What is Agency Booking Software?

Agency booking software, or sometimes named agency management software is a cloud-based platform designed to specifically to help music or entertainment agencies manage everything relating to their professional work, from bookings, to issuing contracts and invoicing and managing clients.

Agency companies can simply be defined as any person, business, who provides a middle-man service between a client wanting an artist and the artists you manage.

Like Band Pencil, software built for agencies can also be branded as artist, or band management software. This is because the needs of agencies are often similar to the needs of anyone working in the entertainment industry. Different vendors will target different audiences - but you can usually find whether agencies are supported.

However, there are slight differences between a CRM system and agency booking software. Agency booking software is basically, in its raw form, a complete CRM system, but built with features built for agencies at the focus. A CRM system is a Customer Relationship Management. It's a technology used to manage interactions with customers and potential customers. In the case of agencies, it is built to help manage bookings from enquiries to confirmed bookings.

Having said this, agency management software usually offers more features than a typical off the shelf CRM system. These features usually include contract creation and the ability to collect e-signatures, invoice creation and online payments, and possibility to manage artists through one system.

Top 4 Features of Agency Booking Software

1. Team Support

The ability to add your team to a centralised software is a must have for most agencies. Using mulitple logins allows you to manage your team with ease. With Band Pencil you can add up to five users to one account (and more if needed), this lets your emails come from your users, not a generic email address. Not only this, but you can easily see which user has added which event - this allows us to give the client the agent's contact information to create a more personalised service.

2. Client Management

Clients are key to your agency, they pay you for your services at the end of the day. We recommend you pick a service which allows you to securely store client information. An added bonus would be a software which allows the client to view gig information, sign contracts, view invoices and make payments. See more about our client portal here.

3. Artist Management

It's hard for anyone to manage multiple different people and coordinate their jobs so a management software needs to offer a system to easily allow artists see the event information online. Band Pencil has a member portal and offers a  "self-service" approach so your team can view event information online 24/7. You can even hide the client's information to prevent poaching!

4. Invoicing & Payment Systems

You need to be able to quickly build invoices and track event income and expenses. You also need to be able to download these invoices and send them to clients without having to use a third party software such as Microsoft Word. Being able to track this in a software will allow you to:

• Track unpaid invoices
• Send reminders
• Produce on demand revenue reports

If you want to be paid quickly we would recommend picking a software which has an online payment system. In doing this you get paid quicker; make it easy for clients to pay invoices and easily create receipts on the fly.

With Band Pencil, invoicing and online payments are intergrated and with Band Pencil Pay you can accept payments online. Our built-in invoicing system makes managing invoices easier and speeds up your workflow.

Do You Need An Agency Management Software?

If you're reading this article then you've probably already answered this question, but if you're not sure here's a simple way to figure that out.

In a given month, how much time do you spend managing holds and booking events? Yes, the management side of any company can be a full-time job. You've only got to look at the service industry like plumbers or electricians - often even a small local business will have a person in the back office managing jobs, sorting the invoices and coordinating the work.

If you're spending a large amount of time, and using may different services (Excel, Word, email, calendars) you may want to consider using a software to help bring everything under one roof and store this information securely. Not only this, but storing information in one place and managing your bookings on a software will help speed up your workflow. On average, our users book events 2x faster using Band Pencil's software. That means if it take 6 hours to organise one event Band Pencil will reduce this to 3 hours - that's a quarter of your day back to focus on other more important things.

Software is a financial commitment, so this is a choice you need to make yourself, but the pros definitely out weight the cons in the long run and remember, software costs are an allowable business expense.

Which Agency Booking Software Is The Best?

This is a very subjective decision and really depends on your needs. Choosing the right product for your business is a challenging task. As most software will offer some sort of free trial I recommend you register with all the softwares that interests you and try them out. Read the testimonials from other users and reach out to the support team to see if you can schedule a demo. Pick a software which has all the features you need now and has the features you may need as you grow.

We suggest you avoid looking at comparison charts or if you do, remember they are probably out of date and they will be very bias towards their own software!

What is Band Pencil?

We know the name doesn't really shout agency software, but trust us, our software is used by many agencies across the world to help manage their bookings. Band Pencil started out in the music industry mainly to help band leaders manage their events. It was so liked, agencies started to join us as it offered all the services they required.

Don't just take our word, S&J Live Music, a music booking agency based in the UK said:

From enquiry to billing, Band Pencil really does it all. Clients are always impressed how easy it is to sign the contract and download the invoice. From our standpoint Band Pencil helps us look professional to the client.

As Band Pencil is aimed at the music industry, by default we use the term musician, or member, but in Band Pencil's settings you are free to change this to whatever you like. Some popular choices for entertainers are: entertainers, performers, artists or members!