A per diem is a daily allowance paid to each band and crew member to cover meals and incidentals while they're on the road. It's usually a set amount per person, per day, and it applies to every day of the tour, including travel days and off days, not just show days.

Because it's paid out to so many people so often, per diem is one of the easiest things on a tour to lose track of. A clear record of who was paid, how much, and when keeps the touring party happy and keeps your books clean.

The basic math is simple: the daily rate times the number of days, for each person in the touring party. The part people get wrong is the day count. Travel days, off days, and rehearsal days usually count too.

Where it gets messy is keeping those numbers straight over weeks or months. The Per Diem Template uses formulas to roll everything up into weekly and monthly totals automatically, so you always know how much has gone out without adding it up by hand.

The template uses a color-coded system to mark each payout as paid or still owed. One look at the sheet tells you exactly who has received their per diem and who you still need to take care of.

That matters on a busy tour, when payouts happen in green rooms, on buses, and in hotel lobbies. Instead of relying on memory, you update the sheet as you pay and the colors do the rest.

Yes. The two templates are designed to work nicely together. The Tour Budget Template is where you plan what per diems should cost across the run, and the Per Diem Template is where you track what was actually paid out, person by person.

Using both gives you a full picture: the plan, the reality, and whether the per diem line in your budget is holding up as the tour goes on.

It varies by tour. Many tours pay weekly, some pay a few days at a time, and some pay daily. What matters most is picking a schedule, telling the touring party up front, and sticking to it.

Whatever schedule you choose, the template's weekly and monthly totals make it easy to see what each payout should be and confirm it went out.

Yes. The template is built to track per diem payouts for everyone in the touring party, band and crew alike, in one place. Whether you're running a four-piece in a van or a large production with a full crew, every person's payouts sit on the same sheet.

Per diems are often paid in cash, and cash leaves no trail unless you create one. A written record protects you when someone asks whether they were paid for a certain week, and it gives the business manager or accountant clean numbers at the end of the tour.

It also saves time. Instead of reconstructing payouts from memory or a stack of notes, you have one sheet with the totals already calculated.

Usually the tour manager keeps it, and it gets shared with the artist's manager and the business manager or accountant. Because it shows payouts for every person in the touring party, it's good practice to share it only with the people who need it.

You get the Per Diem Template as a downloadable .XLSX file for Excel, plus a shareable Google Sheets version you can copy straight into your own Drive.

The formulas and color-coded payment tracking are already in place, so you can add your touring party and start logging payouts right away.