Pub gig payment methods.. online, boooo!

[Marky L]

Ok so, covers band world here. Playing the usual mix of pubs and clubs and have always gone home with cash in my pocket for the night. 

 

But now it really seems to have swung to online payment. I can understand that many of the establishments take payments for booze etc via card and phone so there's less cash on the premises, but for and old skool oldie like me, it sucks.

 

As an example, we played a pub last Saturday (which I think is Greene King) and they informed us that we'd be payed online via whatever app it is that we are signed up to already. What bugs me is they quote payment for ten days after the event.. which is an arse pain BUT.. if you don't want to wait you can forego 2.5% of your fee for immediate payment.. even ruder! We play a few of this chain's pubs so it's becoming more of a regular occurrence for us.

 

So do you dump 2.5% (not much but it's the principle)? Also you either need a trustworthy designated banker (chortle) or a group bank account, the management of which is an arse pain too.

 

I don't like the way this modern world is going. Guess I'm very out of date now. 😔

 

Moan over. 😁

[Silvia Bluejay]

Well, think of it as freelance work with a company. With that you invoice your client and they pay either within 30 days of receipt or at the end of the month. (Obviously that doesn't apply to your plumber or decorator fixing stuff in your home - you usually have to pay immediately - but I bet it does apply when those same tradesmen work for a company.)

 

The alternative is to be paid cash for the gig but risk being stiffed for part of your fee with some stupid excuse (not enough people in the pub, etc.) or be asked to commit fraud by signing a receipt for a higher amount than agreed so the landlord can pocket the difference.

 

So there are two reasons why this is happening - accountability and, as you mention, the slow death of cash. You almost need a mortgage to buy a round these days, you have to use plastic...

 

As long as you keep track of the band's finances, the system should work. 👍

 

 

[Wombat]

Yes, there arn’t many compatible things where you get paid ‘after’ you’ve done whatever you’ve been paid to do. The band that played my lads wedding got paid before hand.

All the power is with the big brewers though. And with pubs closing at the rate they do round my way you’ve got a high chance it will be a different publican 10 days after a gig! 😂

[Len_derby]

Come up further north! There’s a pub I regularly play at that’s strictly cash-only.

To be fair, they have had free-of-charge ATM installed on the wall outside. So no one needs to die of thirst .

On a serious note, it does make it harder for pub managers to ‘skim’ the fee they claim they’ve paid for entertainment. That definitely happened in Ripley a few years ago and the perpetrator got the sack.

[tauzero]

Most of our gigs are play now, pay later - the drummer and I both act as "treasurers" in that some of the gigs he does the online thing and others I do invoices for and collect the money, then we just redistribute it as a straight 4-way split. Generally works OK although occasionally we have to chase up payments.

[Lozz196]

A benefit of this is not then spending your share straight back over the bar, so you end up with actual money, albeit at a later date. 

[Happy Jack]

The 2%-5% handling fee thing is easily dealt with. On the rare occasions I encounter it I just add the same percentage to the band's fee, I tell the booker about it in advance, and I tell them why I'm doing it.

 

I've never once had push-back on that. The people I'm dealing with routinely agree with me that it's fair, and of course it's not their money. If they've booked a band at £300 they're hardly going to switch you off because the fee is now £306.

[Marky L]

Thanks for the input folks. I guess I'm stuck in the "a bunch of notes in the hand" after the gig school, but I do like the idea of adding a percentage to the gig fee to cover their fees 😃

[lurksalot]

Greene King have been doing that for years , they had a really odd way of doing it IIRC.

i had to set up an account with a payment portal , invoice them and wait , i think the 2.5% was taken by the portal.

im sure most of these cashless methods are to keep the staff from getting near any business cash.

[Steve Browning]

19 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

The 2%-5% handling fee thing is easily dealt with. On the rare occasions I encounter it I just add the same percentage to the band's fee, I tell the booker about it in advance, and I tell them why I'm doing it.

 

I've never once had push-back on that. The people I'm dealing with routinely agree with me that it's fair, and of course it's not their money. If they've booked a band at £300 they're hardly going to switch you off because the fee is now £306.

It's not 306. 300 is 98% of the final fee. To get your 300, you use (300÷98)×100. 306.12.

[Happy Jack]

Great Scott! He's right!! I could have lost 12p!!!

 

Coming up next: How to charge VAT on VAT.

[Steve Browning]

They pay little enough. Sod paying them!!

[Silvia Bluejay]

1 hour ago, lurksalot said:

Greene King have been doing that for years , they had a really odd way of doing it IIRC.

i had to set up an account with a payment portal , invoice them and wait , i think the 2.5% was taken by the portal.

im sure most of these cashless methods are to keep the staff from getting near any business cash.

That system was called Invapay. Very unpopular with all bands, as we had to add the website's cut to our requested payment. Several years ago they moved to SAP Concur, which sort of works once you know how to deal with it. Except its terminology is absolutely arcane and I'm still wondering if that's because it's been transliterated from German or simply because it takes the p1ss. (It calls an invoice a receipt, etc. which I really hate.)

[Steve Browning]

1 minute ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

 (It calls an invoice a receipt, etc. which I really hate.)

Me too. Have you ever worked in tax? 😁

[Silvia Bluejay]

Incidentally, I remember having a conversation with someone in a thread on here about GigRealm a few years ago. That person was recommending it really hard - presumably they had a stake of some sort in the system - while I was saying that it looked like a scam. Well, a couple of years ago I decided to test it - it is a scam. Avoid it like the plague. Not only are the gig offers on it really low pay, but most of them are probably fake - nothing ever seems to happen even in what look like the best circumstances. And your data gets sold to third parties even if you tick the infamous box stating that you don't want that. I had an angry exchange of emails with GigRealm when I started receiving all sorts of dodgy promotions to the email address I had created just for that site. Uber and Lyft especially would not leave me alone and invited me to use them at a discount in the US (!!). I had to demand GigRealm wipe all of my data off their database.

 

So there's a lot of sh!t out there; however, I can see the reason why many chains have decided to use a payment system of some sort, and I accept that.

[Silvia Bluejay]

9 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

Me too. Have you ever worked in tax? 😁

LOL no but I was self-employed for 30 years! 

[lurksalot]

2 hours ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

 (It calls an invoice a receipt, etc. which I really hate.)

 

2 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

Me too. Have you ever worked in tax? 😁

And quite often the customer will ask for a receipted invoice 😁

[Norris]

We are lucky enough to only have a couple of places that we have to invoice. The rest are good old cash in hand at the end of the night.

[martthebass]

All our venues are cash only. If they aren’t cash then they aren’t one of our venues. Fortunately we don’t do it for a living and can be choosy.

[casapete]

7 hours ago, Norris said:

We are lucky enough to only have a couple of places that we have to invoice. The rest are good old cash in hand at the end of the night.

 

1 hour ago, martthebass said:

All our venues are cash only. If they aren’t cash then they aren’t one of our venues. Fortunately we don’t do it for a living and can be choosy.

Our regular pub / club gigs are cash too. The blues trio only do pubs where this is the case,

although AFAIK there aren’t that many places around here that insist on invoices / delayed payment anyway. 

Private functions / weddings etc for our duo are usually paid via bank transfer, BEFORE the gig!