Frequently Asked Questions

venMan is a comprehensive cloud-based platform for professional management of events, venues, staff, equipment, and finances. The software is designed for event organizers, concert promoters, exhibition builders, cultural institutions, and any company that regularly organizes events. From initial planning through execution to post-event processing and billing - venMan covers the entire event lifecycle.

While Excel is suitable for simple lists, venMan offers a specialized, automated solution with real-time collaboration, intelligent staff planning, integrated financial management, and automatic invoicing. You save up to 80% of administrative time through automation of recurring tasks, central data management, and seamless integration of all event processes. Additionally, you benefit from approval processes and comprehensive reporting capabilities; the visual workflows come with Enterprise.

Yes, but not as an all-access pass. The free trial runs on the plan you choose when you subscribe and lifts no plan limit: whether a module is unlocked is decided by your organization's plan, not by the trial — Basic reaches 21 of the 88 modules, Pro and Enterprise more. If you want to try a higher tier, take the trial on that tier. By card or SEPA direct debit it lasts 14 days; over PayPal its length depends on the PayPal plan booked. You store a payment method when you start it, it is only charged afterwards, and each organization gets the trial exactly once. During the trial you create your own events and invite your team; after that you decide whether to carry on. Your data remains preserved throughout.

Very fast! After registration, our interactive onboarding wizard guides you through setup step by step: organization details and plan selection, business settings, branding, email signature, your venues, optional integrations, data import, and team invitations. You can then immediately start planning your first event.

Yes, we support data import! venMan offers flexible import functions for Excel/CSV files. Our support team is happy to help with larger data migrations and creates custom import scripts for your existing systems if needed. Enterprise plans include personal onboarding support with data migration.

venMan is flexible for all event types: concerts, festivals, trade shows, conferences, corporate events, sporting events, theater performances, private celebrations, and much more. Each event is set up with its own event type, venue and floor, staffing requirements covered via staffing profiles, a task list, and workflows (Enterprise) that automate recurring steps. The software adapts to your requirements - not the other way around.

Staff planning in venMan is intelligent and automated: Define staffing profiles with qualification requirements (e.g., 'Technician Level 2', 'Stage Manager', 'Security'), set shift times, and assign staff. The system automatically checks availability, qualifications, and working time limits. Staff receive automatic notifications about assignments. Time tracking is a Pro module: it is digital, and all hours are automatically documented for payroll.

Yes. In the event list, choose "Save as template" on the event you want to reuse, and the reusable part of its setup is stored under Events > Templates: start and end time, venue, floors including the own-or-external hosting decision, event type, staffing profile and role headcounts, guest list quota per artist (Pro), staff lead time, artist budget and the promoter quotas. A template deliberately does not carry what belongs to one specific event. You pick the date yourself when you create the event, and the status, guest list entries, tickets, the lineup and booked artists, the external host contact, invoices and settlements, uploaded artwork and the per-floor door split, rent or gastro amounts you negotiated all stay behind. An event created from a template starts as a draft, exactly like every other new event, so you review it before it goes live. Templates can be renamed and deleted, but the captured configuration itself is not editable — if the format changes, save the updated event as a new template. Everything else is unchanged: staffing profiles bundle your staff requirements, day and week templates in shift planning generate complete shift plans including exceptions for holidays, task templates populate the task list, and workflows (Enterprise) handle recurring steps automatically.

venMan offers dedicated location management: Record all your venues with address, capacity, contact details, and geo-coordinates for on-site time tracking (Pro). Each location can have multiple floors/areas with their own capacity and colour coding (e.g., Main Stage, VIP Area, Backstage). Notes on directions and parking, load-in, backline, and Wi-Fi are kept directly on the location, as are the weekly opening hours including exceptions for holidays and special dates. An event inherits those opening hours automatically for its date. The access times on the event show you whether they are inherited from the location or overridden for this event. Overridden times stay put even when the location opening hours are changed later; one click resets them back to the location hours, and an event can also be marked as deliberately closed for its day. On top of that you record a build-up and teardown time per event, safety requirements as free text, and up to 40 custom fields made of a label and a value. Floor plans are uploaded in the media tab as a document of type floor plan — there is no floor plan editor.

Yes! The events overview offers three views: list, cards, and a month calendar showing every event of the month at a glance — clicking an empty day creates a new event right away. In list view you search and sort all events; past and archived events can be shown when you need them. For detailed shift planning there is also the disposition timeline with day, week, and month views including drag & drop. You can also create straight from the disposition view: the "New" button in its header creates an event or a day plan, both pre-filled with the date you are looking at. The day plan opens as a form inside the timeline; for an event you move to the same form you get under Events > New and come back to the same week after saving or cancelling. So there is only one create path for events, and the event entry only appears when you hold the capability to create events. Day and week plans also stay reachable by clicking a day header in the week view or a calendar week in the month view.

Yes — every organization gets its own public portal under its own address, and your guests need no account for it. What the portal shows depends on your plan, because every surface behind it is its own module: imprint, privacy policy, house rules, the freely editable content pages and the link flows below are there on every plan; the public event list and the event detail pages together with your own ticket sale — cart, checkout, order confirmation and an order overview — come with Enterprise; the merch shop, guest lists and lost and found come with Pro. Tickets sold this way are checked at the door with the ticket scanner in the app. On top of that the portal carries an open-deck lottery for DJ applications, guest-list views for artists, promoters and contingent holders, your menu cards behind a QR code (Pro), and per-guest recording downloads through a personal code that expires and has a download limit (Enterprise). Artists, external hosts and suppliers get link-only flows for contracts, hospitality and technical requirements, opened by a long unguessable token in the link instead of an account. Those links are not single-use: they stay valid until the booking is archived, so treat them like a password.

Asset management is a Pro module and it covers the whole inventory: Record all assets with serial numbers, purchase dates, maintenance intervals, and current locations. Categorize equipment using fully editable categories (technology, furniture, decoration, other) and types (e.g. CDJ, mixer, speaker, microphone, lighting), and track condition and availability per unit. Store a product image and document maintenance with photos and PDFs in the maintenance log. The system automatically warns of upcoming maintenance and shows utilization per asset.

Yes, equipment planning is integrated — it sits in asset management and is therefore a Pro module: during event planning you see in real time which equipment is available, a finalized floor rider holds those units for the event date so another floor cannot book them a second time, and conflicts are shown. Equipment that always goes out together can be saved as a bundle — a DJ booth, a bar kit — and assigned to a booking in one step. The bundle is expanded at the moment you assign it: anything already assigned anywhere on that event, and anything whose individually tracked units are fewer than the bundle asks for, is skipped and listed for you instead of disappearing silently. Equipment you do not track unit by unit is assigned and listed as such. Editing a bundle later changes what the next assignment produces, never an assignment you already made. Equipment whose maintenance is overdue is flagged as restricted, both in the bundle report and in the equipment picker of the technical rider. That status is derived from the maintenance due date rather than set by hand, and it does not take the unit out of the pool: venMan warns you and still lets you assign it.

Yes! The rental module enables professional equipment rental: Mark assets as 'rentable', define rental prices (daily rate, weekly rate) and volume discounts. Create rental quotes and contracts with automatic availability checking. Customers can request equipment through the public rental portal. After approval, invoices are automatically created with correct rental periods. All rental transactions are documented in the system.

venMan offers integrated maintenance management: Define maintenance intervals per asset (e.g., every 6 months, after 100 operating hours). The system automatically creates maintenance reminders and to-dos. Document performed maintenance with date, technician, work performed, and costs. After each documented maintenance, the system recalculates the next due date automatically. Maintenance histories are fully traceable for audits and insurance.

Invoicing is fully integrated and automated: Create invoices directly from events, rentals, or manually. All event costs (staff, equipment, external services) are automatically captured and can be transferred to invoice items with one click. The invoice is generated as PDF with your company logo, all legal mandatory information, and optional DATEV compatibility for your accounting. Sending is automated via email.

venMan supports modern and traditional payment methods: For platform subscriptions, we accept credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) via Stripe and PayPal. For customer invoices, you can specify all common payment methods (bank transfer, SEPA direct debit, PayPal). For Enterprise and Custom plans we agree on billing and payment terms individually — just talk to us; the self-service checkout supports credit card and PayPal.

Yes, absolute legal security: All generated invoices contain the legally required mandatory information according to §14 UStG (consecutive invoice number, tax ID, VAT breakdown, service period, payment deadline). PDF export is DATEV compatible and can be directly imported into your accounting software. For international customers, correct VAT treatment is automatic (reverse charge for EU B2B transactions).

Yes! venMan supports flexible payment terms: The default is 14 days after invoice date, but you can set individual deadlines for each invoice. For multi-stage projects, you can even define different due dates per invoice item (e.g., deposit immediately, balance after event). The system automatically recognizes due dates from OCR-scanned receipts (Pro). Overdue invoices automatically receive the 'overdue' status and can be chased with a payment reminder via workflow (Enterprise).

Receipt capture is a Pro module. The OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function automates it: Simply photograph or scan a receipt (invoice, receipt, cash register receipt). venMan uses AI-powered text recognition to automatically extract the following information: amount, date, vendor, invoice number, VAT rate, due date, and payment details. You review the recognized data, assign the receipt to an event or cost center, and save. The original receipt is archived in a revision-safe manner.

Yes, on two levels. Per event you set an artist fee target and classify the promo budget (low/normal/high). On top of that, Finance › Category Budgets (a Pro module, not part of Basic) lets you plan a target amount per month and booking category — build-up, venue operations, artist fees, technical production, waste disposal, beverages, marketing, travel, rent and hire, insurance, bank and payment fees, other, internal. The actual figure comes from the invoices of the same period, calculated on net amounts, and the report shows plan, actual, deviation and a status (on plan / close to the limit / over budget). Planning is in EUR: cancelled invoices do not count as spend, and invoices in another currency are not converted but reported separately as a count. Invoices without a category are not hidden: they are reported as their own line with a count and a sum, and the category itself is pre-filled by the AI extraction and correctable on the invoice. Freely definable custom categories and automatic threshold notifications still do not exist. Actual costs also come together in settlement: staff, cash desk, receipts (Pro), and external service providers are recorded per event and evaluated in the settlement and the finance reports — including DATEV export for your accounting.

Three ways in, one place to match them — and each way is its own module. Receipts (Pro): photograph or upload them and the AI extraction fills in amount, date, vendor, invoice number, VAT rate and due date. Your mailbox (Enterprise): connect it over IMAP or POP3 and venMan collects incoming mail itself, recognizes invoices in the attachments and extracts them the same way — structured e-invoices (ZUGFeRD/Factur-X and XRechnung to EN 16931, in both the CII and the UBL syntax) are read from their XML instead of from a picture, which is exact rather than inferred. Your bank (Enterprise): through PSD2 open banking you connect your accounts and transactions arrive on their own. Matching is rule-based: you write your own rules for recurring bookings, and the first rule that matches proposes a category with a confidence score. A transaction no rule covers is categorized by hand — there is no AI suggestion for bank transactions. Outgoing payments run the other way (Enterprise): collect due invoices into a payment run, approve it, and venMan produces a SEPA XML file or initiates the payment through the bank connection.

The number of user accounts depends on your chosen plan: Basic allows up to 5 users, Pro up to 20 users, Enterprise and Custom have no user limit. Each team member receives a personal account with individual login credentials. In addition, you manage staff profiles without their own login (e.g. freelancers or temporary workers) who are only scheduled for shifts — up to 20 on the Basic plan, up to 100 on Pro, unlimited from Enterprise.

venMan offers a granular role and permission concept: Predefined roles are Owner, Administrator, Manager, Staff, and Viewer. Each role bundles individual permissions (over 60 capabilities) that control which modules are visible and which actions are allowed (view, create, edit, delete). For scheduling, you additionally define your own staff roles (e.g. 'Shift lead' or 'Technician'). This way every team member gets exactly the access they need — without exposing more than necessary.

Several people can work on the same event or shift plan at once, and every change goes straight into the shared database. Many surfaces also push those changes into a tab that is already open, over a server-sent-event stream: the event list, the task board, the notification bell, guest lists (Pro), planning approvals and the recordings cockpit (Enterprise) update themselves without a reload. What venMan does not do is collaboration inside a single form - there is no live cursor on a shared field, no continuous merge of two people typing into the same form, and no built-in chat. People who are not looking at the screen are reached by notifications instead - shift assignments and changes, swap requests, sick reports, absence requests and planning approvals arrive in the app and, if you use them, over the Telegram or WhatsApp bot. Written remarks come in two shapes. Most records carry a single internal note field that anyone with edit rights can rewrite - events, assets, contacts, invoices and lost and found (Pro) among them. On an event that note sits next to the description and is not part of what gets published to the portal, the website or the CMS sync. The day plan additionally has a real note thread, with an author and a timestamp on every entry, and your team sees the same thread under its own shifts. On top of that a task can require a completion note, and a workflow approval (Enterprise) carries a comment. What does not exist: a comment thread on every object, @mentions, or internal direct messages. Notes are also the one thing that is never pushed - the event page listens for guest-list changes only, so a note you write reaches a colleague's open tab after a reload, and it notifies nobody. If something has to reach a person, send it as a notification or put it on the day plan.

Team invitation is simple and secure: Go to Settings → Team, enter the new member's email address, and select the desired role. The system automatically sends an invitation email with a secure activation link. The recipient can set their password by clicking and immediately receives access according to their role. You can revoke invitations at any time or change roles afterward.

The help is in the app. venMan ships 68 help articles per language — German and English — as a searchable help center, plus a contextual drawer that opens beside the page you are on and shows exactly the articles that belong to it, so nobody has to hunt for the right chapter. Guided tours walk you through the important screens step by step. Your guests and external partners get their own, smaller help section inside the public portal. The interface itself is available in German and English; content you maintain yourself, such as menu cards (Pro) and handbooks, can be translated into further languages.

Most of the routine around the roster. Absences are requested and approved in the app and are visible in planning, so nobody gets scheduled while they are away. Rotation patterns describe recurring rhythms your team applies for, instead of you assigning every week by hand. Availability surveys go out over the Telegram or WhatsApp bot before planning and collect who can work when. On top of that there is a shift inbox for accepting and declining, swap requests between colleagues, a disposition board for the running day, and shift notes on the day plan. Recognition is a module of its own and comes with Enterprise: XP, levels and achievements for completed shifts, plus employee of the week and employee of the month. Below that plan the recognition widgets do not appear at all — it is not a switch you can flip per organization.

Your data is stored in highly secure data centers in the EU (Germany) and is subject to strict German and European data protection laws (GDPR). All data is transmitted encrypted (TLS 1.3) and stored encrypted (AES-256). Multiple daily backups at geographically separated locations guarantee maximum data security. Access is logged (audit log). ISO 27001 certification is in preparation.

Yes, full GDPR compliance: venMan meets all requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation. You have full control over your data and can request information, correction, or deletion at any time. Personal data is only stored when necessary for operations. We provide a data processing agreement (DPA) under Art. 28 GDPR. It is built on the standard contractual clauses of Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/915; you can read the full text with all four annexes at /legal/dpa without signing in. Your organization accepts a specific version in the app under Settings → Data processing: the acceptance is recorded with the version, the person and the time, cannot be changed afterwards, and a new version has to be accepted again. The subprocessors are named in Annex IV, each with its purpose and its transfer basis. Your data is never sold to third parties or used for advertising purposes. Detailed information can be found in our privacy policy.

Multi-layer security: Each account is protected by a strong password, and you can optionally activate two-factor authentication (2FA via authenticator app) for additional protection. Sessions expire automatically when unused. Relevant actions are logged in the audit log (who changed what when), so you always stay in control of who accesses your organization.

Cancelling switches nothing off straight away: you keep full access until the period you paid for runs out. From that moment the workspace becomes read-only, and the database enforces it rather than the interface merely hiding buttons — changes you make in the workspace are refused by the database itself, while reading, searching and exporting keep working exactly as before. Two things deliberately keep working: your public portal pages stay online and still accept entries from visitors, and your own account stays yours, so you can still switch to another organization, start a new one and log out. A banner names the date you have been read-only since. Your data stays reachable for at least 30 days. Use that time for the exports the modules already ship: CSV and Excel lists, DATEV exports and PDF documents. There is no one-click dump of the whole account. When the 30 days are over we do not delete anything automatically. The workspace simply stays read-only and your data stays where it is, still readable and still exportable. Ask us and we delete it — at any time, including before the 30 days are up.

We do not offer a public REST API or outgoing webhooks, and there is no self-service integration platform to build against. There is exactly one programmatic entry point, and it points inwards: every workflow can be given its own incoming webhook trigger, authenticated with a bearer token and protected by a payload limit, a rate limit and an idempotency key, so an external system can start an automation inside venMan. The workflow system itself is an Enterprise module. Apart from that, venMan ships with ready-made integrations — the integration settings and the Social Media Hub are Enterprise modules: point-of-sale and gastro systems (Lightspeed K-Series, Orderbird, SumUp, Zettle, Kollex, Nayax), ticketing (Eventim, Ticket.io, Tickera), DATEV-compatible exports and CSV/Excel import/export for your accounting, iCal calendar files for shifts and dates, connections for your social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter), Telegram and WhatsApp bots for your team, payment providers (Stripe, PayPal), and CMS synchronization for events (e.g. WordPress or Webflow). Missing an integration? Talk to us — for Enterprise customers we build custom connections.

Yes, multiple integration options: DATEV export for seamless handover to your tax advisor (standard interface) and CSV/Excel export for import into any accounting program. For Enterprise plans, we develop custom interfaces to your specific ERP/accounting solution on request.

Yes: shifts and dates can be added to all common calendar apps as .ics files (iCal format) (Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar). Team members add their shift assignments to their own calendar straight from the assignment notification, and event dates in the public portal can be saved as calendar entries too.

Yes, through Nayax. venMan polls the Lynx API of your machines, imports the sales into the same revenue view as the bar and the till, and maps machine products onto your own products so the figures are comparable. On top of the sales you get planogram snapshots, machine alerts that can start a workflow (a refill reminder, for example), and a vending revenue widget for the dashboard. Writing prices back into a machine is built but disarmed: it stays off until you switch remote price maintenance on for your organization, and even then it refuses any slot venMan has no planogram snapshot for. Two things have to be true before anything is fetched, and it is not on by default: integrations are an Enterprise module, and someone with the integration-management permission has to enable Nayax for your organization under Settings › Integrations and store the API token there.

The Social Media Hub is an Enterprise module and centralizes your social media activities. Publishing and analytics cover five networks: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn and Twitter. Schedule posts in advance with the integrated scheduler and analyze engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares). Smart Scheduling uses your own analytics to suggest optimal posting times. The central inbox for direct messages covers four of those five — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter; TikTok direct messages are not connected, so TikTok is publishing and analytics only.

Automatic shift planning saves you enormous time: Create shift plan templates with recurring patterns (e.g., 'Weekend Service', 'Festival Team') including staff requirements, qualifications, and working hours. The system then automatically generates complete shift plans based on these templates. You can define exceptions (holidays, special events) and generation occurs weekly, monthly, or event-based. After auto-generation, you review the plan and can manually adjust.

The visual workflow builder is an Enterprise module and enables automation without programming: Create workflows via drag & drop with trigger nodes (e.g., 'Event created', 'Invoice overdue'), action nodes (e.g., 'Send email', 'Create invoice'), and condition nodes for if-then logic. Pre-built templates help you get started (e.g., 'Automatic event confirmation', 'Create invoice after event'). Workflows run automatically in the background and log all actions.

Yes — time tracking is a Pro module, and there are six ways to clock in; you decide per organization which of them are active: the clock-in/clock-out button in the app, GPS geofencing that only accepts a stamp inside the radius around the venue, a QR code scanner at the entrance, a PIN terminal in kiosk mode, and the Telegram or the WhatsApp bot. All recorded times are automatically assigned to shift plans, breaks are tracked separately, and managers see in real time who is currently working. Entries wait for a manager to approve them, and the break rules that were broken are shown right next to them. At the end of the month you export the data for payroll (DATEV compatible). Pay follows the employment type: hourly types are hours multiplied by the hourly rate, monthly types are pro-rated from the monthly salary over the expected monthly hours. Exactly one surcharge is automatic: when you correct someone's actual hours on an event settlement, venMan adds a night surcharge of 25 percent. It is a simplified calculation for the 22:00 to 06:00 window — it applies to shifts that start at 22:00 or later and counts at most eight hours. Overtime multipliers and holiday premiums are not computed at all; the settlement reports both as zero.

Yes, with the workflow system — an Enterprise module, just like the Social Media Hub — you can automate almost everything: Invoice creation after event completion, automatic reminders to customers (e.g., payment deadline), social media posts at specific times, staff notifications before shift start, automatic backup exports, monthly reports via email, and much more. Combine time-based triggers (daily, weekly, monthly) with event-based triggers (e.g., 'Invoice created') for maximum flexibility. All workflows are fully configurable.

Further than a rules engine — and it is an Enterprise module. A workflow is a graph you draw, with 9 node types — trigger, action, condition, loop, delay, approval, task, error handler and end — and 6 ways to start it: a business event, a schedule, an incoming email, a manual start, a message from your Telegram or WhatsApp bot, or an incoming webhook. 26 business events can trigger a workflow, and the editor only offers events that something in the product really emits, so you cannot build an automation that never fires. Action nodes send notifications, emails and social posts, create tasks, generate AI replies, or run one of the built-in operations: create an invoice, a DATEV export, a payroll report, a settlement export, an employment or rental contract, a purchase-order draft, the shifts for a day plan, draw lottery winners, send an availability survey, or sync an event to your CMS. 62 ready-made templates give you a starting point. Every run is logged step by step, you can dry-run a workflow before switching it on, and approval nodes hold a workflow until a person decides.

Yes — both are Pro features and are not part of Basic. Menu cards are built from your gastro products: sections, items, prices, price rules and translations, plus an AI import that reads an existing card from a photo or PDF, a print-ready export, and a public QR menu your guests scan at the table. For Lightspeed K-Series venMan also builds a ready-to-import price list out of the card so you do not retype the prices; you download it and import and activate it in the till yourself. venMan never calls a till system from the outside, and no other till is connected for this handoff. Screens are the display side: you pair a screen with the on-site agent, assign content and a schedule, and venMan renders and refreshes what runs on it — a menu card, the timetable for the day, or your own content. Both modules are available from the Pro plan upwards.