The cheapest system is the one nobody works around
The licence is the cost you can see. The rest of the bill is the spreadsheet open beside it, the WhatsApp group that really does the crew booking, the whiteboard in the warehouse, and the walk to the office to ask what's changed on tomorrow's load-out. None of that appears on an invoice, so nobody budgets for it, and everybody pays it.
Every production company is good at something in its own particular way: how it builds a three-room quote, the spare it always sends, the note the crew must read before they leave. Off-the-shelf software is written for the average hire company, and nobody runs the average hire company. Your habits are its edge cases. They are our specification.
What it costs
Discovery £1,000 +VAT. Build from £25,000 +VAT, fixed once discovery agrees the scope. Then £195 +VAT a month with any number of logins, and changes at £300 +VAT a day when you want them.
How long
New jobs on the new system five weeks after we start building. Everything else in fortnightly releases over the next seven weeks.
What people put up with
Before designing this we read 87 public reviews of one of the best-known rental systems in UK events, and the forum threads where UK hire companies talk about theirs. The same complaints came up again and again:
- Feature requests that sit on a wishlist for years
- Custom quote and invoice layouts that take six to eight weeks to arrive
- Crew booked by text message, because every crew login costs another monthly fee
- Kit that can't move straight from one job to the next without a workaround
- Reports that can't use the fields you added yourself
- Redesigns and sign-in changes that arrive on the vendor's timetable rather than yours
None of these is a hard engineering problem. Each is what happens when one product has to serve thousands of companies and put every request to a vote. When the product serves one company, the vote is short.
What's in it
Quotes and jobs
Built from the way you already quote: rooms and departments as groups, your kits, your day and part-week rates, per-square-metre staging, crew days, hotels, per diems and transport. Set the show dates once and delivery, set-up and takedown follow. Versions you can compare and go back to, and templates for the shows you do every year.
Stock and availability
Serialised and bulk stock, kits inside kits and flight cases, with every item inside a kit counted when you check what's free. Shortages show the moment a quote goes provisional, with sub-hire raised from the same screen. Kit can move straight from one job to the next, item by item, without coming back to base.
Warehouse
Prep, scan out and scan in on any phone or a Bluetooth scanner, with no app to install and no page reloads between scans. Scanning carries on when the Wi-Fi drops. Missing and damaged kit goes onto the job and the invoice. Rolling stock checks by shelf, category or case.
Crew and transport
Crew roles and vehicles are proper lines on the job from the start. If you use TeamTrack, they flow across to it, and approved per diems and crew costs come back onto the job. Every freelancer can have a login, because a login costs nothing.
Testing
PAT and LOLER due dates on every item, certificates on file, and anything untested or in quarantine stopped at the scanner before it reaches a truck.
Money and figures
Deposit, part and balance invoices, with the client's PO number carried through, synced to Xero with payments coming back. Cost and margin on every job, utilisation per item, revenue by department, and reports on any field you add, your own included.
Example screens with made-up data, drawn to show how it works.
The busiest screen in the warehouse needs no login
Every time someone walks to the office to ask what's going out tomorrow, two people stop working. So the system includes a board for a large touchscreen on the warehouse wall, signed in with its own key that can only read jobs and mark notes as read.
- Jobs going out and coming back today, tomorrow and over the next seven days, with times, vehicle and venue
- Prep progress on every job, and anything short or still waiting on sub-hire
- The warehouse notes on each job, flagged red when one changes after the job was prepped
- Overdue returns, kit in quarantine and tests due this week
- Touch a job for its pick list; tap a note to mark it read, so the office knows who has seen it
Tell it what's wrong in your own words
Most software asks you to fill in a ticket. This asks what happened. Every screen, the warehouse board included, has a Tell us button with Claude behind it: it asks a question or two, answers how-to questions on the spot from your own written guides, and turns the rest into a ticket with the job and the screen attached.
A job at risk goes straight to a person at VSE, who responds within two hours, 07:00 to 21:00, every day. Something broken is fixed in the next weekly release. An idea is quoted in days, and only started once you agree. Each month you get a summary of what came in and what changed.
Changing system without betting your job on it
Nobody was ever sacked for keeping the old system, which is exactly why old systems last so long. Switching feels risky for a sensible reason: if it goes wrong, it goes wrong on a show day. So the plan is built to take that risk out.
- Two days of discovery first. We sit with your office and warehouse, read your data and come back with a fixed scope and a fixed price. If you go no further, you keep the report.
- Your data comes with you. Stock, kits, clients, rates, test records and two years of jobs, with a check report on every trial run.
- New jobs go live at the end of week 5. Jobs already booked finish on your old system, so nothing moves mid-show.
- A release every two weeks after that, each tried by your team on a staging copy before it reaches a real job, and never released the day before a load-out.
What makes yours different
This is what discovery is for. These are the small things that make each production company its own, and the reason the standard product never quite fits:
- How you lay out a quote: by room, by department, by day, or all three
- Your rate rules: part weeks, ten-hour crew days, fixed charges, client price lists
- Which kit always travels with which, and the spares nobody writes down
- What the warehouse must know before a load-out, and how late changes reach them
- How your freelancers want to hear about work, and what they need on the day
- Carnets, European jobs, overnight de-rigs and back-to-back shows
- What your accountant fixes by hand in Xero every month
Each is a small thing. Together they are a fair description of why your clients come back.
Prices
| What | Price |
|---|---|
| Discovery: two days with your team, a written report, a fixed scope and a fixed price | £1,000 +VAT |
| Build: your system, live for new jobs in five weeks, the rest within twelve. Paid 30% at the start, 40% at go-live and 30% when the last release is accepted | from £25,000 +VAT |
| Running: hosting, backups and monitoring, the Tell us service, and fixes to anything not working as built. Any number of logins | £195 +VAT a month |
| Changes and new work, whenever you want them, quoted in days before we start | £300 +VAT a day |
Why no price per user? Because a price per user is a tax on involving people. The warehouse, the crew and the freelancer who comes in twice a year should all be able to log in without anybody doing sums first.
Not included: the warehouse screen and the small PC that drives it, your Xero subscription, and TeamTrack's own subscription and connection work if you use it.
Where it runs and who owns what
It runs on VSE's AWS account in London. Each company's data is kept apart by rules in the database itself, encrypted in storage and in transit, and backed up continuously with a copy held in a separate account. Built on ISO 27001 / SOC 2-certified infrastructure, with controls aligned to ISO 27001. Sign in with Microsoft or Google, or an authenticator app, and a lost phone is reset remotely the same day.
We keep the code. You get a licence to use it for as long as you like and to have anything changed. Your data is yours, with a full export whenever you ask for it.
Moving from OnRent Events or Current RMS
We read your stock, kits, accessories, rates, clients, jobs and test records through its API, check a sample against your shelves, and bring it all across. If you use TeamTrack, keep it: the new system feeds it the same jobs, crew roles and vehicles.
On HireHop, Rentman or spreadsheets? We do those too, with the import built during discovery.
Thanks. We'll be in touch today.
We'll reply the same working day with a few questions and some dates for discovery.
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Start with what annoys you most
Tell us which system you use now, roughly how many items you hire out, and the one thing you would change first. We'll come back the same working day with a few questions and some dates for discovery.
We take on a small number of builds at a time, because each one has our full attention for its five build weeks. Or email enquiries@virtualstudio.events.