Girl Scouts DC Budget and tips

Before our trip, if you had told me we would come home almost $1200 under budget, I would have told you you were crazy.  Based on calculations and some estimates, each category had it's own budget.  I also had envelopes for each category to keep them separate.  Each night I logged what was spent while the girls were in the pool.  In my travel folder, I had a clear pouch for receipts.

Category/ Budget/ Actual/ Overage or shortage
Food - $800 - $508.79 - $291.21
Hotels - $1515.92 - $1520.61 - ($4.69)
Rental van - $1095.40 - $593.17 - $502.23
Attractions - $252.00 - $49.60 - $202.40
Metro/Parking - $232.00 - $142.12 - $89.86
Gas - $600 - $490.12 - $109.88
Tolls - $4.00 - $3.80 - $.20
Total - $4499.32 - $3308.23 - $1192.09
(My spreadsheet does look a lot better than this but I don't know how to attach it.)  :(

The biggest savings came from the rental van.  Enterprise has an outstanding contract with the Girl Scout council in our area.  They do not charge for mileage or are able to up sell any insurance.  Plus, when we returned and I mentioned the check oil light kept coming on and we had to replace wiper blades, they took an additional 10% off the original rental agreement and refunded the amount for the wipers.  Bonus!

As I had mentioned in my first trip planning post, we had one meal daily of picnic foods and one delivered, picked up or meal out.  We were fortunate enough to have a home cooked meal also during our stay in DC.

Third was attractions.  We had originally budgeted for a trolley or bus tour but during the trip, the girls decided they would rather spend more time in the pool.  The third day in DC, they voted to go to the National Aquarium.  And we were able to use some from this category to cover it.
http://www.trolleytours.com/washington-dc/
http://www.aqua.org/

Some tips from our trip:
**Pick a hotel with some type of kitchen set up.  Even a Microwave and mini fridge can add up the savings.
**Look for a hotel with free parking and free shuttle.  I came across some hotels that charged $20-25 per night.
**Does the hotel offer free internet and continental breakfast?  We made sure every hotel had free breakfast and internet.  Who wants to pay extra for their girls to check Facebook?!  And, when we budgeted $15 per person per day, cutting out breakfast goes a long way.
**Check out multiple websites or vendors.  Do they allow discounts for groups, AAA memberships or frequent "fliers"?  A lot of times you can double up on discounts.
**Keep the girls involved.  While our budget changed from camping to hotel and Trolley to Aquarium, they need to enjoy the trip with in the budget.
**Keep detailed records.  It was much easier to track this daily than waiting til the end of the trip to do everything and remember every detail.  I'm pretty happy we only misplaced two receipts.
**Trust and communicate with the others on your trip.  They may have different, valuable insight!!
**Two areas to always over budget - Food and Gas!
**Always overestimate the amount of food your troop will need!
**Use sites like http://gasbuddy.com/ to estimate the amount needed for gas.  Using the Trip Cost Calculator will allow you to enter your stop locations to see who has the lowest priced gas along your route.
**http://www.wmata.com/rider_tools/tripplanner/tripplanner_form_solo.cfm  will help budget costs for using the Metro.  Utilize the online maps to find which stations are closest to your destinations.