Booking
From the first email to the last invoice.
What happens at each step, who does it, and how long it takes. The first reply comes inside 24 to 48 hours, in business hours. The contract, the certificate of insurance and the W-9 arrive in one email, and nobody has to ask for them.
The steps
Timings assume a date six months out. A booking made three weeks before the event runs the same order, compressed.
| Step | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1. You write | 24 to 48 hrs | Availability and an exact number, itemised |
| 2. You hold the date | The day we agree | Contract, insurance certificate, W-9 and invoice, one email |
| 3. Your contact reaches you | With the contract | Name and cell of the player who runs the band side |
| 4. You send the run of show | Any time | We fill in the band’s rows and send it back |
| 5. We agree the cues | The week before | One person owns each program moment |
| 6. The venue confirms | The week before | Power, stage, load-in route, decibel cap |
| 7. Load-in and sound check | The day | The room handed back to you, ready |
| 8. The night | The night | Your contact is on the stand, load-in to load-out |
| 9. The invoice | After the event | One page, everything on its own line |
Deposit, balance timing and payment methods are on the question list. Load-in and sound-check times by band size, and the six venue answers in step 6, are on what we need from your venue.
Three things, and the rest is ours
Six of those nine steps need nothing from you at all. Three do, and they are the three that stall a booking when they arrive late.
- The date and the room, to get a number
- A city works if the venue is not chosen. We can price a night without a signed venue and re-price it when you have one, because travel is its own line rather than something folded into the headline figure.
- The venue name, to raise the certificate of insurance
- The certificate names your venue as additional insured, so it cannot be issued before the venue exists. This is the single most common reason a complete event file sits at 90% for a month.
- The run of show, whenever it exists
- Send the draft, not the final. We fill in the band's rows against whatever you have and send it back, and we do that whether or not you have booked us.
If something changes
Guest counts move, programs get rewritten, a venue falls through. Tell us and we re-quote. Added performance time bills at the same hourly figure in 30-minute increments with no overtime rate, a smaller band re-prices down the published ladder, and a changed date is a conversation rather than a form.
If a player cannot make the date, you get the substitute's name and the reason as soon as we have them. Discovering a substitution at load-in is the version of this that goes wrong, and advance notice is the part we can actually keep.
Start at step one.
The date and the room is enough to get an exact number back.
Also for planners: what we need from your venue, the run of show templates and the full question list.