Hire Exactly What Your Show Needs and Know Where Every Piece Is

Let Every Rider Fill Your Backline List

Book your acts with their set times and add their technical riders in Advancing, and Backline hire fills itself, with each item on the right stage and day and each act's need quoted from its own rider. A line saying the act brings its own gear is left off, and lines too unclear to count are listed for you to check on the rider. When a rider changes, the list follows.

Fai reads each rider as it arrives and again when it changes, and suggests adding items she finds in the production documents you upload. When a rider changes a need your team set by hand, the item says Rider changed: review, and you choose to use the rider or keep yours. A rider never overwrites a decision your team made.

• Read from riders: each act's need quoted from its own rider
• Unclear lines flagged: with a shortcut to the rider to check them
• Rider changed: review: use the rider or keep your team's figure

• Advance Every Act Without Chasing Email Threads
• Work out the backline and production to hire for your event

Hire Each Item Once for the Busiest Day

Acts on one stage and day share, so the busiest act's need counts and an act that needs its own adds on top. Reusable gear is hired once for the busiest day on each stage, things that get used up, such as drumheads, strings and tape, add up every day, and what the stage already has or you already own comes off first. You stop paying for a third set of CDJs that would sit in a flight case all weekend.

How we worked this out on each item shows every day and stage behind the number, so you can answer the promoter who asks why you hired four and not six. The stage's own technical specs and the kit you own are read the same way as a rider, so a house PA or your own mixers come off the count.

Production hire sits beside backline with the same working-out. Add the PA, lighting, staging, power and anything else you hire, with where it goes, the days it is needed and whether it can be reused, and a matching item joins the line already there. Set the load-in days before and load-out days after, and every hire period and per-day price follows. At a conference, add each room's kit the same way.

• Reuse across days: gear hired once, used-up items counted daily
• Your kit first: the stage's specs and your own kit come off
• Production hire: PA, lighting, staging, power and more
• Hire period: load-in and load-out days on every line

Send Each Supplier Only What Changed

Fai drafts the email to each supplier from its items, hire dates, delivery and collection times, for you to read and send. Every send keeps a copy of the list as it was, so each item changed since says so, and the next email lists only those changes. Your backline company never builds your show from last month's version.

Track every line from To order through Quoted, Ordered, Confirmed, Delivered and Returned. Items marked ordered count as committed costs in your event budget, and a supplier's priced items become a draft purchase order in one step. Print a clean sheet for any supplier with each item, how many and the hire dates, with delivery and collection at the top.

Need a supplier near a venue you have not worked at before? Describe what you need and Fai lists local suppliers with their website and contact details.

• Fai drafts the email: items, dates, delivery and collection
• Send the changes: a short email with only what is new
• Purchase order: a supplier's priced items in one step
• Budget: ordered items counted as committed costs

• Send your event hire lists to suppliers
• Know What Your Event Will Cost Before the Bills Arrive

Get Every Order Confirmed and Every Quote Read for You

Give each hire supplier its own page, with no sign-in, and email it the link. On What we ordered from you, the supplier sees each line with its dates, stages and price and confirms them in one go. When it can only supply fewer, something else or at another price, it asks for a change, or asks to move the delivery and collection times, and you accept or decline each request.

The supplier uploads its quote as a PDF or a photo, or you add one it emailed. Fai reads it against your lines and puts a suggestion on Today with the quoted prices and any substitutes, and names the lines the quote leaves out or has fewer of. Approve it and the prices fill in on your lines, so nobody types a quote in by hand.

The supplier's page always shows each line as it is now, and each new link you send stops the one before, so only your latest email works. Ask Fai what your suppliers have asked for and where each quote stands.

• Please confirm: every ordered line confirmed by the supplier
• Ask for a change: fewer, something else, another price or other times
• Quotes read by Fai: prices, substitutes and gaps, for you to approve

• Get hire suppliers to confirm orders and count deliveries for your event

Count Deliveries In and Out and Pay Only for What Arrived

When a delivery arrives at the dock, your crew counts in how many came and how many are damaged, with a note. When the supplier collects, they count out what went back. Each line then shows how many are short, extra or damaged, and the latest count names who counted and when.

Open the supplier's purchase order and What arrived compares every line ordered with what was counted in and back. A shortfall or damage is flagged in plain words, so you query the invoice with the facts in front of you and pay only for what you received. A slip at the dock is undone in one step.

• Count in: how many arrived and how many are damaged
• Count out: what went back and in what state
• What arrived: ordered against counted, line by line

• Pay Everyone on Time and Settle Every Show With Figures Both Sides Can Check

Hand Out Radios and Kit by Scan and See Who Has What

Put all your kit on one list: a single thing with its own tag, such as a golf buggy or a set of keys, a numbered set such as every radio, or a batch you count, such as hi-vis vests. At the kit desk, a barcode scanner reads the tag and opens the right step, so you hand kit out to a crew member, a volunteer or anyone by name, with a deposit note and a due-back time, as fast as the queue moves.

Take each piece back with how it came back, and damaged kit is flagged on the kit list so a faulty radio is not handed straight back out. Who has what shows everything that is out, by person or by item, with what is overdue, and you take a whole team's kit back at once when their shift ends. After the event, ask Fai to draft one reminder to each person who still has kit, approve them on Today, and mark what is lost with its history kept.

Keep your radio plan beside your kit, with each channel as it shows on the radio, who uses it, and each call sign with the person who answers. Print a radio sheet to pin up, and each team's day sheet shows its own channels.

• Scan or search: a barcode scanner opens the right step
• Who has what: by person or by item, with what is overdue
• Reminders from Fai: one email each, approved by you
• Radio plan: channels, call signs and who answers

• Hand out radios and kit to your event crew

Let Outside Teams Order Your Spare Kit at Your Prices

Press teams, contractors and exhibitors all need radios, buggies and tables. Offer the kit on your list at the price you set for each team, and each team orders from its own page with no sign-in, choosing the dates and where the kit goes. How many are available always comes from your kit list, so you never promise a team what your own crew needs.

Add your own cost to see your margin on every order, and set the most one team can order, a last day to order and which kinds of team can order it, so stand furniture goes to exhibitors and radios to the press. Approve an order and the kit is held for that team straight away, with an invoice the team pays from its page.

Print a pick list of approved orders by day and place, hand each order out so the team shows in Who has what as the kit's holder, and take it back line by line with its condition. The team can order the same again at your next event in one step.

• Your price list: what each team pays, with your margin
• Held on approval: approved kit cannot be promised twice
• Pick list: by day and by place, ready to print
• Invoice: for every priced order, paid from the team's page

• Let outside teams order kit and equipment for your event

Have Every Supplier's Insurance and Paperwork Before Load-In

Ask every supplier, caterer or contractor for public liability insurance, a risk assessment, a method statement, or a food hygiene, gas safety or electrical safety certificate, with a due date and what the file must show. Each team adds the file on its own page, and teams of that kind you add later are asked too.

Under each file, Fai shows what she read in it, such as the expiry date, the cover and the name it insures, and says what does not match, like a policy that ends before your event does. You accept it with the expiry date confirmed, or send it back with what needs to change, and the team is emailed in its own language.

Each request shows which teams are done, which files need checking, who is overdue and what expires soon. Let Fai suggest each reminder on Today, or have reminders sent before the due date and before an accepted file expires. Accepted files sit under each team in Licences and certificates, beside your traders' certificates.

• Common documents: insurance, RAMS and safety certificates
• What Fai read: expiry date, cover and who it insures
• Reminders: before the due date and before expiry

• Collect insurance and certificates from your event's outside teams