Many companies recognise the achievements and contributions of their employees throughout the year through annual dinners. Commonly, companies will allocate a certain amount of money to organise an annual dinner. However, planning such an event is not easy as the organising team needs to plan the event carefully according to the specified budget. This paper demonstrates how a binary knapsack problem approach is applied to help an insurance company select the required items for its annual dinner within the allocated budget. Two models were developed and solved using the LINGO 12.0 software. The first model was developed to determine the activities that will be selected based on the restriction of the total budget. The second model was developed to maximise staff preference on the selected items within the specified budget. The results of both models were compared and discussed. The item selection technique used in this study is for organisations with a limited budget.