One published breakdown prices a 12-person, 6-hour quarterly executive planning session at $5,880 in payroll time, or $23,520 a year across four quarters. That is the answer to how much a quarterly planning meeting costs in its cheapest common form: a room, a whiteboard, and a day of senior salaries. The expensive form is the offsite, and nobody quotes it the same way, which is exactly the problem.
How much does a quarterly planning meeting cost: the in-office version
All rows use loaded hourly cost, meaning salary divided by 2,080 working hours, times 1.3 for benefits and overhead. Multiply the per-session number by 4 for the annual cost.
| Format | Per session | Per year (x4) |
|---|---|---|
| 10 people, 4 hrs, $130k avg | $3,250 | $13,000 |
| 12 people, 6 hrs, $120k avg | $5,400 | $21,600 |
| 15 people, 6 hrs, $150k avg | $8,438 | $33,750 |
| 25 people, 8 hrs, $110k avg | $13,750 | $55,000 |
Notice what the table assumes: the session starts on time and ends on time. Quarterly planning has a habit of spawning a second day nobody budgeted. A two-day version of the 15-person row is $16,875 a session, $67,500 a year. If your planning meeting regularly bleeds into day two, price it at two days and see whether the agenda still feels essential.
The offsite version, and the number nobody puts in the quote
A 2 to 3-day offsite in 2026 runs $800 to $3,500 per attendee for travel, lodging, meals, meeting space, and activities, per current offsite planning data. A 30-person leadership offsite lands between $30,000 and $80,000. One detailed corporate event budget puts a 3-day leadership offsite for 15 people at $60,000, a 2-day company kickoff for 250 at $558,500, and a 1-day local department offsite at $625 per person.
Here is the tangent worth its own paragraph: offsite planners quote per-person prices that cover venue, food, and travel. They never include the payroll cost of the attendees sitting in that venue. Fifteen people at $150,000 salaries cost you about $8,438 a day in loaded payroll for a 6-hour session, on top of the $60,000 offsite bill. The real quarterly cost of the 15-person offsite is closer to $68,000 a quarter, $272,000 a year, and no vendor quote will ever show you that line.
The default I would pick
I am not against offsites. A leadership team that has not been in a room together all year gets real value from three days of it. But the in-office quarterly review is the underrated default: same decisions, a tenth of the cost, and nobody loses two travel days. Run the cheap version every quarter. Upgrade to the offsite once a year, in January, when the plan for the year actually needs the room. And whichever format you pick, put the payroll number on the budget line next to the venue number. The decision only looks expensive when it is visible, and it should be.
Price your own planning session, then watch the number tick in real time.
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Related reading: How Much Does an All-Hands Meeting Cost? A $48,750 Answer · What a One-Hour Meeting Actually Costs: Worked Examples by Team Size · What Does a No-Meeting Day Actually Save? Real Numbers, Not Vibes
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