Advance a show with the venue

Advancing is where you and the venue agree on the details of a show before load-in day — the schedule, the room, hospitality, production, and the deal terms. ArtistHQ gives you one advance sheet per show, and can send the venue a link to fill in their own side.

Open the advance

The Advancing tab lives inside a show. Go to Shows, open the show, and pick the Advancing tab. It unlocks once the show is on hold or confirmed — before that the tab is greyed out, because there's nothing to advance on an inquiry you haven't booked yet.

The sheet is split into sections: Deal, Schedule, Venue, Contacts, Travel, Hospitality, Production, Checklist, and Notes. A Sections list down the side jumps you to any of them, with a dot that reads grey (untouched), amber (partial), or green (complete) so you can see at a glance what's still thin.

Fill in what you know, then hit Save. The tab warns you if you try to switch away with unsaved edits, so nothing you type goes missing.

Pull people instead of retyping

Under Contacts, use Add from your Contacts or Crew to drop a promoter, venue manager, or local crew member straight in from your existing records. Name, email, and phone come across filled in — you're not re-keying the tour manager's number for the tenth time. You can edit any field afterward; it becomes a normal row on this show from there.

If you've played the room before, a banner appears at the top: You advanced [venue] on [date] before. Tap Autofill from last time to prefill the empty venue logistics — schedule, room specs, wifi, contacts, hospitality — from that show. It only fills blanks, never overwrites what you've already entered, and money terms stay blank on purpose.

Advance with the venue (Plus)

Two-sided advancing lets the venue complete their half. It's a Plus feature.

In the Advance with the venue card, add an optional note and tap Create venue link. Copy the link and send it to your venue or promoter contact. They fill in their side — schedule, the room, house backline, local crew, hospitality — with no login and no account. You can Revoke link at any time while you wait.

When they submit, the card shows The venue sent their side, grouped into:

• New details — things you left blank that the venue supplied. These merge in cleanly.
• Differs from yours — where their answer conflicts with what you have. Each shows you have X, venue says Y, with a use venue's checkbox. Tick only the ones you want to take.

Tap Merge into advance. Their answers, plus any conflicts you accepted, drop into the form fields — then you review and hit Save to keep them. Your own entries are never overwritten; you decide every conflict yourself. Extra backline items, crew calls, and venue contacts they added come across too.

Where the advance goes next

The times you set here feed the day sheet, and the deal terms carry through to settlement. When you're ready to reconcile the numbers after the show, head to settle a show. For the wider workflow around booking, holds, and show status, see managing shows.