Guide
How Much Time Does Crew Booking by WhatsApp and Excel Actually Cost?
Check your crew coordination workload with a practical checklist and free text worksheet. Record roles, equipment requirements, responses and active coordination time for one real job.
A worksheet for your next job
Download the editable text worksheet and duplicate the role block for each position. Edit it locally or print it. No registration required. This is a planning aid, not a SAVIE import format.
Download the crew plan and time log (.txt)1. Define the requirement before sending requests
Record the project, location, contact and setup, show and teardown dates with start and finish times. Specify the equipment and expected experience for each role. A lighting technician working on grandMA3 is a more precise requirement than an open position called technical crew.
Identify missing information. Assign an owner and a due date to each open question. An empty cell does not mean availability is confirmed.
2. Separate a request, an option and a confirmation
Keep one entry per role and person contacted: request date, response deadline, latest status, next action and responsible dispatcher. Use explicit states such as open, requested, option, confirmed and declined.
An option or a positive message without agreed shift details is not a complete confirmation. Record agreed hours and terms, and establish who can confirm the booking. Recheck overlapping commitments when a shift changes.
3. Check the handover before production day
Review each required position: booking confirmed, briefing current, meeting point and contact known, equipment requirements clarified. Keep required evidence of qualifications separate from self-reported equipment experience.
Give every open role a next action and an owner. When a shift changes, record who was informed and whether the person confirmed the new time. This makes the plan usable when another dispatcher takes over.
Measure the coordination around a booking
Start with a recent, representative job. Count the time spent making a shortlist, sending requests, following up, updating the roster and reconciling replies across messages and spreadsheets.
Separate active work from elapsed waiting time. A reply arriving the next morning does not mean that the dispatcher spent the whole night working on the booking.
Use a simple, explicit calculation
Illustrative assumptions: three jobs per week, two hours of coordination avoided per job and 4.33 weeks per month. That amounts to about 26 hours of recovered capacity per month.
At an illustrative monthly salary of EUR 3,000 and 173 working hours, the salary-only value is EUR 3,000 / 173 x 3 x 2 x 4.33, or about EUR 451 per month. This excludes employer costs, software fees, setup time and training. These inputs are examples, not measured SAVIE customer results.
Capacity is different from cash savings
The calculation values time that could become available for other work. It does not mean the company will spend EUR 451 less each month. A cash saving depends on a change in actual costs, such as less paid overtime.
Some coordination will remain. Complex briefs, late changes and conversations about suitability still need a dispatcher. Use a conservative estimate for the work a system can remove.
Test the estimate on your own jobs
Run a small pilot on comparable jobs. Track active coordination time before and after, along with booking completion, missed replies and corrections. Include the time needed to maintain profiles and learn the workflow.
SAVIE puts requirements, crew information and booking responses in one place. The useful question for a pilot is how much that changes your team's work, with your crew and your production schedule.