New Studio Booking - 4s Systems Limited Shepperton

Studio Booking System

4s Systems have many years of experience developing, implementing, and supporting software solutions for major film and TV studios. The key application, used in some of the largest studios in the UK, is the Studio Booking System (SBS).

SBS has been designed to cover all aspects of the resource management and booking process, from control of resources (for example stages, rooms, locations, labour and equipment), categorisation and rates, through pencilling and confirming bookings and management of booking changes, to reporting and data transfer to accounting systems.

SBS includes features and functionality that are specific to the film and TV industry. However, 4s recognises that as no two studios are alike, we work closely with customers to customise certain areas of the system to suit their needs.

Making IT easy with innovative solutions

Calendar

At the core of SBS is the calendar. It’s the first view users see when they log in, and it’s where all functions for creating and editing bookings start and where associated booking-related functions are accessed from.

Key features of the calendar are…

Extensive filters enable you to see the information you need.
Customisable date range gives you a detailed view of bookings, or a wide-range overview.
Options available for users to customise the information they see.
Colours and ‘thickness’ tell the user the status and other information about allocations, for example whether pencil or confirmed and the type of production.
Access to functionality for creating and managing your bookings, jump to any specific allocation in any booking or resource, adding allocations to existing bookings, moving or deleting bookings or allocations, reselling space, adding production phase information, changing the usage or billing status of specific days.

Booking control

To manage your resources effectively and give you the information and control you need about current, future and past bookings, you need a comprehensive set of tools.

SBS gives you access to all the important features directly from the calendar or the Edit Booking window accessed from it, or from other pages accessed from the main menu bar.

These features include…

Adding new bookings, or adding new allocations to existing bookings from the calendar, CLICK+DRAG and SHIFT+DRAG+CLICK functionality to make it easy to set allocation duration and add multiple allocations using your mouse.
Moving allocations from resource to resource, and extending or shortening the duration of allocations – by clicking & dragging or using menus.
Reselling space if a booking changes – SBS tracks resell credit values.
Deleting allocations or entire bookings – leads to the authorisation process.
Managing key data about each allocation – agreed pricing or discount, usage, billing method.
Generating quotations from booking data and allocations – templates can be built to match the look and feel of your corporate documentation.

Generating contracts and associated documents from quotations
Upload booking-related documents into the SBS, for example risk assessments and other H&S documents that productions need to provide.

Certain operations – discounts over a threshold set by your organisation, changing, moving or deleting allocations without resell – have to be authorised through the built-in authorisation system

Resource management

The resources that you hire are the heart of your operation and the functioning of the SBS.
Resource records contain all the data necessary for the booking process and related reporting, and SBS gives you the tools you need to create, modify, and manage your resources…

Resource creation, editing and ordering.
Visibility of the resource on the calendar and booking of the space.
Calculation of cost for each allocation from the rate card in the resource record and duration.
Grouping/categorisation of resources by building, location, default ‘usage’ (is a stage a stage or is it a live concert rehearsal space?), and other categories.
Lock and key records. These can be used by KeyDraw for security operations – see below.
Export resource data for use in spreadsheet applications.

Company and production management

It’s not just about the resources that you hire, it’s also about your customers and the productions they make at your studio!
Alongside the resource records, and just as important for SBS operation, are your customer and production records. These records store the vital information, and provide the data to the bookings, quotations, contracts and for billing…

Basic company information – name, address, contact email.
Contract related details – legal company and production name for the contract, registered number, notice address.
Standard discounts for the ‘stages’ and ‘room’ top-level resource categorisation, to save entering these every time.
Contacts – company and/or production contacts attached to those records, or freelancers who work on a production then move on to another.

Billing

SBS isn’t designed to be an accounting system, but all the data your accounting system needs to generate booking-related invoices is available within SBS. This means that you have choices…

Integration – SBS can be fully integrated with your accounting system. We have experience of integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Iris Exchequer and Sage, but because of the design of SBS and the import capabilities of most modern accounting systems, data transfer can be accomplished successfully, although note this may require some involvement from the providers of your accounting system.
Data export – SBS can export billing data in spreadsheet format (csv, xlsx etc.) for manual import into your accounting system.
Document generation – Pro-forma or tax invoices in your corporate design/template format can be output.
Reporting – Reports can provide billing data for manual entry to an accounting system.

SBS allows you to specify whether your billing is based on, for example, a 5-day or 7-day week, and adjusts it’s internal rate calculation according to your setting. SBS has several regular billing routines built in, or billing can be run per-production or ad hoc…whatever you need.

Reporting

Reporting is vital for you to keep track of the performance of your organisation.
SBS gives you a suite of ‘standard’ reports giving information on a wide variety of data – production values, projected revenue, bookings, utilisation, unoccupied space, current rate card etc.
But 4s recognise that every organisation is unique, and your reporting requirements will be just as unique, so are ready to modify the standard reports, or build new reports to meet your requirements.

Static Data Management

SBS uses a number of ‘lists’ of data that can be managed by your administrator,
for example…

Production types and display colours.
Resource types and authorisation thresholds.
Resource categories and usages.

Data security

Security of your data and that of your clients and their productions, is of the utmost importance.
You will certainly have highly confidential data of your customers – their company details and that of their productions. You may have personal data in the system relating to contacts, for example mobile phone numbers and email addresses may be personal not corporate, therefore under the remit of the GDPR Regulations.
SBS gives you peace of mind with these high-level controls…

Fields in the database that might potentially contain personal data are encrypted at rest.
On a hosted server access to SBS is by the HTTPS protocol, meaning data is encrypted in transit between the database and user’s browser. This can be implemented in on-premise solutions but may not be considered necessary.
Daily backups of data to a separate server.
Option for users to implement 2FA, and admin setting to prevent users turning it off. We strongly recommend you develop a formal policy for this key aspect so everyone understands what is required and why.

In addition, SBS gives you extensive and flexible control over user activities through its role-based permissions system. You can create any number of roles and add your selection of permissions. There are permission options for calendar access and operations, access to records, authorisations, access to reports, static data management, notifications and billing etc. In each of these areas there are numerous options, enabling you to build an effective permissions system for your studio and staff.

Physical security

4s can offer an additional security application to control and record availability, withdrawal and return of physical keys.
KeyDraw is designed to be installed locally on PCs in reception or security offices, and operated by the team who issues keys to productions and receives returned keys. KeyDraw only permits keys to be signed out for productions that are ‘live’ on that day, and integrates with SBS in real time to ensure it is always up-to-date – as bookings are added to SBS, keys can be signed out.
Some features of KeyDraw…

KeyDraw reads the lock and key data from SBS resources, so ‘knows’ which keys belong to which resources, and how many keys are available.
KeyDraw also reads certain booking data and will only permit keys to be withdrawn for resources that are booked on a particular day. No booking in SBS – no key issue!
Keys can be signed out using an electronic signature pad or sign-out integrated with a fob system such as Net2 which speeds up the process. Either way the sign out is recorded in the KeyDraw database.
Keys can be signed out individually, or a ‘key bag’ can be created and many keys added to the bag. A single signature signs out all keys, but they have to be signed back in individually so they can be checked and verified.
Keys can be barcoded which makes signing out/in and creating key bags quick and easy
KeyDraw tracks every sign out and return, and only permits the number of existing and available keys to be signed out.
If a production wishes to restrict access to certain keys, for example a runner cannot sign out keys for the director’s or finance office, details of the restriction can be entered into the booking in SBS, and this flags a red warning in KeyDraw. As SBS is not integrated with the security system the details of the restriction are emailed to security – the red warning tells them to check the email for details and check the ID of the person collecting keys.
Various reports are available for inventory and checking.

We currently have 27 tills based over 6 sites in the London area. The speed at which we can serve our customers is vital and a key point of our business.
When looking for a new EPOS solution we needed seamless integration with our stock control systems, Sage 200 accounting software and implementation without any impact on our customers.
4s Systems were able to offer a solution which covered all these requirements and this made choosing them as our solution provider an easy decision. We have been working with 4s Systems for over 10 years with remote and onsite support, their helpdesk is easily reached by all our employees and their support team have always gone above and beyond.

4s always act quickly and efficiently with a friendly manor no matter what the urgency of the task and as such we have no hesitation in recommending them to others.

Richard Ahl, Hitchcock and King
We cherish and protect our principles and ethics by managing growth, whilst maintaining operational excellence. With these as our core values the suppliers we work with our carefully selected. Since starting Wilson Jones Ltd we have grown to over 100 staff and the use of technology is fundamental in helping us to succeed.
IT and Telecommunications are vital in keeping us connected across multiple sites. 4s Systems have designed and implemented all our IT, Telecoms, CCTV, Accounting and Payroll software and Managed services. We have found them to be very proactive and responsive in their approach, their solutions always come within budget and have been rolled out with very little disruption to the running of our business.

With their excellent advice, 4s Systems have kept us at the forefront of technology, and for this I would like to thank them.”

Kam Bhari, Wilson Jones
As a new recruitment business our IT support was vital and 4s Systems have been fantastic! I can’t speak highly enough of Dave and his team, they are a pleasure to work with, nothing is ever too much trouble and everything is explained on a level we understand (and us not being the most IT literate this is impressive!) Problems are always resolved very quickly at a reasonable cost. 4S have been a massive support for our new business and we are very glad to have them!”

Zoë Calver, DiavalentineCalver Recruitment Limited
We have been looked after by 4S for nearly two decades now and they are simply the best. Working with them feels like having in-house IT support and they are very much part of the team. From the speed of their response to the way in which they de-mystify technical jargon I couldn’t recommend them highly enough.”

Sara Putt
Our company has grown immensely over the years and keeping up to date with technology was becoming a daunting task. We realised we needed to work with an outside company to help streamline our hardware setup and to improve our disaster recover processes.

We were recommended 4s Systems, they carried out a full audit of our IT processes and network and highlighted some key areas that we could improve on and came up with some solutions that were cost effective, maximised our infrastructure, reduced the amount of servers we were running and greatly improved our carbon foot print.

Outsourcing our IT was a hard decision for us, 4s Systems made this transition very easy for us and we haven’t looked back since.
Thank you for your continued support

Mills
As an independent children’s television production company reliant on IT, we need friendly and efficient support we can depend upon. This is why we’ve chosen 4S Systems for all of our IT support. They continue to deliver an approachable and effective service over the phone, online and in person. Thank you 4S Systems”
Julie Cronshey

Head of Production – Darrall Macqueen
4s Systems has changed our lives! London does not suffer from a shortage of IT firms, and in a crowded field, only a small number of firms stand out. We consider 4s Systems to be up there with the very best. Their engineers are outstanding and have been hugely beneficial to our business. We are extremely grateful for what 4s systems do – thank you.”

Bailey & Jones
We supply important eye care instruments to the NHS, as a company we count on 4S to keep our networks and IT infrastructure first-rate.
The team are very approachable and go the extra mile; no task is too small or big. Thank you 4S keep up the excellent work!”

Sense Medical
Embracing IT is an essential in today’s business, without 4s I simply do not know how we would have managed it. From the small day to day niggles to major software and hardware transition, 4s have supported us every step of the way. We have been customers for over 20 years and the service throughout has been exemplary."

Richard Thorpe Managing Director, The Pavilion
Having recently used 4s for our companywide email migration I would fully endorse with no hesitation in using their services.
They understood our business requirements. Delivered a solution to specification which was on time and within budget.
Assured CYP with 100 % confidence and fully met and exceeded our expectations. Migration was completed successfully with zero business impact. In addition the transition project team delivered excellent support to all our staff during and post the migration."

Thanks Vic