"Gig Leads" as a special type of event

[sarah]

I'd love to see an additional event category, the "Gig Lead". This would be a special type of event that didn't require a Start Date, and therefore which didn't appear in the Calendar View, but which appeared in the List View or when searching for a certain category.

The reason? When you're using the Event Schedule to manage gig bookings, there's a "pre-calendar" stage which Bandhelper can't currently manage (AFAIK), when you're talking with a venue about a "lead" for a gig but you don't yet have a date. At the moment you have to use a separate spreadsheet or even a Bandhelper competitor to manage these leads, up until the moment you get a Start Date and you can put it in the Event Schedule. It would be very useful to be able to do all this inside Bandhelper.

Anyway, finding Bandhelper very useful, with a couple of tweaks it could be really doing some heavy lifting when running a band.

Cheers,

Sarah

[arlo]

You can handle this by adding a contact, then adding an action for that contact to follow up with them about booking. You can set dates for actions (e.g., follow up in two weeks) and set the actions to appear in the main menu shortcuts or send you reminders on their due dates. Then if the result is "call me in another two weeks" you can add another action.

Once you book something, you can add an event and attach that contact to the event.

BTW, you can add the event with a date but without the Confirmed setting when you're in that stage of "we were offered a date but I haven't verified that my bandmates are available yet." Once you're sure you have the personnel to play on that date, then you can mark it Confirmed.

[sarah]

Thanks Arlo - yes, I already do that. It's not the same though - a Gig Lead is basically an event without a date, and from a management perspective it belongs in the same list as gigs with dates. Adding it as an action on a contact means it's effectively invisible when you're viewing upcoming events.

At the moment I'm using Excel to manage this, which means that I have to maintain two stores of gig information (Excel is more useful because of the unified view). It means that Bandhelper can't currently become my primary (or only) management tool - I'm basically using it as a kind of Google Calendar plus Set List management tool.

All the best,

Sarah

[arlo]

I don't think any other calendar software lets you add events without a date -- where would it display them? Since BandHelper has a list view, that's possible -- it could display them at the top of the list -- but I'm afraid it would create confusion to have these floating there.

I'd encourage you to try it the way it's designed, even though that's different from how you're currently thinking of it. You would look at the Actions list instead of the Events list to see the leads you're working on, or use Settings > Appearance > Main Menu Shortcuts to allow them to appear on your main menu. Alternatively, you could create a special category for contacts like In Progress and filter the Contacts list by that category. But I think actions are better because they're dated, can send automatic reminders, and don't interfere with the primary categorization of a contact.

One other option if you really want to see these in the Events list is to pick a future date to park these on, like 1/1/2025, and then set the real date when it's available. You would not request responses or set the event as confirmed while it's in this state, and you might need to inform your bandmates to ignore events on this date. But if you use the Actions instead, you won't have to worry about people confusing this for a real date.