Every number on the dashboard opens the real screen behind it.
Open the app and the top of the screen shows you the season at a glance — the next show and how close it is, crew slots still open, gear you still have to rent, gear flagged for repair. Tap any of it and you land on the screen that can actually do something about it. The counts aren't a separate summary — they come from the same functions the gig and staffing screens run, so a number here can never disagree with the list it opens.
Nothing tells you what's actually going on.
Most shop software opens on a menu. It tells you what you could do — never what needs you today. So the real dashboard is a whiteboard, a text thread, and whatever the owner happens to remember on the drive in. The rental you meant to call about sits in somebody's notes app until the week of the show. A camera op nobody booked turns into a Thursday-night phone tree.
And when a system does put numbers on a home screen, they're usually a separate rollup — computed a different way, refreshed on a different schedule, quietly disagreeing with the screen you land on when you click them. Once that happens twice, nobody trusts the top of the screen again.
With GigPal PRO: the first thing you see is the season, computed live off your real gigs — and every tile taps straight through to the screen that can act on it, never a dead-end number.
Four numbers, and where each one takes you.
Nothing here is a second opinion.
The home screen doesn't keep its own tally. TO RENT runs the same shortage function the rent list itself runs. CREW TO BOOK runs the same season-wide staffing function STAFF THE SEASON runs. IN SERVICE counts gear carrying a service flag — the same flag the repair screen lists. There is no nightly rollup and no cached summary to go stale, so the number on the tile and the list behind it are the same calculation twice.
Colour does the triage for you.
A tile goes orange when it needs you and green when it's clear, and the line underneath says why in plain words rather than making you decode a zero — "5 items short" versus "nothing short", "flagged for repair" versus "all gear healthy". NEXT SHOW turns orange inside two days, because that's when a countdown stops being information and starts being a deadline. Four tiles across on a laptop, two on a phone, same numbers either way.
Tap the number, land where the work is.
NEXT SHOW opens that gig, already loaded. CREW TO BOOK opens STAFF THE SEASON — every open role across every upcoming show, in one sitting. TO RENT opens the rent list. IN SERVICE opens the repair screen. Each tile goes to the same place whether it reads 7 or 0, so the destination is predictable instead of depending on today's count. Leaving one of those screens open and tapping a different tile can't strand you on the wrong one either — the three season-wide screens are one setting, so opening any of them closes whichever was up.
NEXT UP — your next four shows, with their gaps.
Under the tiles sits a short list: the next four gigs by load date, each row carrying the countdown, the calendar day, the show name, its item count and venue. When a show is still short on crew, that row wears an orange pill — 2 CREW — so you learn which show the season-wide total belongs to without opening anything. That pill is computed per gig, against that gig's own requirements, not by dividing the total four ways. Tap a row and you're in the gig; tap ALL GIGS for the full list.
Then it gets out of the way.
Below the read is the short list of things people actually came here to do: scan an item or case, look up gear by name or tag, open the Tech Table to run gear out and back in. Crew Leaders get two more — the activity feed of who scanned what and when, and network lookup for IPs and interfaces on smart gear. That's the whole menu. A crew member on a phone in a loading dock sees four large targets, not a settings tree.
The parts that make a glance worth trusting.
Crew see their screen, not yours
Rentals and staffing are a Crew Leader-and-up read — they're money and hiring, not everyone's business. Plain crew get the next show, the service count, and their own actions, which is the entire point of the screen for them. Nothing is greyed out — the tiles they can't use simply aren't built into their view.
The show loading today stays on the list
A load date is a calendar day somebody typed, so "upcoming" is measured against your local date, not a UTC timestamp. Measured the naive way, from late afternoon onward the app is already on tomorrow's date — and the show loading in the morning drops off NEXT UP for the whole evening before, on the one screen crew check to find out where to be.
CREW TO BOOK counts the whole season
The tile totals open slots across every upcoming gig, not just the four in NEXT UP. Summing only the visible four is the easy version, and it's wrong: a shop with nine shows on the books would read a comfortable number on home and find a much bigger pile on the screen it opens. The tile runs the season-wide math instead, so the two numbers can't disagree.
"7" to rent, across "5 items short"
The big number is pieces to source; the line under it is how many separate things they are. Seven pieces spread over five line items is five phone calls, not one — and one line item short by seven is a single call. Both facts live on the tile because they lead to different afternoons.
Already-rented gear stops counting
A shortage is only clear when it was both marked handled and became real, trackable gear — marked-but-not-landed is still outstanding work and still shows. Once a line is genuinely secured it contributes nothing to the count, so TO RENT never quietly re-bills you for gear you already paid for.
Three people, three days, still short
Crew coverage is checked day by day and the requirement takes the worst day, not the best. Three utilities who each cover one day of a three-day show would otherwise read as fully staffed, even though no single day ever had more than one person on it. The home tile inherits that arithmetic, which is why its number is usually higher than a gut check.
Two shows a month apart are two rentals
The same package short in September and again in November isn't one big order — it's two, from two different phone calls. Shortages are clustered by whether their date windows actually touch, so the count you glance at reflects real rental occasions rather than a summed number spanning a season you could never fill in one go.
The background that stays a background
A faint drifting grid with three soft pings sits behind the page — it can't intercept a tap, it never scrolls away with the content, cards stay fully opaque on top of it, and if your device asks for reduced motion the pings simply aren't drawn. It reads as a room that's on, not as an animation you have to look past.
- The tiles
- NEXT SHOW · CREW TO BOOK · TO RENT · IN SERVICE. The middle two are Crew Leader and up; the outer two everyone sees.
- Countdown reads
- TODAY, TOMORROW, 5d, or OVERDUE · 2d. Orange inside two days, accent colour beyond — and orange is the app's one meaning for "out / needs attention" everywhere else too.
- NEXT UP row
- Countdown, calendar day, show name, item count, venue — plus an open-crew pill when that specific gig is short. Up to four gigs, soonest load date first.
- Excluded
- Archived gigs and templates, from every count and from NEXT UP. A gig whose load date has passed leaves the strip on its own; nothing has to be tidied up by hand.
- Actions
- Scan an item or case · Look up gear · Tech Table for everyone. Activity / audit and Network lookup are added for Crew Leaders and up.
- Where it runs
- Any browser, phone or tablet. Tiles reflow four-across to two, and the reading column stays a fixed width on a big monitor instead of stretching to the bezels.
The state of the season, in one glance.
See your own season on it.
Bring your inventory and your next few shows in, and the home screen fills in automatically — there's nothing to configure for the numbers to start reading true.
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