Hire schedule & budget

The drawing adds up. Every event object, barrier run, trackway and car park becomes a hire line — quantity, unit, the days and weeks it is on site, a rate, a total — grouped with subtotals, totalled ex and inc VAT, and divided by the attendance. The sidebar's 10 · Event budget shows the total; 💷 Hire schedule… opens the table and 🏷 Hire rates… the card it is priced from.

How a line is priced

• Quantity follows the object: cubicles for a toilet trailer, kVA for a generator, metres of counter for a bar, floor area for a marquee or a tent, one for anything else. A stage is priced as deck + thrust area per m², with its roof, its wings and its screens as their own lines.
• Period is the days of the phases the item is on site — build days + live days + derig days from the demand dialog. A rate per week charges whole weeks, rounded up and never fewer than one (a one-day bar is a week's hire); a rate per event is one flat charge however long the hire (delivery, a skip, marshalling, an ATM).
• Barrier runs are priced per metre by style — Heras fence, pit barrier, crowd barrier — delivery and fitting in the rate. A privacy screen on a Heras run is a second line, Heras fence — privacy screen, per metre of screened run and per event: screening netting is bought, not hired. Trackway per metre, laid for the build and lifted after the derig. The car park is a marshalling allowance per 100 spaces for the live days. One Delivery & collection line per category of object placed.
• Groups, in order: Performance, Structures, Welfare, Medical & safety, Bars & traders, Entry & movement, Waste, Entertainment, Camping & glamping, Site & traffic, Signage & wayfinding, Site security, Barriers, Trackway, Car park, Delivery.
• VAT at 20 % is applied to the whole as a guide, never by item — the one statutory figure in the budget (gov.uk VAT rates — Checked).

A vendor pitch is priced at 0 — a pitch is income to the organiser, not a hire — and a catering unit's rate notes that a trader usually brings their own: set it to 0 if so. Not priced at all: VAT by item, crew and labour beyond welfare, security (a vehicle security barrier or an HVM opening is counted on the plan but never priced, and the schedule never names it), medical cover, insurance, licensing and local-authority fees, power distribution and fuel, traffic management, and anything not drawn.

The rate card

The built-in card is Indicative UK hire rates (built-in) — 64 rates in GBP, ex VAT. A few, so you know the order of magnitude: toilet trailer £120 a cubicle a week, portable toilet £45 a week, stage deck £30 per m² a week, marquee £14 per m² a week, Heras fence £2.50 a metre a week, trackway £28 a metre a week, car-park marshalling £600 per 100 spaces per event. All ours.

Camping & glamping

Each glamping unit has its own rate on the card — our indicative estimate from published UK hire prices, read 19 Oct 2026, ex VAT. The bell tent, pod and pre-pitched tent are priced per event, because that is how glamping suppliers quote festival hire and how the published prices are given (a weekend, or 2–3 nights); a long event usually costs more. The hot tub is priced per week, from 7-day hire prices, so a hire past 7 days is charged a second week.

• Bell tent — £150 each per event, pitched and struck on a groundsheet, unfurnished. The figure is for a 5 m tent, the size the published prices are for; the library model is a 6 m tent sleeping 4–6, which usually hires for more. Furnished with beds, rugs and a lamp is nearer £200–250.
• Glamping pod — £350 each per event, placed and collected. A thin figure: few event pod rates are published, and those behind it are mostly for pods sleeping 2–3, so a family-size pod sleeping 4, like the library model, may cost more. The crane lift and haulage go on the camping delivery line.
• Pre-pitched tent, 2–4 person — £80 each per event, hired in and pitched, without beds. What you pay a supplier, not what a camper pays for the package; also a thin figure, built up from tent hire and pitching prices.
• Hot tub — £250 each per week, a 4–6 seat tub delivered, filled, set up and collected. An inflatable is about £150–250, a wood-fired tub about £310–460. Water, a 13 A supply or logs, and daily water testing at a public event are not included.

Supplied by a glamping operator. Often a glamping operator brings the tents and pods and charges the campers, not you. Tick Camping kit supplied by a glamping operator (no hire cost) — under the sidebar's 10 · Event budget once the design has a bell tent, pod or pre-pitched tent, and at the top of 🏷 Hire rates…. The bell tents, glamping pods and pre-pitched tents are then priced at 0 and marked operator-supplied in the schedule, its CSV, the sheet schedule and the Safety Plan appendix, and they are left out of the quote request (its notes list them by name and count). The camping delivery line goes too when every camping item is the operator's. A hot tub stays priced, because it is as often hired separately. The switch is saved with the design; undo reverses it, and collaborators follow it. Untick it to price the units again.

A rate card saved before 19 Oct 2026 may still set the old single glamping_unit rate. Its figure is applied to the bell tent, the pod and the pre-pitched tent wherever the card does not set them itself; a glamping_unit of 0 — the old built-in default — is ignored, so it cannot silently zero the new figures.

Rate not set

The budget never shows a silent £0. A line with a quantity on a built-in rate of 0 — a figure nobody has entered — is marked rate not set. The sidebar shows the group as, for example, Camping & glamping: 7 units, rate not set instead of £0, with a Set rates link that opens Hire rates…; a group that has priced lines too keeps its total and names the rest. The total says how many lines are without a rate. In the Hire schedule the row's rate reads rate not set and its total "—", a banner above the table lists them with Set rates…, the CSV's Status column says rate not set or operator-supplied, and the schedule's notes, the sheet schedule, the planning report and the appendix say the same.

Entertainment is worded for showmen: Entertainment: 3 rides or stalls, rate not set — a showman's ride usually pays you a pitch fee. A travelling ride or stall is usually income, not a hire, so set a rate only if you are hiring it in. A rink, a silent disco or a climbing wall is usually hired in from a supplier, so its row is on its own built-in 0, Attraction, hired in: enter the supplier's quote there. The group line says so: Entertainment: 2 hired-in attractions, rate not set — enter the supplier's quote when they are all it counts, and the showman wording followed by a hired-in attraction needs the supplier's quote when it counts rides as well. The delivery lines, site plant and a vendor pitch are built-in 0s as well and are marked the same way.

When 0 really is the figure, tick keep at 0 beside that rate in Hire rates… and Apply: it is stored as your own 0, the line is priced at 0 on purpose, and it no longer says rate not set. A 0 you type over another figure, or load on your own card with your own basis, counts as a rate you set. A card made with Export JSON and loaded back still carries the built-in 0s word for word, so those lines keep saying rate not set until you enter a figure or tick keep at 0.

🏷 Hire rates… lets you:

• Edit a rate in place. An edited figure's basis records that it was entered under Hire rates… on that day and what it replaced. A rate still at its built-in 0 shows rate not set and a keep at 0 tick (see Rate not set above).
• Load JSON… — your supplier's quote as a rate card: a JSON object with an id, a name and an r object of rates, each {v, unit, per, basis, source, kind, verified}. A rate the card does not set keeps the built-in figure; a row priced from the card names it in its basis; a blank cell is refused and named, never loaded as £0.
• Export JSON — the card in use, to edit and load back. Built-in — back to the indicative figures.

Apply keeps the card with the design — undo reverses it, and collaborators follow it.

Where the budget shows

• The Hire schedule… table, with 📋 Copy CSV and ⬇ Export CSV (the last column, Status, says why a line is at 0).
• A Hire schedule on a sketch sheet, beside the Event objects and Event zones schedules.
• The events page of the planning report and the Safety Plan appendix.
• The sidebar's 10 · Event budget, and Est. hire on the design's dashboard card.

One function feeds all of them, so they cannot disagree.

Request quotes

📨 Request quotes… in the Hire schedule's footer builds a supplier-neutral request for quotation from the design. You download it and send it to the suppliers you choose. It does not contact any supplier.

• What it holds. Download CSV saves quote-request.csv: the site, its location, the dates of each phase and the respond-by date, then one row per item with ref, group, item, specification, quantity, unit, phases, the dates on site, hire days and any service need ("servicing to be quoted" for toilets, urinals, hand-wash units and showers; "fuel to be quoted" for generators and lighting towers; "filling, power and water treatment to be quoted" for a hot tub), then the notes. Camping kit the glamping operator supplies is not requested; a note lists it by name and count. Download PDF saves quote-request.pdf in six sections: the request and your contact details, dates by phase, site and access, line items, the event-days site plan if included, and notes.
• No prices and no supplier names. The rows are the drawing's quantities, not the priced schedule. There is no rate, total, VAT or rate-card name, and loading a rate card changes no row. The delivery lines become one line, "Delivery and collection: to be quoted". Brand-named kit is asked for generically: the fence line is a "temporary mesh fence". The notes say what is not requested: security, medical cover, traffic management other than the car-park marshalling listed, power distribution, and labour beyond delivery, collection and the servicing listed.
• Not an order. Both files say the request is not an order and that the quantities are planning estimates from the design. A supplier's terms usually make your order the offer, which the supplier then accepts, and the price is the price at the time you order. A further note says the request is informal: a public body follows its own procurement rules, and above the Procurement Act 2023 thresholds uses an e-tender portal.
• Dates. With an event date set under Attendance & demand, each row shows the dates it is on site. An item on site for build and derig only lists two ranges, so the event days are not claimed. Without a date the request counts days from the first event day and says "dates not set".
• Your contact details. Signed in, your name, company, email and phone are filled in from your account profile (Edit profile on the dashboard). You can change them for this request. They go into the downloaded files only and are never saved in the design, so collaborators and review links never see them. Not signed in, you type them each time.
• Site details. The site name, access and delivery address, ground, power and delivery-window notes, the respond-by date and the plan choice are saved with the design and shared with collaborators and review links. Do not put names or phone numbers in them; those belong in your contact details above. A reviewer can download the request but cannot change them.
• Location. The request gives the site's centre only when the boundary is closed, and otherwise says "site boundary not drawn". Signed in, it can add the nearest postcode (via postcodes.io, from the ONS Postcode Directory), with the Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and ONS attribution in the notes. A Northern Ireland postcode is never printed, because that data is licensed for internal use only.
• The site plan. When the event may be a qualifying event under Martyn's Law — the readiness check reads it as qualifying, or cannot yet tell (its headcount test is 800 or more people on site at once, staff included) — the plan is off by default, because a plan showing the security layout should not go to several suppliers. When the check reads "no", it is on. Your tick overrides the default. When the plan is left out, the request says only that it is not included and will be shared with the chosen supplier; the reason stays in the dialog. The plan never shows the security layout — the control room, vehicle security barriers, HVM openings or safer areas. The control room's row asks for a "Site cabin", and you give the chosen supplier its location separately.
• Before you send. The dialog lists what is missing: the event date, a contact phone or email, access notes and a respond-by date. You can download anyway. Each gap prints as "not provided", and a note in both files lists the gaps.

On an iPad each download opens the share sheet, so the CSV and the PDF are two files and two sheets.