Band expenses you should track

Most bands know their gig income to the euro and their expenses to the nearest thousand, if at all. Then the PA dies, the van needs a clutch, and the year that felt profitable turns out to have been a hobby with good cash flow.

Tracking expenses is not about tax (though it helps). It is about knowing what a gig actually costs so that your prices are real. Here is what to track, roughly what it costs, and how to do it without a bookkeeper.

Per-gig costs

These scale with how much you play. They come off the top of each fee before anyone is paid; see splitting a gig fee fairly.

• Transport: van hire (80–150 EUR a day in much of Europe), or mileage on a member's vehicle at an agreed rate (0.30–0.50 EUR per km), fuel, tolls, parking, congestion charges. Often the largest per-gig cost.
• Accommodation and per diems: 60–120 EUR per person per night on longer trips; a fixed per diem of 20–40 EUR for meals when the venue does not feed you.
• Hired gear: extra PA for a 300-guest room, lighting, backline, a generator for outdoor gigs.
• Deps: a dep's fee is an expense of the gig, not of the absent member.
• Consumables: batteries (a 5-piece with wireless mics and IEMs burns 15–25 EUR of batteries a night unless rechargeable), strings, sticks, gaffer tape, printing, drum heads.
• Agency commission: 10–20% of the fee on agency-sourced gigs.
• Payment fees: card processing at 1.5–3.5% on deposits paid by card.

A typical 5-piece function band's per-gig costs, before deps and hire, run 150–400 EUR for a regional gig. Knowing your number is the first input to pricing.

Fixed and annual costs

These exist whether you play 10 gigs or 80, which is why bands that play little have surprisingly bad economics.

• Insurance: public liability (often required by venues, typically 100–300 EUR a year for a band-level policy) and gear insurance (1–3% of the insured value per year is a common range). See gear insurance for musicians.
• Rehearsal space: 15–40 EUR an hour for a hired room, or 150–400 EUR a month for a shared lock-up. Forty rehearsals a year at 3 hours is 1,800–4,800 EUR.
• Shared gear ownership and depreciation: a 5,000 EUR PA lasts perhaps 8 years; that is 625 EUR a year to set aside, whether or not it breaks this year. Same logic for lights, the IEM rack, stands and cases.
• Repairs and maintenance: 300–800 EUR a year is a realistic reserve for a gigging band's shared gear.
• Software and subscriptions: band management (expert.band is 3.90 a month for one band, 30% less on yearly billing), website hosting and domain (50–200 a year), email, cloud storage, a chart or setlist app, accounting software (0–300 a year).
• Marketing: photos (a session every 2–3 years, 300–800 EUR), video (a proper live video is 800–3,000 EUR and pays for itself many times), wedding fairs (200–1,500 EUR per stand), ads, printing. See wedding fairs and showcases for the conversion maths.
• Professional fees: an accountant (300–1,200 a year), a lawyer for the contract template once, collecting society membership.
• Bank charges: a business account is 5–15 EUR a month in many countries.
• Uniforms and stage clothes: if the band pays, budget 100–300 per member every couple of years.

For a working 5-piece, fixed costs of 4,000–9,000 EUR a year are normal. Spread over 40 gigs that is 100–225 EUR per gig that has to be in the price, and usually is not.

Costs bands forget

• The leader's time: not a cash expense, but 3–6 hours per booking that should be paid from the fee, or it is being donated.
• Learning a song for a client: an hour of arranging plus a 20-minute rehearsal slot for 5 people. Charge for it or stop offering it.
• Cancelled gigs: the deposit you kept minus the work already done. Track it, so you know whether your cancellation policy is working. See deposits and cancellation policies.
• Gear that walks: the mic cable that never comes back. Small, constant, real.

A simple system that actually gets used

The complicated system is the one that stops being used in March. This one takes 15 minutes a week:

1. One account for band money. Every band expense is paid from it, or reimbursed from it within the week, so the bank statement is the ledger. See a bank account for the band.
2. Photograph every receipt the day it happens. Name the file 2026-06-14_van-hire_140.jpg and drop it in a folder for the month.
3. One row per transaction in a sheet or bookkeeping app: date, gig (or "fixed"), category, amount, who paid, receipt filename. Ten categories are enough: transport, accommodation, hire, deps, consumables, commission, insurance, rehearsal, software, marketing.
4. Per gig, one summary line: gross fee, per-gig costs, net. This is the number you compare with your price.
5. Monthly, 30 minutes: reconcile the account, chase missing receipts, look at the fixed-costs-to-date line.
6. Yearly, one afternoon: total by category, cost per gig, and the depreciation reserve. Then re-price.

The most useful output is a single figure: average total cost per gig (per-gig costs plus fixed costs divided by gigs played). If it is 350 EUR and you are quoting 1,200 for a Saturday, everyone can see the maths.

Do this today

1. List every subscription and insurance the band pays. Most bands find one they forgot.
2. Set up the 10-category sheet and enter last month.
3. Decide the depreciation reserve for shared gear and start transferring it monthly.
4. Compute cost per gig for last year, even roughly. Compare it with your lowest quote.

Where expert.band helps

Each gig in expert.band already has the fee from the accepted quote and the notes for the date, so the per-gig cost line has an obvious home next to the income it belongs to. Gear and kits in gear and packing keep the inventory of shared equipment in one place, which is what you need when it is time to work out what is worth insuring and what needs a replacement reserve.