Welcome

What Herding Cats is

Herding Cats is where a dance competition company runs its season. Staffing,
travel, hotels, registration, gear, and money all live in one place instead
of across nine spreadsheets, a shared inbox, and three group texts.

It’s built for the way this business actually works: twenty-six weekends, a
truck, a rotating crew, and a hundred studios who all need answers on
Thursday night.

Who this help site is for

You. The director, the coordinator, the office manager — the person who
knows where everything is and would like to stop being the only one who
does. You do not need to be technical to use any of this.

What’s in here

When plans change

A judge drops out. The venue moves you. The truck breaks down. This is the
help Herding Cats gives you when a weekend goes sideways: a checklist of
what to do, a ranked list of who to call, and swapping one person for
another without losing track of their flight.

Start here if you’re reading this at 11pm on a Thursday.
→ When plans change

Registration

Opening an event for entries, setting your categories and prices, verifying
studios, and running the inbox. There’s a page written for studio owners
that you can send to them, and a page on how money reaches your bank and
how to handle a studio’s request to change something after they’ve
submitted.

For whoever runs entries.
→ Registration

Money

The per-event profit and loss that builds itself as you work, vendors and
bills, invoices to studios, counting the cash at the end of the weekend,
and handing a clean file to your accountant.

For the owner, and anyone you’ve given money access to.
→ Money

Inventory

Numbered cases, what’s packed in each one, what needs reordering or
repairing, and the codes you stick on cases so anybody with a phone can
check the packing list at the truck.

For whoever loads the truck, and whoever gets the phone call when
something’s missing.
→ Inventory

The assistant

The cat button in the corner. Ask it a question in plain English and it
answers from your own records — and when it wants to change something, it
asks you first.

For everyone.
→ The assistant

Common questions

Login codes not arriving, adding a teammate, what’s free and what’s paid,
who can see what, whether it works on phones, and how to get help.

→ Common questions

A note on add-ons

Some parts of Herding Cats are optional and come as add-ons — Finance,
Registration, Inventory, and a few others. Anything not in your plan is
simply hidden from your menu rather than greyed out, so a missing menu item
is your answer. Where a page in this help site covers an add-on, it says so
at the top.

If you want one switched on, just ask. We turn things on the same day.

Getting help

Email MeowCaniHelpYou@tryherdingcats.com. A real person reads it. No
ticket number, no phone tree.

That’s also the address for anything urgent, anything that looks broken,
and anything you’d rather just have someone do for you.