Crew accreditation system or simple schedule: what does your festival need?
Many festivals start in a spreadsheet or a simple shift tool, and for some that is still enough. Here is an honest walkthrough of when it works, and when it starts costing time, mistakes and crew members.
Three questions that decide it
Crew here means everyone who works the event: volunteers, staff and contractors. If you answer yes to two of these questions, you have probably outgrown the simple solution.
Do the team leads need to work on their own?
With a few teams, one person can assign every shift. With 20, 50 or 200 teams, the team leads need to add crew members, plan shifts, register attendance and write to the team themselves, without getting access to the whole festival.
Does accreditation depend on the shifts?
If everyone gets the same wristband and the same meal tickets, it can be handled at the entrance. If access, meals and perks depend on team, user type and number of shifts, the system has to work it out, print it on the pass and register the hand-out.
Do you have guests alongside the crew?
Press, artists, sponsors and partners each have their own list, quota and contact person. If they sit in a spreadsheet next to the crew system, they end up at the entrance with nothing to scan.
What the difference is in practice
Step by step from registration to finished event. The column on the left is not wrong. It is just built for fewer teams and fewer rules.
| Step | Spreadsheet or simple schedule | Crew system like Crewstack |
|---|---|---|
| Registration | One form for everyone. The answers are copied on by hand. | Its own form per user type with several pages, conditional fields and document upload. The answers are used directly as requirements on shifts and shown to the scanner. |
| Approval and waiting list | Emails back and forth. The waiting list is a tab in the sheet. | Registration open, by invitation only or only for last year’s crew. Automatic waiting list when the teams are full, and a message when a place opens up. |
| Teams and team leads | The team lead gets a copy of the sheet or access to all of it. | Team groups in several levels with capacity per team and user type. The team lead sees and runs their own team. You decide what team leads are allowed to do. |
| Shift rules | The rules are in an email and checked by eye. | Minimum and maximum shifts and hours per user type, requirements per shift, breaks between shifts and a stop on double booking are enforced automatically. |
| The crew’s own choice | Requests are sent by email or in a comment column. | Crew members pick or request shifts themselves within the rules, accept them in the portal and swap between them with the visibility you choose. |
| Communication | Mail-outs from a private account and group chats per team. | Messages to a team, a team group, a user type or everyone, as email and SMS. Scheduled sending. Automatic SMS reminders before the shift. Your own email templates. |
| Accreditation and catering | A list at the entrance and meal tickets in a box. | Access, add-on and extra products assigned by team, user type or guest list, with a budget per team. Your own pass design with QR code or barcode, a scanner for check-in and hand-out, RFID and NFC wristbands through an integration. |
| Guest lists and accreditation | A separate spreadsheet per partner, collected the day before. | The partner gets a link to its own list and a quota. Import from Excel. Groups for press, artists and sponsors with their own ticket templates. Check-in at the same scanner as the crew. |
| During the event | A printout of the schedule on Friday morning. | Attendance registered per shift on the phone, a "working now" overview, live check-in numbers and a hand-out report. |
| After the event | The sheet is filed away and built again next year. | Excel export, dashboards and activity log. Schedules, forms and templates are copied to next year, and last year’s crew is invited again. |
| GDPR | Personal data in shared files and on private phones. | Data in the EU, a data processing agreement, access per role and per field, an activity log and automatic deletion of uploaded documents. |
Honestly: when is the simple solution enough?
Stay with the simple solution if
- You have one event with one registration form and fewer than a handful of teams.
- Everyone on the crew gets the same, no matter how much they work.
- You have no guest lists, accreditation or product hand-out to keep track of.
- One person can keep every shift in their head and answers all the questions themselves.
Then a simpler and cheaper tool is probably the right choice, and we say so on a demo too.
Switch to a crew accreditation system if
- The team leads need to work independently without access to everything.
- Access, food and perks depend on team, user type and shifts.
- You have press, artists, sponsors or partners with their own lists and quotas.
- The rules for shifts and hours have to be enforced, not just communicated.
- You spend days collecting, correcting and resending information that has already been typed in once.
Crewstack is built for the second column
Developed in Denmark and used at Roskilde Festival, Copenhell, Heartland, Folkemødet and 150+ other events since 2014. Formerly Heap360.
Short answers
What is a crew accreditation and management system?
A crew accreditation and management system brings crew registration, teams and team leads, schedules, communication, accreditation, access and catering together in one system, so the information from the registration is used all the way through to the wristband at the entrance. The difference from a schedule alone is the connection: the user type decides form and rules, the team decides schedule and products, and the shifts decide access and reminders.
When is a simple schedule enough?
When you have one registration form, few teams, no special rules for shifts and no guest lists, accreditation or catering to keep track of. Then you pay for more than you use in a full crew system.
Can we start with part of the system?
Yes. Some start with registration, teams and schedules and bring guest lists and products in the year after. Others start with guest lists and accreditation alone. See more questions and answers.
What does a crew accreditation system cost?
The price of Crewstack depends on the number of crew members and guests, which parts you use, how much help you want with the setup, and how many SMS messages you send. See how the price is put together.