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Venue Deep Dive
Managing crew is one of the hardest parts of running a venue. Especially if you don’t have full-time staff. You don’t have an operations department. You rely on having talented freelancers, tight margins, and a lot of moving parts.
I’ve worked with grassroots venues where one person was juggling bookings, advancing, crew scheduling and bar stock all at once. When it works, it feels heroic. When it doesn’t, it’s stressful and expensive.
In this article, I’m going to break down what actually goes wrong when there’s no clear system, and how independent venues can build a professional crew setup without blowing the budget. This is for small to mid-sized venues who rely on freelancers and want more control, not more complexity.
Full time crew are a big commitment so many venues choose freelancers which give you flexibility. That’s the upside. The downside is that they’re not sitting in your office every day. They’re working across multiple venues, festivals and events. If your information isn’t clear and accessible, they have no way of knowing and often then have to guess.
Managing freelance crew at a venue isn’t about hiring better people. Often it’s just about giving good people the structure to do their job well.
When there’s no shared system, three things usually happen.
Double Bookings and Availability Confusion
That’s how you end up with two people turning up for the same shift or nobody at all. Even a small venues running multiple shows per week can spiral into confusion without clear scheduling visibility.
Information Living in WhatsApp Threads and Emails
If key details are scattered across:
Then nobody has the full picture. Searching for soundcheck times at on show day is not a system. It’s firefighting.
Last-Minute Chaos on Show Days
When crew don’t have full information ahead of time, problems surface at the worst moment. Missing tech details. Unclear stage plots. Unconfirmed backline. What should be a calm load-in turns into reactive problem solving.
You don’t need full-time payroll staff or expensive enterprise software. You need a system that works and scales with you. Start with this principle: every gig should have one clear source of truth.
That source should include:
You don’t need complexity. You need consistency and this is exactly why we built Stage Portal.
This is where most of the issues arise. .
Tech Specs, Riders and Stage Plots in One Place
Your sound engineer should not be receiving a rider at soundcheck. Tech specs and stage plots need to be available well before the event. That allows:
When all technical information is centralised, you remove guesswork and allow engineers to plan ahead of time. It also allows them to highlight potential issues ahead of the event itself.
Clear Call Times, Contacts and Responsibilities
Every freelancer should know:
This is basic operational hygiene. But it’s often overlooked because it “feels obvious.”
The biggest hidden risk in small venues is the bottleneck.
Removing the ‘One Person Holds Everything’ Problem
When one person controls the calendar, crew contact list and advancing information, the venue becomes fragile. If they’re ill or having to deal with something else, everything slows down or worse grinds to a halt. A strong crew system removes single points of failure. This means that crew can get on with event prep or if you have to switch crew last minute, they have all the information they need ready tog go.
This doesn't need to be complicated either, the goal is not more admin. The goal is fewer surprises.
Crew talk. They know which venues or events are organised and which are stressful. When a crew member arrives and everything is clear, they feel respected. Their time is valued. Their job is easier. When they arrive to confusion, they feel like they’re fixing problems that could have been avoided. Retention isn’t only about pay. It’s about experience.
For many this starts as a centralised cloud drive with spreadsheets, but the risk here is that this can become a beast quite quickly. Multiple versions of spreadsheets, documents in the wrong folders and managing people's permissions to data can quickly make this very complicated.
If you find yourself:
Then your system has outgrown its tools.
This is where Stage Portal is designed specifically for venues to solve these problems. One centralised place for bookings, artist details, technical information and crew scheduling. If you are worried about changing from your current system, then schedule a demo and we can show you how you can get setup quickly and easily.
You don’t need a large payroll to run professional shows.
You need:
When those are in place, the crew perform better. Communication improves. Stress reduces.
If you want to tighten your crew system and remove the bottlenecks before they cost you a show, start by reviewing your current setup this week. And if you’re ready to explore how to centralise bookings, crew assignments and technical information properly, check out Stage Portal or schedule a demo.
Professional gigs are not about bigger budgets.
They’re about better systems.
Find out more about Stage Portal or book a demo to see it in action.
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