What a good day sheet contains (and how to keep one)
Everything a day sheet has to answer before the band leaves the house — call time, load-in, parking, set times, who to ask for — and where to keep it.
Somebody asks in the band chat, at ten past eleven the night before: what time are we there? Three people answer with three different times, two of them confidently. Somebody else scrolls back through four months of messages looking for the attachment. The answer was in an email, sent to one person, nine days ago.
Every band has had that night. The fix is not better memory or a stricter group chat. It is a day sheet that exists, that everybody can find, and that answers the questions people actually ask.
What a day sheet is
A day sheet is the one page that says how the day works. Where the venue is, what time you are there, where you unload, when you play, what you wear, who to find when you arrive.
If your bookings come through an agency, the agency usually writes it and sends it a few days before the date — often as a Word document or a PDF attached to an email. If you take your own bookings, you write it yourself from what you agreed with the client.
You will also hear "run sheet", and the two get used interchangeably. Strictly a run sheet is the same day seen from the event's side: it lists everything that happens, the speeches and the cake and the first dance, not just the band's part of it. A good venue coordinator has one. It is useful to see, because it tells you what is happening either side of your sets, but it is not a substitute for the band's own sheet.
What has to be on it
The test for any line on a day sheet is simple: does it answer a question somebody would otherwise ask in the chat? If it does, it belongs. If it does not, it is padding, and padding is what makes people stop reading a sheet.
Where. The venue name is not enough. You need the full address, the postcode to drive to — which for country venues, farm weddings and estate barns is frequently not the postcode on the letterhead — and, if there is one, the separate entrance for suppliers. A note like "do not follow the sat-nav past the gatehouse" saves more time than anything else on the page.
Parking and load-in. Where you unload, where you then move the cars to, and whether the two are the same place. Whether there is a lift, a ramp, a gravel path, or forty metres of lawn. How late you can leave the van there. This is the section that decides whether a five-piece gets set up in forty minutes or ninety, and it is the section agencies most often leave blank.
Times. The call time first, then the load-in if it is different, then the sound check, then each set with a start and a finish, then the DJ or playlist arrangement around them, then out. If the schedule is genuinely still moving, say so on the sheet rather than writing a time nobody should trust.
The music that has to be right. The first dance song and artist, and whether the band is playing it or it is going through the PA. Anything the client has asked for by name, and anything they have asked you not to play. These are the details that turn into a problem at the worst possible moment, because there is no fixing them at eight o'clock.
Dress. One line. "Black tie", "all black", "smart, no jeans" — whatever it is. It goes on the sheet because it is the thing people pack for, which means they need it before the day, not on it.
Who to ask for. A name and a mobile number for the person at the venue, and the same for whoever is running the band's side. When the van is in the wrong car park, a phone number is worth more than every other line on the sheet put together.
Anything specific the client asked for. Volume limits and sound limiters. A time the music absolutely must stop. Whether there is a piano you can use or must not touch. A quiet set during the meal.
Why is the call time the line people get wrong?
Because it is the one time on the sheet that is not about the music.
The start time is set by the event. The call time is set by the load-in, the sound check, and whatever is happening in the room beforehand — and at a wedding, that is often hours earlier. Nobody wants a band carrying speakers through a room during the speeches, so bands are frequently called before the guests arrive at all, set up, and then disappear for three hours.
Which means a player who reads "9pm" off the sheet and works their journey back from that has misread the only time that mattered. Put the call time at the top, in its own line, and label it as the time to be there rather than the time you play. If you write one time in bold on the whole page, write that one.
What the band has to add
An agency's sheet is written about the booking. It cannot know things about the band, and those are exactly the things that go wrong.
So whoever sends the sheet on adds:
- the line-up for that date — who is actually playing, which matters the moment anyone is covering;
- who is driving whom, if the band shares cars, and where they are meeting;
- anything the band has agreed among itself — a changed meeting point, someone arriving separately from another gig, whose PA is going.
That last group is the reason a day sheet is not finished when the agency's attachment lands. It is finished when it says how this band is getting to this gig.
Who needs it, and when?
Everybody playing, several days before. Not the night before, because the details that change people's plans — the call time, the parking, the entrance — are the ones they need while they can still rearrange the rest of their day.
And especially whoever is depping. A member who has played a venue three times knows roughly how the day goes and can absorb a vague sheet. The person covering has never been there, does not know the band's habits, and has nothing to fall back on. They need the same sheet as everyone else, and they need it without being handed the band's whole diary — one gig, its sheet, its set list, nothing more. That is how it works for a dep in Event Band Manager.
If the venue sends a change afterwards, the change matters more than the original. It has to reach people the same way the sheet did, not as a reply two levels deep in an email thread.
Where should it live?
Wherever it is, it has to survive three things: the date moving, a member joining later, and a car park with no signal.
A message thread fails all three. An email fails the second and third. A shared folder survives, as long as everybody can remember which folder — which, at five past five on a Saturday, they cannot.
The version that works is the sheet attached to the gig itself, so that opening the gig shows the sheet. Nobody has to remember where it is, because there is nowhere else it could be. That is how day sheets work in the app: the agency's file is fetched from the shared link it always lived at, converted so it reads properly on a phone rather than downloading as a document, and kept against that gig — readable even with no signal, which is precisely when people need it.
A short checklist
Before the next gig, check the sheet answers all of these:
- What postcode do I actually drive to?
- Where do I unload, and where does the car go afterwards?
- What time do I need to be there — not what time do we play?
- When is the sound check?
- When does each set start and finish?
- What am I wearing?
- Who do I ring if something goes wrong?
- Who else is playing this one?
If a player can answer all eight from one page on their phone, the sheet is doing its job. If they have to ask in the chat, something on this list is missing — and the eleven-o'clock question is coming.
See it in the app. Gigs, everyone's travel worked out from their own postcode, an equal split to the penny and a statement each at the end of the month — free for a band running itself.