Small venues use booking software for six jobs: an availability calendar with holds, capturing enquiries, sending proposals and contracts, scheduling deposits and instalments, producing an event sheet for the day, and keeping a supplier list. A venue hosting a modest number of events a year may find it leans hard on two or three of these and barely touches the rest, and it is worth finding out which.
The calendar, with holds and date options
This is the heart of it. A venue calendar is not an ordinary diary, because a date has more states than open and booked. One couple may hold a Saturday for a fortnight while deciding. Another may be offered first refusal behind them. A third is weighing two dates. The calendar needs to show enquiry, provisional hold with an expiry date, second option, confirmed and closed, and it needs to tell you when a hold is about to lapse.
If your venue has several spaces, or runs a ceremony and a reception in different rooms, the calendar must also stop one space being booked twice while allowing two events on the same day.
Enquiries, proposals and contracts
Enquiry capture means a form on your website, plus a way to log those that arrive by phone, email and directories, all landing in one list with the date requested, guest numbers and how they heard of you.
Proposals and contracts are documents built from a template with the couple's details, date, package and price filled in, then sent for electronic signature. The saving is in not retyping. If you send a handful a month, a word processor template and a signing service do the same job. Have the contract wording itself reviewed by a lawyer, because software only fills in the blanks.
Deposits and instalments
Each booking has a payment schedule: booking deposit, one or more instalments, final balance before the event, perhaps a damage deposit returned after it. The software's job is to know what is due when, send reminders, record what has arrived and show you who is late. Card payments still go through a payment processor, which charges its own fees whatever system you use.
The event sheet and the supplier list
The event sheet is the single page the team works from on the day: timings, guest numbers, room layout, menu choices, dietary needs, supplier arrival times, contact numbers and the notes that matter, such as which relatives should not be seated together. It should be built from the booking record, not retyped.
The supplier list holds caterers, florists, bands and hire companies, with insurance documents and notes. It is useful, though for a small venue a shared document may cover it.
Working out which jobs you truly use
- For each of the six jobs, write down how you did it for your last three events
- Mark where the software was used, where a spreadsheet or paper was used instead, and why
- Note which features you pay for and have not opened this season
- Count who needs access, including weekend staff, and check whether each login is charged
- Total the yearly cost with our free software bill calculator
If you use the greater part of it and the cost is reasonable against your bookings, keep it. Rented venue software suits many venues well. If you use the calendar and the payment schedule and little else, read our guide to renting versus owning business software before you renew.
Hiro rebuilds just the jobs a venue uses and moves the existing bookings across, so nothing has to be keyed in again. The page for wedding and event venues goes through what venues commonly rent and which parts can be rebuilt.