Cheeseweasel Posted October 29, 2013 Share Posted October 29, 2013 What software does everyone use to manage/schedule the day-to-day operations of their businesses? Our small production company does everything from producing festival stages to hiring wedding disco equipment. On a typical busy summer weekend, we might have 2-3 stages out along with various small delivery jobs and dry hire, and it falls to me to book crew and schedule everything (as well as usually managing things on-site, engineering, driving etc). As you might imagine, it can be quite a juggling act to work out the most efficient way to use crew/vehicles, getting the right number of people to load trucks, turn up on-site, collect/return sub-hires, split off in another vehicle and do something elsewhere, tidy the warehouse etc... I'm currently using a fairly clunky system of Excel spreadsheets to create timelines which detail the various tasks that need to happen and which crew are involved, but I'm interested to know what other people use to manage logistics - there must be suitable software out there that would allow me to create tasks and allocate resources (crew, vehicles) to them. The project-management packages I've seen are designed for managers overseeing long projects, and as such, the timescale tends to be in terms of days rather than hours. I'm more concerned about scheduling the many small tasks that go into, say, managing a festival with three stages over four days, or managing various jobs over the course of a week, so maybe 'project management software' is not what I'm after? I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts/recommendations! Thanks,Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Pearce Posted October 29, 2013 Share Posted October 29, 2013 Outlook tasks on an exchange setup or google calendar have both worked well for me. Create a calendar for each crew/van then invite those calendars to events created on the master schedule, you can then export an agenda/schedule for each crew member/resource, or even sync it to their personal device.Google calendar's API can also be used to create digital signage day views/upcoming events etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trussmonkey Posted October 30, 2013 Share Posted October 30, 2013 try this. it is a paid per user per month online based project management software . http://www.projectmanager.com/project-dashboard.php looks pretty good. Ive just MS Project and that is excellent if a little over the top for day to day needs but the above link is accessible anywhere you have an internet connection. also if you use Google then there is an app (paid again) called Smartsheet Project manager..... not tried it but it does look like it has all the right PM tools and is web based. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
top-cat Posted October 30, 2013 Share Posted October 30, 2013 Eclipse Hiretrack is one of the industry standards for entertainment rental companies. It handles the whole lot - you build events in it and then take your database of gear, crew, vans etc and allocate them to jobs. It's extremely comprehensive and includes weights and sizes of things to help plan truck packing, you can use it with barcode scanners to scan equipment in and out, and so on. Basically you can run your whole operation off the single software package. Obviously that does come at a price and it's not cheap and the more computers you put it on, the more expensive it get. But a friend of mine's hire company bought a 3-machine system, one for hires, one for workshop, one for projects... and he reckons the £3k or so they spent on it has come back in the sense of them being a lot more efficient as a company. There are other dedicated systems similar to this but Hiretrack is the big name in it, and it is used by many of the major production hire companies in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevejones1 Posted October 30, 2013 Share Posted October 30, 2013 Hello Tim, We offer a very easy to use scheduling software solution for any type of resource. You can add your own groups of resources like locations, wedding equipment, disco equipment, job types, customers etc. Then you create an event/job and choose all the resources you need for that event. You can try it all free from our website. We hope any product you find will allow you to see how much time and effort you can save by using a true scheduling solution over Excel or Access which work great but are not made for scheduling. Please let me know if you need any help. http://www.scheduleit.co.uk Regards Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve@soundbp.com Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Try http://www.workflowmax.com That does time tracking but not sure about equipment scheduling. Another place to look is: http://www.xero.com/uk/add-ons/This is a director of cloud based software add ons to the accounts package Xero Hope that helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Probably a bit of overkill, but we use Retain - it is a wallchart based resource planning software. We are going to be moving away to a new system soon, primarily as it will integrate into our rental system - but I will always have a soft spot for Retain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheeseweasel Posted October 31, 2013 Author Share Posted October 31, 2013 Thanks for all the suggestions everyone - will try them out when I get a bit of free time and report back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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