strategic Priority
Securing CFO approval for 2025 offsites comes down to thorough planning, clear alignment with business goals, and demonstrating ROI.
By following this guide, you’ll build a solid budget proposal that not only gets approved but also ensures your team has transformational in-person experiences with their colleagues.
Offsite is here to make the world a more connected place, one offsite at a time. When you’re ready to plan your next team retreats, or if you want our help at no cost during your annual planning efforts, please visit offsite.com and make a free account!
Thanks for reading.
Jared