More Things I Learned Running A Sound Company In The 1990s

Check Lists Are A Good Thing

We had some very nice ABS briefcases that a single wireless microphone kit would fit into… except that I was constantly getting phone calls complaining that there was no AC adapter, or no mic clip, or only one antenna. Plus rentals were coming back missing one or more of those items.

The solution? A check list in every case. Over time this expanded to include any case that contained a specific package – mic kits, spares kits, pre-packed cable cases (as noted in my earlier article), and so on.

Another aspect was development of a new “pull-and-pack” sheet for building shows that included a space for what case an item went into, the initials of the person who packed it, a space to indicate that it had been loaded on the truck, and a final check box to indicate that it was back in the shop.

Initially I got some pushback from staff about initialing when they packed or checked something but it put a halt to the “I don’t know” responses when inquiring about who packed a certain case. I explained to them that most of the time, it was helpful because if someone made a mistake in packing, I wanted to know so the person could be shown the correct way to do it the next time.

“The Show With Three Names”

This was a phenomenon that came about from having multiple, fairly autonomous departments (audio, lighting, staging, staffing and trucking) that were often informed at different times (and in different ways) about an upcoming event by the account managers.

So I might be talking to my counterparts in lighting and staging and mention that we were building for “Name Of Band,” at which point head LX might mention that he was building “Name Of Venue” while staging might mention an order for “Name Of Promoter.”

Further, the people in trucking might have rented a truck for each one only to find out that they were all the same event.

The solution was to consolidate all of the various show requisition forms (then still mostly on paper) in one place in the account manager area. Crew booking was done in Filemaker, which generated a unique number for every event. So on a table in that area was a book with upcoming show numbers, and as previously mentioned, requisition forms for every department.

After that shows were built and referred to by the show number, which also kept things more confidential, especially when a competitor came by to pick up a cross rental and had a nice long look around the shop to see what was up.

As an outgrowth of this, we had at least one delivery driver on the road every day, and from the traffic on the shop paging system I could tell that they were constantly dropping gear at gigs downtown. After we’d gotten on top of the shop forgetting to pack things, this still continued.

When I challenged the account managers with “Why are you guys forgetting to request so much stuff?” they replied that they weren’t – the clients were constantly asking for “Oh by the ways.” To which I countered, “Well O.K. then! If the clients are ordering extras, they need to be billed for the multiple deliveries, too!

After that, every driver drop was logged against the relevant show number and (hopefully, I never was able to confirm it) billed to the client.

Speaking Of Billing…

When I started, invoices were generated from a handwritten form called a “request for invoice,” which for a dry rental had to be submitted along with the multipart rental contract (also handwritten).

Eventually an invoice would come back for approval, along with the shop and customer return receipt parts of the rental contract. If you got a call about a rental that was out while its contract was up in accounting, too bad. This was a cumbersome way of doing things but the part that really irked me was the request for invoice form, which ended up with exactly the same information on it as the rental contract.

One day I asked why this was required, and the answer came back that it really wasn’t!

Then I discovered that the rental contract form was actually already set up to print from a computer and managed to do away with another handwritten document, the “rental hold form.” Simply, it become one layer of the rental contract, which saved typing the information twice and also gave a us a database of rentals.

As a result of all of this, the paperwork required for dry rentals and their invoicing was greatly reduced and sped up to the point where it all happened the same day, which, wait for it, improved cash flow!

Looking back, the two things that I helped change the most, and for the better, were communications and workflow. One of the main qualities that makes us humans different from the rest of the herd is the ability to communicate.

The “show with three names” is an example of a communications issue, and asking why I had to enter billing information twice is an example of communicating about workflow.

While all of the events in this article happened 20-plus years ago, the relevant points remain: Keep your head up and your eyes open for opportunities to streamline your operation by eliminating redundant practices and poor communication.