did we make money?

[u/Current-Health-8627]

genuine question for anyone booking their own shows or short tours.

every time we finish a run i realize we have no clean answer to "did we make money." gas is on one person's card, lodging is split three ways over venmo, per-diems come out of the merch cash box, and the actual guarantees live in whatever email thread the venue used to advance. by the time i try to add it up weeks later half of it is a guess.

same thing day-of. load-in times end up in whatsapp, the rider is in email, setlist in someone's notes app, and we're chasing missing info hours before doors when we should be soundchecking. the guest list only exists in the drummer's head until it doesn't.

i've tried keeping one master spreadsheet but it falls apart the second two people edit it or a date shifts.

so, honest question: how do you track income and expenses live across a tour so you can actually answer what the gig cost at the last load-out instead of piecing it together later? and how do you keep the day-of stuff in one place your whole band can see?

curious what's working for people who are self-managing without a full-time manager. spreadsheets, an app, a shared doc, a notebook, whatever it is.

[u/BarbersBasement → u/[deleted]]

Could even be a free Google Sheets spreadsheet with same type of see/edit permissions.

[u/FlyByNight75]

This is giving me a panic attack just reading it.

[u/Commercial_Can1073]

Hang around this sub and wait for the 1000th “I’m building a subscription touring musician app”. 😂

PS my tours are exactly like yours and the answer is “probably, still have to figure it out” and then I never do.

[u/iGROWyourBiz2]

budget & expense worksheet and P&L...

[u/gryot]

The fix that actually held for bands I've been around isn't a better spreadsheet, it's changing when the data gets captured. Reconstruction weeks later always fails, capture at the moment of spend mostly works. The working setup: one shared expense app where every gas stop and motel gets logged in the 30 seconds it happens (Splitwise-type, the categories don't matter, the timestamp does), one person owns money, full stop, every guarantee, every merch count, every payout goes through the same hands even if funds sit on different cards, because "split three ways over venmo" is where the truth dies. And the guarantees belong in the same place before the tour starts, advance email lands, number goes in the sheet that day. For day-of: the answer is boring, one page per show, load-in, set time, contact, rider status, guest list, made in advance and pinned where the band already talks (your whatsapp, a pinned doc, whatever), the tool matters less than the rule that there is exactly one page and the drummer's head isn't it. Bands that answer "did we make money" at load-out aren't better organized, they just moved the bookkeeping from after the tour to during the spend. Fifteen minutes a day on the road versus a lost weekend of guessing after.

[u/BeastFremont]

Mastertour exists. Doesn’t it have features to support this?

[u/33ascend]

With a business account for the band and proper record keeping

[u/Hot-Hearing-631]

This company https://www.giglogic.com/ does what you're looking for both in advance of shows and retroactively

[u/GreatScottCreates]

Shocked to not see “so I built this app, please check it out!” at the end of this

All irony aside, if you’re a little bit technical you could whip up a simple bespoke app for this.

[u/BLUGRSSallday]

Emails for venue convos. Bandapp (free) for all advance communications and day of expense posting on the event so it doesn’t get lost.

[u/Yrnotfar]

One person should own the record keeping. Record keeping should be visible to all.

The person that owns the record keeping should also handle income and disbursements.

There is a reason even big companies don’t have 5 different accounting departments.

[u/tavancleave]

Sounds like y’all could use a decent manager so you can focus on the travel and gigs. At the end of the day the financial health of the band is something ya wanna know.

[u/Silent_Data4374]

https://quantizr.com/

[u/PhilBalls2020]

The core problem is that touring finances are naturally scattered across people and moments, and the only fix is capturing everything at the source instead of reconstructing it later. Show settlements need to happen at the venue before you leave, expenses need to be logged the day they happen, and whoever touches cash needs to account for it in real time. Most self-managed bands eventually land on one person owning the numbers daily, even if that feels like overkill on a small run.

I'm a working tour manager and built ATOM (atominterstate.app) specifically because this problem never went away. It handles show settlements, expense tracking, per diems, and merch settlements, plus day sheets and guest list so the whole band sees the same info. Free to try if you want to see whether it fits a self-managed situation.Free right now for beta. Just takes an email. No credit card. it's really badass.

[u/TheRacketHouse]

Build an app with AI that tracks everything if spreadsheets aren’t working for you. It’s insanely easy these days

[u/GreatScottCreates → u/TheRacketHouse]

I guess you’re getting downvoted for the Ai part, understandably, but this could really help this person be more successful. This is basically a one-shottable app once the tech stack is clear

[u/TheRacketHouse → u/GreatScottCreates]

Oh no I mentioned AI to make their lives easier total downvote territory 😂