Signs You Need a Venue Management System

How can a Venue Management System help Venue Managers?

It’s no secret that managing a venue means handling dozens of tasks every day. Therefore, a venue manager’s role is difficult to describe in just a few words. It’s even more complicated to determine if they need a venue management system to cover it all. Can you relate? 

According to Berklee School of Music, “The venue manager supervises the day-to-day operations of a club or concert hall. With administrative, logistical, and creative duties in both the front- and back-of-house.” Berklee continues to highlight a few of the tasks and responsibilities you are likely to perform in your venue management role:

Supervision duties

You hire, prepare, schedule, and oversee in-house staff such as ushers, bartenders, box office employees, maintenance workers, and security guards. Your job also involves keeping an eye on the facility’s safety and ensuring the equipment is adequately maintained. Also, you may be responsible for managing employees’ payrolls.

Coordination duties

Before and after each show, you closely communicate with the performers. Your work may involve collaborating with the performer’s agent, tour manager, sound engineer, lighting crew chief, and other touring team members, depending on the size and scope of the performance space. 

The venue manager also arranges for artists and their entourages to have hospitality and amenities available. As a venue manager at a smaller or independent club, you may even have to book and promote the shows yourself. 

By taking on these duties, you can see yourself less as a venue manager and more as a project coordinator who can wear a broad range of hats at any given moment. What’s the best way to do it on time, without errors, and successfully? Maybe a venue management system is what you need.

Related: Productivity Hacks for Concert Promoters

How to Know if You Need a Venue Management System

As a venue manager, you know time is your most precious asset. Eventbrite recently reported that “According to a survey of nearly 50 live music venues, the average venue employee spends between one and four hours every day on booking and ticketing alone.” Are you one of them? If so, you may have early signs that show you need a venue management system.

The tools you are using are generic

You find yourself switching from spreadsheet to spreadsheet, trying to customize generic tools to fit your unique venue management needs. The inefficient workflow highly affects your time and your productivity and also makes you prone to making mistakes.

If you want to spend less time on what makes you unproductive and more time on what you love, you need an easy-to-use app. To eliminate the hassles of spreadsheets, phone calls, emailing about ticket sales, and organizing venues, you should choose a simplified, modern platform to address each of these music industry-specific problems.

You struggle to communicate and collaborate with your team and other parties

You exchange emails, phone calls, text messages, and even sticky notes with multiple people, and these conversations come and go with no order. You have no way to keep track of discussions, pending items, agreements, and sensitive information.

You need a place to organize your team so they can work on their projects together, allowing you to track their communication efficiently and effectively. In addition, the best venue management system could allow you to sort data regarding every show and touch per event, distribute tasks and timelines per stakeholder, and keep sensitive information confidential. 

You have a hard time with the offer and settlement processes

Completing settlement processes keeps you switching from app to app to pull the reports and other information you need. Why would you want to be tied to your desk for hours while you could be focusing on growing your business?

If you partner with a top venue management system, you can monitor and report adjustments, payouts, expenses, and additional revenues. In one click, you can also produce custom settlement sheets to facilitate working with an artist, agent or tour manager. 

Additionally, you can prepare separate settlement reports for your internal and external customers. You will no longer have to worry about overpaying or underpaying an artist because the ideal platform will instantly calculate taxes and other variable expenses.

Venue management systems should also allow you to create offers quickly, register a hold, send proposals, and settle a show on the go if they have the adaptability to desktop or mobile platforms. 

You can’t correctly visualize your financials

You lose track of it all when it comes to the venue’s financial performance. You want to know how your sales are going, need to reinforce marketing or want to make other decisions on the fly. You need to have available hours and patience to navigate multiple platforms and spreadsheets to estimate on your own.

With the right app, you can track and visualize real-time marketing and production costs in just a few clicks. Additionally, you will be able to enter ticket revenue and expenses related to a specific show without disclosing deal details or other information about other shows.

You can use this platform to keep track of every show, including automated ticket counts, dashboards, and reports. When making booking decisions in the future, you’ll need a tool to let you know the show notes, profitability, and other details of previous bookings with specific agents or the entire agency.

You handle multiple calendars

You get lost by having separate calendars: one for each show, one for your personal appointments, another one for your staff. If you integrate them into a traditional platform, they look like a complex mosaic of time slots and colors you cannot quickly navigate or understand.

Alternatively, you could look for a venue management system with an integrated calendar so you can view all your offers at multiple venues simultaneously. By doing so, you can easily keep track of those you need to follow up with and have their contact information right there. Ideally, you should be able to configure both access and permission to these calendars.

Related: How to Effectively Market Your Music Venue – Even Now

The Best Venue Management System Has an All-In-One Approach

Knowing there is a better alternative may be a relief after learning these challenges. Consider a venue management system specifically designed for the live music industry that addresses all of these struggles. This is an important point because many event management systems are too general, not understanding the uniqueness of live music venues.

If you feel you have one or more of the above signs, you should invest in a purpose-built venue management system. It is a powerful tool that integrates all of your daily activities as a venue manager, music promoter, producer, or live event coordinator into one comprehensive, automated solution. 

Choosing a platform explicitly designed with the live music industry in mind will give you the flexibility you need. Using it shouldn’t keep you tied to your office. Music pros like you should have access to it anywhere at any time. 

Prism provides you with the features you require to manage each venue management task effectively. Get every show done by investing in more productivity, accuracy, and reliability rather than switching between your calendar, emails, and many spreadsheets. Get started now.