EVENTRA vs. Excel and WhatsApp
Most festivals plan their crew in Excel, collect applications with Google Forms, communicate on WhatsApp and record hours on paper. It is free, everybody knows it, and up to 300 crew on a single day it works. After that it breaks in four places: incomplete data, shift conflicts, estimated hours and a payroll run that takes weeks. EVENTRA replaces the four tools with one system the crew feed themselves.
In short
- Excel costs €0 in licences and roughly one full-time position over the summer.
- Rest periods, Minijob limits and the 70 days are invisible in Excel until the payroll office calls.
- Paper check-in produces estimates. QR check-in produces minutes, even without a signal.
- EVENTRA's fully configurable application form lets the crew enter their own data, and AI checks that everything is there. Nobody retypes anything.
Based on the processes we found at festivals before they introduced EVENTRA.
Features side by side
| Feature | EVENTRA Crew platform for festivals, sports events and staffing agencies | Excel, WhatsApp, Google Forms Spreadsheet, group chat, form, paper list |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiting | ||
| Configurable application form | Yes Own form per event, AI checks every application for completeness | Partial Google Form, data copied by hand |
| Crew self-service data | Yes Tax ID, bank, ID, documents entered by the crew | No |
| Qualification tags | Yes | Partial A column in the sheet |
| Planning and compliance | ||
| Rest-period warning | Yes 11-hour warning while planning | No |
| Minijob limit | Yes Monthly limit per person, warning before the shift | No The payroll office notices |
| 70-day rule | Yes Across all events, with a forecast | No Counted by hand across all events |
| Event day | ||
| QR check-in | Yes | No Paper list |
| Offline check-in | Yes Supervisor scan without a signal, later sync | Yes Paper always works and never arrives |
| Live board | Yes Web and crew app | No |
| Crew app | Yes iOS and Android, incl. team-lead view | No WhatsApp groups |
| Access | ||
| Accreditation and ZVÜ | Yes Incl. ZVÜ data collection and export | No |
| Guest list and wallet passes | Yes Guest list, Apple and Google Wallet | No |
| Payroll and price | ||
| DATEV export | Yes LODAS and Lohn und Gehalt, file or API | No Manual entry at the payroll office |
| StoTax export | Yes | No |
| Customer billing and AÜG | No Customer invoicing and AÜG module in the making | Partial Invoice from the sheet |
| Pricing model | Yes Unlimited crew and admin users. €99 platform fee per month, €5 per shift, €4 from the 501st shift in the contract year, €3 from the 2,001st | Yes Free, paid for in hours and mistakes |
Facts about other vendors are taken from their public pages. Not documented means not found, not absent. Corrections are welcome.
When Excel is enough
Under 100 crew, one day, all permanent staff
Then a shift plan in Excel and a sheet at the gate is honestly sufficient.
No short-term employees, no Minijobbers
Without the 70-day and Minijob limits most of the risk disappears.
Common questions
See your event in EVENTRA
30 minutes with the founder. We rebuild your event live, from the application form to the export file for your payroll office.
Your own test environment in minutes. No credit card, ends automatically.
See pricing