Why production companies choose Flightcase

It was built by people running the shows

Flightcase started because a working production company kept hitting the same wall. The software it was paying for was good at recording a rental and bad at everything either side of it, so the actual job lived in spreadsheets, group chats and a folder of PDFs that nobody could keep straight.

That origin shows up in what got built first. Not reporting dashboards. The quote builder, the client link, the show record, the pull sheet, and the invoice. In other words, the sequence a job actually moves through.

Quote versions stop moving underneath the client

This is the feature teams comment on first. When you edit a quote in Flightcase, the link the client already has does not change. It stays pointed at the revision that was sent.

It sounds small until you have had the other version of this conversation. A client approves a number, someone edits the quote for an internal reason, and the client refreshes the link a week later to find a different total with no explanation. Or worse, the client forwards an old PDF to their finance team and it gets paid at the wrong price.

Because approval binds to a specific revision, the invoice can be generated from the pricing that revision carried, discounts included. That is one of the places where money quietly leaks in this industry, and it is a data modelling problem rather than a discipline problem.

Internal stays internal until you say otherwise

Every file, schedule item, note and update in a show carries an audience. The default is internal. You mark something for crew or for the client deliberately, and you can take that back later.

Teams that have been burned by a shared drive understand why this matters. The margin notes, the subrental cost, the plan B you have not committed to yet: none of that should be one folder permission away from the client, and it should not depend on somebody remembering to move a file.

The catalog is entered once

Gear carries a rate, a replacement value, a location and a quantity. Cases and kits go onto a quote as one line at one rate rather than as a pile of parts. Crew carry several roles, each with its own rate, because a person who does audio on Tuesday and rigging on Thursday is not billed the same both days.

Every quote after the first pulls from that. Availability is worked out from the same quantities, so a job that would overcommit a case shows up before the truck is loaded rather than after.

Crew availability is separated from crew booking

Flightcase treats these as different states on purpose. Asking twelve freelancers whether they are free in a date range is a planning question. Assigning someone to a show and getting a confirmed call is a commitment.

Systems that collapse the two produce a roster that looks staffed and is not. Keeping them apart means a coordinator can see who might be free, who has been asked, who said yes, and who is actually booked, which are four different facts.

The commercial side is not an afterthought

• Quotes carry sections, line discounts, section discounts, and separate tax controls.
• Client facing display modes let you show full pricing, items without line pricing, or section totals only.
• Deposits, balance invoices, and card payment are part of the same record rather than a separate billing tool.
• Workspaces can run in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD or AUD, and tax is labeled for the region so VAT reads as VAT.
• Financial visibility is a permission, so a show PM can run their job without seeing company wide numbers.

What we tell people to check before switching

Flightcase is in open beta. It ships often, which is an advantage when you need something changed and a cost when you would rather nothing moved.

If your buying decision rests on RFID, several warehouses with mature availability planning, or a deep integration into an existing finance system, say so early and test that first. We would rather tell you the honest answer than win a trial that ends in a migration back.