Changing project needs can easily and quickly cause AV project costs to increase beyond what was originally budgeted. Perhaps a client requested equipment that was outside of the original scope and required the addition of skilled crew members, or perhaps the client bumped up the event forcing you to add more labor to the project in order to meet your deadline. In either case, while Project Managers and Account Executives can’t avoid these scenarios, they can improve how they monitor and attempt to stay on budget by investing in an expense management software that will give them better project status and cost insights.

The dreaded AV scheduling spreadsheet. It’s an AV scheduler best friend and their worst enemy. It contains all of the information you need to keep your project on track, on budget, and on time, helping you manage all of your crew management processes. But, as handy a tool as it is, it’s also outdated. While your Excel scheduling spreadsheet may keep your AV project on track, it also may stagger behind industry trends and technological advancements in the business world that could improve your scheduling process and bring you even better insights.

Live events are make or break. Your AV team and crew gets one chance to either make it all go right the first time or miss the mark. Adding to the challenge, live events can be unpredictable with deadlines and scopes that are constantly moving. While these obstacles can be hard to overcome, you can defeat them and set your live event up for success with careful AV crew scheduling, planning, management, and preparation.

Coordinating a group of people to do anything can be hectic -- especially in the world of AV. Between communications, multiple databases, availability, and evolving project requirements, simply scheduling your crew for a project can cost you a substantial amount of time and money. Fortunately, the addition of a crew scheduling and management software can alleviate many of these scheduling tasks and help you manage your AV crew with greater ease. When introducing a crew scheduling software designed specifically for AV projects, there are a few stand-out features you should expect to find that will instantly take the stress out of crew coordination and scheduling.

Scheduling AV crews is a process that involves a lot of communication and organization. The larger the crew and the bigger the project, the more difficult scheduling becomes. Time consuming tasks like searching through records and databases to find the appropriate crew members, creating and sharing schedules for multiple crews, and making last minute scheduling changes can put a major strain on AV schedulers as events draw near. However, many of these scheduling pains can be solved by introducing the proper scheduling system. Here are some of the most common AV workforce scheduling pains, and the tips and tools you need to solve them.

Independent AV contractors are highly valued contributors to the AV industry. Working with contractors on AV projects allows you to access a wider pool of audio-visual skills sets and experience levels, expand your team as necessary, and meet project deadlines when demand is high. Despite all of the benefits they provide to AV schedulers in charge of meeting project needs, securing contractors can also require more upfront work on your part.  

With the wide array of workforce management softwares available, almost all aspects of employee and independent contractor management can become streamlined and centralized. Now that mobile devices and technology tools have become more powerful and mainstream, there are a lot of options to be more efficient with workforce management — which is great news for the AV planners and schedulers who are currently relying on outdated scheduling methods, or even those trying to fit their approach into a industry non-specific software that doesn’t understand their unique needs.

Managing and verifying invoices and payouts on AV projects has a tendency to get overwhelming. This is especially true when your crew is made up of both independent contractors and internal employees and you’re tasked at tracking both. Regardless of inefficiencies manual time tracking presents, AV schedulers are expected to collect and manage time sheets for both freelancers and employees quickly, efficiently, and accurately.

Coordinating AV crews is often a long and daunting task. You have the perfect crew members in mind, but their availability doesn't match. You decide to add AV contractors to the project, but you're lost on how to handle their contracts and insurance. Your project times and dates need to be changed and you have to communicate these changes to your entire crew, fielding questions in between, but your communications are scattered and messages get lost in the process. AV crewing is a big job, and the more opportunities you have to streamline and automate the process, the more time you’ll be able to save and redirect toward managing the rest of your responsibilities.