1 Introduction

DJ Cataclysm – DJ-CRM is a local booking and contact CRM for mobile DJs and musicians. It brings together everything around your bookings: a booking pipeline, a calendar, contact management, invoices and offers, contracts, tech riders and setlists – all in one place and fully offline.

1.1 Core idea: the „next action"

DJ-CRM follows the OnePageCRM principle: every gig, contact and invoice has exactly one clear next step – optionally with a due date. That way you always know what to do next instead of losing tasks in notes.

1.2 Local and private

All data stays on your machine (SQLite database). No mandatory server, no subscription.
An optional, encrypted cloud backup is available, but entirely voluntary.
The app is bilingual (German / English) and starts in dark mode; a light mode can be toggled.

2 Installation and First Launch

2.1 macOS

Open the DMG file and drag the DJ-CRM app into your Applications folder.
On first launch, right-click the app and choose „Open" if a Gatekeeper warning appears.

2.2 Windows

Extract the ZIP file completely (keep all files in the same folder).
Run DJ-CRM.exe.

2.3 Language and Appearance

Switch the language (DE/EN) via the language menu in the top bar. A language change takes effect after restarting the app. Toggle dark/light mode using the sun icon in the top bar.

Tip: Your data lives on macOS under „~/Library/Application Support/DJ-CRM" and on Windows under „%APPDATA%\DJ-CRM". That folder also holds the database, backups and generated PDFs.

3 Interface Overview

The window has three areas: the sidebar on the left, the top bar at the top and the work area in the centre.

The sidebar gives you access to every area: Dashboard, Contacts, Gigs Booking, Calendar, Finances, Setlists, Contracts, Backup, plus Settings at the bottom. The sidebar can be collapsed to save space.

3.2 Top bar

Global search (the „Search …" field, shortcut Ctrl+F): searches contacts, gigs, invoices and actions.
Notifications (bell icon): due next steps.
Dark/light toggle (sun icon).
Language (DE/EN).
+ New (Quick-Add, shortcut Ctrl+N): quickly create a gig, contact, invoice and more.
Update: checks whether a newer version is available.
Help: opens this manual and further notes.
Profile: your sender/company profile used on documents.

4 Dashboard

The dashboard is your home overview. Four tiles at the top show the key figures:

Gigs (next 30 days) – upcoming bookings.
Open receivables – total of unpaid invoices.
Revenue (current year) – income received.
Contacts – number of your contacts.

Below that are blocks for Next Actions (aggregated by due date across gigs, contacts, invoices and offers), Next Gigs, Open Invoices, Reminders, Birthdays, Backup Status and Recent Activity. Clicking a row jumps straight to that record.

5 Contacts

In Contacts you manage clients, promoters and venues in one place. For each contact you can record master data, notes and a next action.

Create a new contact via „+ New" in the top bar or directly in the contacts area.
The Gigs tab in a contact profile shows the full booking history; clicking a gig row jumps to the gig detail view.
Set a next action (e.g. „follow up on offer") with an optional due date.

6 Gigs and Booking

The Gigs Booking area is the heart of the app, split into four tabs: Pipeline, List, Calendar and Export.

6.1 Pipeline (Kanban board)

Each column is a phase (e.g. Enquiry, Offer, Confirmed, Done).
Gig cards can be moved between phases by drag & drop – the status is set automatically.
Use „+ New gig" per column to create a gig directly with the matching status.
Right-click a card for a context menu (Open / Delete). Double-click opens the detail.

6.2 List

The list view is a master-detail: the gig list on the left, the detail on the right with a status stepper, the „Next action" bar and several tabs:

Notes
Reminders
Tech rider
Equipment
Media

6.3 Calendar

Month: a month grid with quick navigation, a monthly summary (number of gigs + total fee) and a status colour legend. Click an empty day to create a new gig.
Gig bars can be dragged to another day by drag & drop – the date is updated.
Agenda: a chronological list grouped by month and day with a time-range filter; past dates are greyed out.

6.4 Export

The Export tab lets you export gig data (e.g. for further processing or archiving).

7 Next Action and Reminders

The „next action" is the central working principle. It appears as a bar in every detail panel of gigs, contacts, invoices and offers.

Enter a short next step and, optionally, a due date.
Use „done" to log the step and clear the field.
The expandable „history" widget shows all completed steps; entries can be edited or deleted.
Due or overdue actions appear at launch – additionally as a native desktop notification.
In the background the app periodically checks for newly due steps; enable it and set the interval in Settings.

In every list (gigs, contacts, invoices, offers) you can filter by „due actions only".

8 Finance: Invoices and Offers

In Finances you create and manage invoices and offers including payment tracking.

Invoices and offers with line items, tax rate (default 19 % VAT) and payment terms (default 14 days).
Payment tracking: record partial or full payments; the status changes automatically to „partially paid" (PARTIAL) or „paid" (PAID).
Invoices and offers also carry a next action (e.g. „send payment reminder").
Open items appear on the dashboard under „Open Invoices"; overdue ones are highlighted.

Note: Default values such as tax rate, payment terms, mileage rate and currency can be adjusted in Settings.

9 Contracts

In Contracts you manage performance contracts and generate PDF documents with your logo from them. Contracts can be linked to gigs and contacts.

10 Setlists

Under Setlists you plan the track order of your performances and export it as a clear PDF – ideal as a run sheet for the gig.

11 PDF Documents

DJ-CRM generates six document types as PDF: invoice, offer, contract, tech rider, setlist and activity report. Every document numbers its pages („Page X of Y") and can embed your logo.

11.1 Embedding a logo

In the Profile tab under „PDF logo" you enable display and set the size (8–40 mm) and alignment.
Upload your own logo there; without one, the default icon is used.

11.2 Activity report

The activity report summarises completed steps (type and time-range filters) and can be exported as CSV or PDF. Open it via the dashboard section „Recent Activity" > „Show all".

12 Backup and Cloud

The Backup area protects your data.

Local backup: „Back up now" any time; the dashboard shows the backup status and when you last backed up.
Automatic backup: enabled by default (daily); old backups are cleaned up after a retention period (default 30 days).
Cloud backup (optional): encrypted (AES-256) into your own cloud storage via the rclone tool.

Recommendation: In addition to local backups, enable a cloud target so your data is safe even if a device fails.

13 Settings

Open Settings at the very bottom of the sidebar. Key areas:

Profile: sender/company details for documents and the PDF logo options.
Notifications: enable and set the interval of the due-date check.
Finance defaults: currency, tax rate, payment terms, mileage rate.
Language: switch DE/EN (takes effect after restart).

14 Global Search and Shortcuts

The global search in the top bar covers contacts, gigs and invoices as well as open and completed next actions. Clicking a result opens the record directly.

Shortcut Function

Ctrl + F Focus the global search

Ctrl + N Open the Quick-Add menu (new gig/contact/…)

15 Data, Privacy and Updates

All data is stored locally in a SQLite database; nothing is transmitted without your action.
Deleted records are marked via „soft delete" and not immediately removed – this protects against accidental data loss.
Update check: via „Update" in the top bar the app compares its version with the current online version and points out news.

16 Support and Contact

Questions, feedback or a problem? Write to us at contact@djcataclysm.com. You can find more information and the latest version at djcataclysm.com.

Thank you for using DJ Cataclysm – DJ-CRM!

Licences and Third-Party Software

Overview

DJ Cataclysm – DJ-CRM is proprietary software. It uses only open-source components whose licences are compatible with commercial, proprietary distribution. None of the libraries used requires disclosure of the DJ-CRM source code.

Open-Source Software Used

Package Licence Purpose

PySide6 LGPL v3 Qt / The Qt Company

SQLAlchemy MIT ORM / database

Alembic MIT DB migrations

ReportLab BSD PDF generation

Jinja2 BSD-3-Clause Templates

cryptography Apache 2.0 / BSD Encryption

icalendar LGPL v3 iCal export

vobject Apache 2.0 vCard import

qrcode MIT QR codes

Pillow HPND (PIL Fork) Image processing

loguru MIT Logging

plyer MIT Desktop notifications

keyring MIT Secure credentials

PyInstaller GPL v2 + bootloader exception

App packaging

rclone MIT Cloud backup (external process)

Notes on Individual Licences

LGPL v3 (PySide6, icalendar)

The LGPL v3 permits use in proprietary software. The conditions are met: Python links the packages dynamically, they can be updated or replaced by the user (pip), and their source code is not modified. Qt / PySide6 (LGPL v3) is credited in the app and in this documentation.

Qt Licensing: https://www.qt.io/licensing/
LGPL v3: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html

PyInstaller – bootloader exception

PyInstaller is licensed under GPL v2 but includes an explicit exception allowing the generated bootloader to be distributed in combination with other programs without restriction. The resulting application may therefore be proprietary.

Mandatory Licence Notice

This product uses the following open-source software:

Further dependencies: see the table in section 2.

Application Licence

Contact: contact@djcataclysm.com