Band expenses: what gets paid back, and how

You bought the backing tracks. You paid for the car park at the hotel because the venue's own spaces were coned off. Somebody said the client would cover the extra PA hire, and you are fairly sure nobody has mentioned it since.

None of it is a large amount of money, and all of it is the sort of thing that quietly never comes back, because it lives in a text message, a bank statement and somebody's memory rather than anywhere a band actually looks. This is how expenses work in a function band, written for the person playing rather than the one running it: what the band pays back, what stays yours, and what you do so a cost you carried reaches you.

The two kinds of claim

Almost every expense a member submits is one of two things, and it is worth getting them the right way round first, because they are paid back differently.

A travel cost on one gig. A train ticket, a taxi from the station, parking, a toll, the congestion charge, a hotel because the gig finished at one in the morning two hundred miles from home. It belongs to your journey to that date, nobody else used it, and it comes back to you.

This is a different thing from mileage. If you drove, your round trip is already handled by the band's travel and mileage arrangement — worked out from your own postcode, at the band's rate, and paid on top of your share. You do not claim the diesel as a receipt as well. What you claim is the cost the mileage does not cover: the car park, the ticket, the bridge.

A cost that belongs to the whole band. Backing tracks. A set of cables to replace the ones that died. A hired keyboard because the venue could not fit yours. You paid for it, but the band got the benefit, so the band shares it rather than simply handing it back to you alone.

Ask one question to tell them apart: who used it? If the answer is "me, getting to this gig", it is travel. If the answer is "all of us", it is a band expense.

Who actually pays it back?

The band's own money pays for most of it, which is why nobody should feel awkward about claiming and nobody should be careless about it either.

Most function bands work in the shape described in how band members get paid: the fee arrives, the agency's commission or the manager's cut comes off, and what is left is the band pot. Everyone's travel comes out of the pot and goes back to whoever made the journey; what remains is split equally.

Expenses sit in that same sequence, and where they sit decides who feels them.

• A travel claim the band agrees to cover comes out of the pot and goes back to you. Everybody's share for that gig is very slightly smaller as a result — the same arithmetic as somebody living further away than you do.
• A shared band cost comes off the pot too, and is then divided across the roster. You get the whole amount back for having fronted it; each person, you included, carries their part. On a five-piece, most of what you paid effectively comes from the other four.
• A cost the client has agreed to cover is reimbursed to you in full and never touches the pot, because the money is not the band's to begin with. The band bills it on, and until the client settles, the band is out of pocket rather than you.
• A cost the band decides is yours is declined and stays with you. That is not a judgement on your character; it is somebody saying a particular cost belonged to you rather than to the band, which is sometimes true.

There is no version where a claim vanishes into thin air. Every outcome is a decision somebody made, and you are entitled to know which one it was.

What the leader decides, and why it is not personal

A submitted claim is waiting on a decision, not automatically approved. Whoever runs the band has to say which of the outcomes above applies, because they are the only one who knows what was agreed with the client.

You can and should say what you think when you submit it. "The client asked for the extra PA, so I think this is one for them" is useful information, not cheek. But it is a suggestion, and the decision belongs to whoever holds the client relationship. If they decide the band shares a cost you thought the client would cover, the amount you get back does not change — only which pocket it comes out of does.

Where it goes wrong is silence. A claim sitting undecided for a month is not a decision; it is a claim nobody has read. That is a fair thing to ask about, and asking about the claim rather than about the person is the version of the conversation that works.

Why the receipt is the claim

A photograph of the receipt, taken on the night, is worth more than every other part of this.

It matters most when the client is being billed. Nobody can invoice a client for a cost they cannot evidence, so a claim with no receipt attached is one the band cannot pass on, however obviously genuine it is. The band is then left choosing between swallowing it and declining it, and neither is what you wanted.

It matters almost as much for you. Six months on, a card payment to a hotel is not a record of anything; a photo filed against a named gig on a known date is. Whether any of it is useful at the end of your year is a question for whoever does your books — there is a separate guide to claiming mileage as a UK musician for the driving side — but nobody can do anything with a cost that was never written down.

Take the photo in the car park, not at home. It takes ten seconds and it is the whole job.

What it looks like on your statement

The point of all this is a line you can read. A statement for the month should show, for every gig you played, your share, your travel and any expense that was reimbursed to you — named, not lumped into a total.

That is the test of whether your band's expenses are working: can you look at one document and see the car park you paid for in Bristol coming back to you? If your band pays expenses as separate ad-hoc transfers instead, they still count, but you will have to keep your own note of them, because nothing else will.

It is also why timing matters. A claim filed the week of the gig lands on that month's statement; the same claim six weeks later has missed it and waits for the next one. Nothing is lost, but you have lent the band money for an extra month for no reason.

When a claim is too late to change

There is a point past which an expense stops being editable.

Before a claim has been paid out it can be corrected: a figure typed wrong, the wrong gig, a receipt for something returned.

Once the claim is on an approved statement, or the gig it belongs to has been paid, it is fixed. Other people's shares were worked out from that figure, and changing it afterwards would make everybody else's paid statement wrong. A real mistake found after that point is fixed by a correction on the following statement, which shows what changed rather than rewriting history.

What is worth claiming, and what is not

A rough line, and one your band may draw differently:

Worth claiming. Anything on a gig you would not have paid if the gig had not existed and that the mileage arrangement does not cover: parking, tolls, public transport, a hotel the band agreed to, a hire. Anything bought for the band at somebody's request, or anything the client asked for.

Usually not. Your own strings, sticks, heads and reeds. Your own instrument, cases and stands. Your own insurance and PAT testing, where the gear is yours. Food and drink on the way, unless your band has said otherwise. These are the costs of being the musician the band hired, and they belong in your own records.

Ask first. Anything above the amount your band would not blink at. "Shall I just get one?" before the purchase is a two-minute conversation; the same question afterwards is an awkward one, and the answer is worse.

If a dep covered you on a gig where they bought something for the band, it is their claim, not yours — the same way their journey is theirs. There is more on that in what a dep actually costs you.

The habit, in one paragraph

Photograph the receipt before you leave the venue. File it against the gig it belongs to, that week, not that month. Say what it was for in words a bandmate would understand — "car park, venue's spaces coned off" beats "parking". Say whether you think it is yours, the band's or the client's, then let whoever runs the band decide, and check it on the statement when it arrives.

Do that five times and it stops being something you have to think about.

Where this lives, if you use the app

In Event Band Manager, a claim is made from the gig it belongs to or from your own My expenses page, with the photo attached at the moment you make it. You say whether it is your travel or something for the band, and you can suggest the client covers it; whoever runs the band decides, and the decision is recorded rather than remembered. Approved claims arrive as their own named line on your statement for that month, with the receipts downloadable behind it, and one can still be corrected right up until a statement takes it.

There is more about the player's side on for musicians, the full picture of what the app does on features, and if you want to see how a gig fee becomes a set of shares in the first place, the band gig pay split calculator is free and stores nothing.

The underlying idea is simple. An expense is a small loan you made to your band, usually without meaning to. Write it down at the time and it comes back. Don't, and it is a story you tell instead.