Event advancing: what it is, how it works, and how not to do it in email
Advancing is the process of confirming, in writing, every detail about a show before it happens. It is the most consequential two weeks of any production, and the single biggest driver of show-day quality. Here's how to do it without losing your mind in email threads.
What advancing actually is
Advancing is the production-side process of confirming every material detail about an upcoming show in writing, with a paper trail. It runs typically 2–6 weeks before the show date. It involves the promoter (or tour manager), the venue, the artist's technical team, and the house production crew.
The output of advancing is a set of typed deliverables (documents and data points) that together define what the show will be. The show then executes against that spec.
The 16 standard deliverables
Most shows reduce to some subset of these. A touring artist will hit all 16. A local corporate activation might hit six. But the taxonomy is stable. Model your advancing around these types and you'll rarely be surprised.
- Tech rider: the artist's production requirements (audio, lighting, backline, stage dimensions)
- Hospitality rider, covering dressing rooms, food, beverages, per-person needs
- Ground transport for airport pickups, show-day runs, driver schedule
- Hotel block: room count, check-in dates, payment responsibility
- Stage plot, the physical layout of instruments, mics, monitors
- Input list, the audio engineer's input-to-channel mapping
- Insurance certificate (a COI naming the venue as additional insured)
- Credentials list: who gets what level pass (AAA, VIP, crew, vendor, guest)
- Parking pass allocation for trucks, buses, crew vehicles
- Load-in / load-out schedule, written minute by minute
- Runner schedule for any off-site errands crew will handle
- Merch settlement: vendor assignment, payment terms, table location
- Security plan, venue-specific with artist-specific additions
- Emergency plan for the weather call, medical, evacuation
- Payment advance: any deposits, wire instructions, settlement method
- Post-show deliverables, from filed insurance to returned gear and settlement docs
Why email threads are the wrong medium
Email has no status. You can't look at a thread and know 'is this confirmed or still pending?' without reading every reply.
Email has no typing. The tech rider lives in a PDF attachment somewhere in the middle of the thread; the hospitality is further up; the ground transport is in a Google Doc link.
Email has no history you can trust. Replies get forwarded, edited, lost. Proving what was agreed by what date requires archaeology.
Email has no role scoping. The tour manager, production manager, venue rep, catering, and artist all sit on one thread (or five), and nobody has the full picture.
A better workflow
Treat advancing as a set of rows in a database, not a set of messages in inboxes. Each deliverable has an owner, a due date, a status, a file (if applicable), and a history of every change.
Assign each deliverable to a specific person. Track status: draft → sent → received → approved → complete. Every transition writes a history row with actor, timestamp, and note.
External parties (artist techs, venue reps, vendors) see their own deliverables in a scoped portal that stops short of the whole advancing stack. Hotel doesn't need to see the input list. The input engineer doesn't need to see the per diems.
The overdue dashboard
Your advancing system's most valuable single view is 'what's slipping.' A simple sort: deliverables with status ≠ complete, grouped by show, sorted by show date.
This is the morning standup artifact. Every day, two weeks before every show, the production manager looks at this and triages. Nothing else is needed.
How the ATLVS Technologies suite handles advancing
Every project in Atlas has a deliverables module with the 16 standard types available out of the box. You can add custom types per org.
Each deliverable has a status workflow, comments (threaded), file attachments stored in Supabase Storage, and a full deliverable_history row per state change.
Artists and vendors see only the deliverables assigned to them, via Gateway portals. They can upload responses, mark their end complete, and comment. All of it writes back into the shared history.
Read more at /atlvs or /features/advancing.