# Software for booking your gear and freelancers



## SanTai (Jan 30, 2018)

Long time since I posted on this forum.

I am looking for a software tool to book gear. I am imagining that this must be a solved problem. What do you use to book your gear internaly when you do shows or rent out the gear?
I have seen some very old post related to this, but what are people using now?

Info, most of our shows are one-offs and we use a lot of free lancers. It is often not possible or practical to go back home to get an extra cable or similar...

I would if possible like to use the same tool to keep track of personel and booking of freelancers.

Wish list:

Mulit user support. (Excel on dropbox gets messy with conflicting copies etc.)
Be able to keep track of indiviuals but book generic. (eg book 10 par cans for a show, pick any 10 but know which have been where after failures or which are missing)
Handling consumables that get returned (used), such as tape.
RFID or Barcode/QR support for the expensive stuff.
Generate a list to use when picking stuff.
Be able to add extra spares when picking, add it to the tool and get a warning if it will result in an issue for other shows.
Gear booked for prepp/show differentiating. Perhaps could use ship something directly from one show to another even if not prefered. (and similar situations)
Keep track on who is booked for what show. Have a database of freelancers and their contact info and maybe of their prefererad type of shows and skills. Auto generating emails and similar is not needed.
Be able to do a "multi show checkin". 5 Shows returning at the same time.


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## Wes (Jan 30, 2018)

SanTai said:


> Long time since I posted on this forum.
> 
> I am looking for a software tool to book gear. I am imagining that this must be a solved problem. What do you use to book your gear internaly when you do shows or rent out the gear?
> I have seen some very old post related to this, but what are people using now?
> ...


I've seen many over the years, the one I liked the most for various reasons is https://www.flexrentalsolutions.com/ Cloud based among other strong points. As to your specific needs, contact Chris Stein there and he will answer.


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## SanTai (Jan 30, 2018)

Wes said:


> I've seen many over the years, the one I liked the most for various reasons is https://www.flexrentalsolutions.com/ Cloud based among other strong points. As to your specific needs, contact Chris Stein there and he will answer.



Thank you! Will check it out. Do you have experience with it?


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## Wes (Jan 30, 2018)

SanTai said:


> Thank you! Will check it out. Do you have experience with it?


Yes, I do. In my experience, most of these over the years required dedicated computer systems, and all seemed to be PC based. I had a need to get a company who was Mac based up and running, and Flex was the best option I found. Not a huge upfront cost, just a monthly charge. Since it is cloud based, works on show site as well as home, office of travel. The best of all worlds! The GUI is smart, easy to use and loaded with powerful features.


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## SanTai (Feb 7, 2018)

Wes said:


> Yes, I do. In my experience, most of these over the years required dedicated computer systems, and all seemed to be PC based. I had a need to get a company who was Mac based up and running, and Flex was the best option I found. Not a huge upfront cost, just a monthly charge. Since it is cloud based, works on show site as well as home, office of travel. The best of all worlds! The GUI is smart, easy to use and loaded with powerful features.



It looks good!

What other options have you looked at or worked with that you liked or disliked?


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## Wes (Feb 7, 2018)

SanTai said:


> It looks good!
> 
> What other options have you looked at or worked with that you liked or disliked?


Mostly I forget the names - but at PRG, Scharff Weisberg (now Worldstage), Production Arts Lighting and before all those, excel, Datastar driven programs.


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## egilson1 (Feb 7, 2018)

Other options
R2 rental software
Intellievent has a few options. 

Also google Av rental software. No matter what you find, it’s going to be exspensive.


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## mikebags (Feb 7, 2018)

We looked heavily at http://www.dbworks.com/products/RentalWorks and https://www.current-rms.com/ before choosing Flex. We have been using it close to three years now. At the time Current RMS was missing some functionality that we needed, Not sure if that's still the case. At the end, it came down to RentalWorks and Flex. Both were similar on features just differed in the way they were deployed. 

Flex would be able to take care of all your items on your wish list.


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## josh88 (Feb 8, 2018)

We use hiretrack. All of our gear is in it, it can be generic gear or specific kits or units. You can schedule jobs, create prep lists, has a database of gear, you can schedule employees onto jobs, does a lot. 
http://www.navigator.co.uk/product-introduction/hiretrack-nx/


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## soundofsparks (Feb 8, 2018)

I have a database I built in access. Access was included in my business version of Office.

I have it set up to track broken gear and gear in use. When we do a new show internally, I can just upload the Lightwright file and it reserves gear avoiding conflicted gear and broken things. Then gives me a break down of items to rent.

Access is a pretty basic databasing program and is reasonably powerful (albeit with some learning curve).

The best thing is that you can do all the things you have listed and have full customizability over how you do them.

There are other, better, database programs out there and they are all similarly customizable. If you have Access already on your computer, it could be a place to start.


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## jlevene (May 1, 2022)

SanTai said:


> Long time since I posted on this forum.
> 
> I am looking for a software tool to book gear....


I'm a bit late, but try HireHop.

It has a free version, does everything you listed and more, it is not expensive and small and large rental companies all over the world are switching to it.

It's also cloud software, but unlike all the rest, it's customisable with its own API. Hand on heart, it's also way ahead with features and technology than all the rest.


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