Festival equipment management for production companies
Festival equipment management starts long before load-in — it starts with a stack of technical riders, one per act, each written in its own format. TRACE reads those rider PDFs and turns them into festival-wide equipment totals, per-stage stock, pull sheets and a rental order you can defend, so your production team plans from structured data instead of a spreadsheet you retyped by hand.
From artist riders to festival-wide equipment totals
Every act sends a technical rider in its own layout — a DJ rider listing CDJs and a mixer, a band's input list and backline, a live-electronic setup with its own patch. TRACE parses each PDF and extracts the equipment as structured data, with a confidence score on every field so you can see at a glance which numbers to trust and which to check before they matter.
From there it aggregates. How many CDJ-3000s, mixers, wedges, DI boxes and microphones the whole festival needs, rolled up by act, by stage and by day — the tally you used to build by hand across forty riders, kept in one model that updates when a rider changes.
- Extraction across DJ, band and live-electronic riders into one equipment model
- A confidence score on every extracted field, with low-confidence values flagged for review
- Totals rolled up by act, stage and festival day
Per-stage stock and pull sheets for the warehouse
A festival total is only half the picture — the warehouse loads by stage. TRACE holds per-stage stock, so you can see what lives on each stage for the day and what floats between them. When the plan is settled, export a pull sheet your crew can pick against, plus equipment lists and PDF reports for the production book.
- Per-stage stock, separating gear that stays put from gear that floats
- Pull sheets and equipment lists you can hand straight to the warehouse
- PDF reports for the file and the production book
Changeover deltas between acts
Between two acts on the same stage, the question is never the whole setup — it's the delta. TRACE compares consecutive acts and shows exactly what changes at each changeover: what to add, what to strike, what to reposition inside the window. Your stage crew works from a short, specific list instead of re-reading two full riders under time pressure, and you can see where a changeover is tight before the schedule is locked.
Spare calculation and a rental order you can trust
The number that has to be right is the one you rent against. TRACE calculates spares with a default policy — for example a spare for every few CDJs or turntables, and one per mixer — that you can override per stage where the risk or the budget is different. Subtract what you own from the festival total and what's left is a sub-hire order backed by the riders it came from, with any low-confidence field marked so nothing goes out unverified.
- Automatic spare calculation with per-stage overrides
- Owned stock subtracted from festival totals to size the rental and sub-hire order
- Every quantity traceable back to the rider and its confidence score
Where TRACE fits in your AV production planning
TRACE sits between the tools that make riders and the platforms that sell tickets and manage vendors. It doesn't replace either — it reads the riders you already receive and turns them into an AV production plan: equipment totals, backline management, crew figures, changeovers and conflict checks, with hospitality and logistics when you need them.
It's open source under AGPL-3.0, with a free tier and paid plans — Explorer, Builder, Scale and Enterprise — that grow with your festival roster rather than your headcount.
Frequently asked
How does TRACE build festival-wide equipment totals from riders?
It reads each technical rider PDF, extracts the equipment as structured data with a confidence score on every field, then aggregates across all acts, stages and days into a single set of totals. When a rider changes, the totals update with it.
Can I trust the numbers enough to place a rental order?
Every extracted field carries a confidence score, and low-confidence values are flagged for review. You approve the figures before they become a pull sheet or a sub-hire order, and each quantity stays traceable back to the rider it came from — so the order is defensible, not a black box.
How does spare calculation work?
TRACE applies a default spare policy — for instance a spare for every few CDJs or turntables and one per mixer — and lets you override it per stage where the risk or budget differs. Spares are included in the festival total that sizes your rental order.
Does it handle changeovers between acts?
Yes. For consecutive acts on the same stage, TRACE computes the delta — what to add, strike or reposition during the changeover window — so your crew works from a short, specific list instead of two full riders.
What can I export for the crew and the warehouse?
Pull sheets and equipment lists for picking, per-stage stock views, changeover lists for stage crew, and PDF reports for the production book. The extracted, aggregated data feeds all of them.