Sponsorship
What this is for
The dancewear brand that bought the Nationals booth. The photographer
paying for the program’s back cover. Deals like these are real money
and real promises, and they usually live in one person’s inbox —
nobody can say what’s been signed, what’s been billed, or whether the
banner ever actually went up.
The Sponsorship register writes each deal down as what it is: a
contract. Who the sponsor is, what package they bought, what it’s
worth, where the deal stands, the invoice it bills through, and the
deliverables you owe them until every one is checked off.
It is deliberately not a CRM — deals and dollars, not a sales
pipeline. There are no leads, no stages, no probability columns, and
no campaigns. A deal exists once there’s a package worth writing
down, and the register tracks it from handshake to invoice to
delivered booth.
Look for Sponsorship in the left-hand menu, under Modules. If
it isn’t there, it’s not in your plan yet — ask us to enable it.
Raising an invoice from a deal also needs the Receivables module;
without it everything else works, and the invoice action says plainly
what’s missing.
Recording a deal
Go to Sponsorships and click New deal
Pick the Sponsor
The list shows sponsors you’ve set up as vendors, so contact and
W-9 details carry over — see
Bills and vendors. For anyone
else, choose Someone new — type a name and type it.Name the Package
Nationals title sponsor, Program back cover. This is required —
it becomes the line on the invoice.Enter the Value — or leave it blank
Leave it blank while the number is still being talked about. An
unpriced deal still counts on the register — it’s counted
separately rather than silently added as $0 — but you’ll need a
figure before the deal can be invoiced.Pick the Season, the Brand if you run more than one, and the
Dates
All optional. The season and brand stamp the deal’s money so the
books can slice by them later.Add Notes and click Add deal
Booth placement promised near the awards stage; renewal talk in
May. The deal lands on the register as Proposed.
Three tiles across the top keep score: Committed value (signed,
active, or fulfilled deals — with unpriced ones counted alongside in
the tile’s note), Proposed value (what’s still awaiting a
signature), and Deliverables due, which turns red when any are
overdue.
A deal’s life
A deal walks a contract lifecycle, and only the legal next steps are
ever offered in its row menu:
Proposed → Signed → Active → Fulfilled → Renewed, with Lost as
the exit while the ink is still wet.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Proposed | On the table, nothing signed. Its value counts as proposed, not committed. |
| Signed | The ink is dry. From here the value counts as committed, and the deal can be invoiced. |
| Active | The sponsorship is running — booth up, logo live. |
| Fulfilled | Every promise delivered. Done. |
| Renewed | Closed, and continuing into a next cycle — which is a fresh deal row, so this one stays a clean record. |
| Lost | The sponsor passed. The row stays, struck through. |
A few moves are missing on purpose. Nothing un-signs: a contract
dispute isn’t a status change. An active deal can’t be marked lost —
a running deal gets fulfilled or renegotiated, not lost. And
Renewed and Lost are terminal; a closed deal doesn’t reopen.
Delete exists only while a deal is proposed. An unsigned proposal
can be deleted for good, deliverables and all. After signature a deal
is a record — mark it lost or fulfilled instead. The register keeps
your history honest the same way the rest of the books do.
Deliverables
The deliverables list is the fulfillment side of the deal — the booth,
the logo placement, the program ad, the social post. Open
Deliverables… from the deal’s row menu.
Each deliverable is a description, an optional event (booth at
Nationals), and an optional due date. Overdue ones are flagged in
red, and the register’s Deliverables due tile counts them across
every deal so nothing quietly slips.
Mark delivered stamps the date; Reopen un-stamps it if it was
checked off by mistake. A pending deliverable can be deleted; a
delivered one can’t — it’s fulfillment history. Reopen it first if it
really was a mis-click.
The invoice, in one click
A signed or active deal with a value can raise its invoice without
retyping anything.
Open the deal’s row menu and choose Create invoice
Herding Cats drafts it in Receivables
The sponsor is the bill-to — as a one-off customer, since sponsors
aren’t studios — with one Sponsorship line at the deal’s value,
and the deal’s season and brand carried onto it. The toast names
the new invoice number.Send it from Receivables
The draft is a draft. Nothing has posted and nothing has gone to
the sponsor until you send it — same as any other invoice. See
Invoices. When it’s sent, the revenue
posts to your sponsorship revenue account.
Back on the register, the deal’s row links the invoice number, and if
the invoice’s life moves on — paid, void, still a draft — the register
says so next to the number, so a dead or unsent invoice can’t hide
behind a healthy-looking row.
One deal, one invoice: a deal that already has its invoice doesn’t
offer the action again. If two people manage to click it at the same
moment, the second click is refused and names the spare draft to
delete in Receivables.
Honest limits
- One invoice per deal. There’s no installment billing yet — a
deal paying in three parts needs its invoices raised by hand in
Receivables. - No reminders. Nobody is notified when a deliverable comes due or
goes overdue — the red counts on the register are the alarm, so make
the register part of somebody’s weekly routine. - Nowhere to attach the signed contract yet. The deal records the
terms; the PDF itself still lives in your files.
Where to go next
- Invoices — sending the draft, and what
happens when the sponsor pays - Bills and vendors — setting a
sponsor up as a vendor so their details carry over - Money — how the whole finance area fits
together