AV Company Software Stack: What Tools Do You Actually Need?

There is no single tool that runs an AV company well. The honest answer is a small stack of focused tools that each do one job. Here is what each layer is for, and what to look at in the UK market.

The six layers

A working AV company needs software for:

1. Lead and client management (CRM)
2. Rental management (kit, availability, sub-hires)
3. Quoting and proposals
4. Crew scheduling and time tracking
5. Invoicing and accounting
6. Communications

You do not need a separate tool for every layer. You do need to know which job each tool is doing.

Layer 1: CRM

What it does: tracks enquiries, clients, contacts, deals, and follow-ups. Records the history of every conversation.

Common picks:

• HubSpot Free or Starter for small AV companies
• Pipedrive for sales-led teams
• Capsule for UK-based simple needs
• Sometimes Current RMS's built-in CRM is enough for very small companies

Honest take: most small AV companies use email plus a spreadsheet as their CRM, and that is fine until your enquiry volume hits about 5 per week. Above that, you need something with a pipeline view.

Layer 2: Rental management

What it does: tracks your inventory, availability, sub-hires, opportunities, orders, and delivery notes.

Common picks in the UK:

• Current RMS (the dominant choice in the UK live events sector)
• HireHop
• Inflatable Office (specialised for event hire)
• Renterval (lighter-weight option for small kit lists)

Honest take: if you own kit, you need this layer the moment your inventory is bigger than you can hold in your head. Current RMS is the most-used in the UK AV market and the best-supported.

Layer 3: Quoting and proposals

What it does: produces the client-facing document that wins the job.

This layer breaks into two parts that some companies conflate:

• Quoting (just the kit list and the price) often lives inside the rental management tool
• Proposals (a full multi-section document that wraps the quote) usually needs its own tool if you want branded, sectioned, modern documents

Common picks:

• pro-posal.io (built specifically for AV and live events, connects to Current RMS)
• PandaDoc, Proposify, Better Proposals (generic but capable)
• HoneyBook (for creative freelancers)

Honest take: if your proposals all look like Word documents and you are competing for jobs over £5,000, you are losing work for visual reasons alone.

Layer 4: Crew scheduling and time tracking

What it does: schedules who is on which job, tracks hours worked, handles overtime.

Common picks:

• Current RMS includes crew scheduling natively
• Connecteam for crew comms and timesheets
• Deputy for shift scheduling

Honest take: small AV companies often run crew schedules in a WhatsApp group and a spreadsheet. That fails the moment a crew member's hours need to be paid accurately or a client asks for a detailed time log.

Layer 5: Invoicing and accounting

What it does: turns accepted proposals into invoices, tracks payments, handles VAT.

Common picks in the UK:

• Xero (the most-used among small AV companies)
• QuickBooks Online
• FreeAgent
• Sage

Honest take: integrate this layer with your CRM or proposal tool so accepted work flows into draft invoices without re-keying.

Layer 6: Communications

What it does: client conversations, internal team comms, file sharing.

Common picks:

• Email plus WhatsApp for client comms
• Slack for internal team comms
• Microsoft Teams for clients who prefer it
• A built-in conversation thread on each proposal (this is what pro-posal.io includes natively)

Honest take: the bigger the company, the more comms get fragmented. Try to keep client-facing comms attached to the proposal or project record, not floating in someone's inbox.

What you do not need

Things that look useful but are usually a distraction:

• All-in-one platforms that promise to do everything. They usually do each thing 70% as well as the focused tool. You end up wishing you had picked Xero plus Current RMS plus pro-posal.io.
• Custom CRM builds. Unless your sales process is genuinely unusual, a standard CRM with light customisation is faster, cheaper, and easier to live with.
• Branded mobile apps. Web apps that work on mobile are nearly always enough. Native apps add cost without much benefit.

A working starter stack for a small UK AV company

If you are setting up from scratch:

• CRM: HubSpot Free
• Rental management: Current RMS
• Proposals: pro-posal.io
• Accounting: Xero
• Comms: Email + WhatsApp internally, Slack if you have more than 5 staff

Total monthly cost in the £150-£250 range, depending on user counts and plans. Far cheaper than building any of these yourself, and reliable enough to scale to a £1-2m turnover business without re-platforming.

Where pro-posal.io sits in this stack

pro-posal.io is the proposals layer. It does one thing, it does it well, and it integrates with the layers either side (Current RMS for kit lists, your accounting tool for accepted-work handoff). It does not pretend to be your CRM, your inventory system, or your accounting tool.

Try it free for 60 days, no card required: pro-posal.io.