Welcome to the BandMath development diary. I’m Tom. I’m a frontman, a solo developer, and maybe just a little too obsessed with band micro-finance. Putting my band Lynxhead together took a lot more process and organization than I thought a rock n’ roll project would but all along the way I found that the more organized we were, the more time we opened up to spend working on the music. So I always liked going the extra mile to make our process smoother.

Band Finance: the unsung hero of music productivity

Facilitating small transactions was a big part of that. The band constantly has little expenses and incomes that might be getting paid by/ to anyone at any time. It could be the monthly studio rental, a new mixing console, or a round of beers. In every one of these cases it’s much easier if one person can pay for it and then credit the others. So having a frictionless way to get things done (like my favorite thing: buying gear) is essential to getting your project going.

That’s what got me interested in the idea of custodian-style accounting and how I could sort of twist it and adapt it to the funny economics of a rock band. Custodian-style accounting is a pretty boring, typical concept in banking where the bank is basically able to mix all the money it receives into a big pot while at the same time keeping everyone’s shares separate. So my idea was, what if instead of one bank to hold everyone’s money, everyone was themselves a bank that could hold the money of any other member of the group, while effectively mixing it all together in your pocket. A sort of collective of banks.

Easier said than done

On a spreadsheet this can get really unwieldy. It basically requires a ledger for every combination of members where their individual fraction of each transaction gets counted. It’s a lot of columns. Too many really. In 2026 there’s no need for that many columns. If it was just for the expense sharing aspect of this whole thing a spreadsheet could have continued to be a functional solution but as soon as you get merch involved it’s not really practical for tracking the inventory plus the cost and retail prices and then working the profits back into the group standings.

And that’s how I started researching relational databases. Relational databases are like if your spreadsheet took LSD and all the columns could float off the grid to freely disassociate themselves and share their information wherever it might be called upon. I then saw a path towards building an app that could support the dual need of expense tracking plus inventory management while being not so complicated that I couldn’t manage the build on my own.

5 weeks ago I committed full time to this project thinking I would have it wrapped up in a week or 2 max. But in the first week something clicked in my brain and I realized this was my calling. That this project was an extension of myself that captured all of my passions, interests and skills in one place. I put a lot of myself into this project, partly because this thing is for me. I can’t wait to finish this project so I can put BandMath to work managing all the uncounted t-shirts sitting in our studio right now. But I’m also really excited to build something real and share it with other creators who are dealing with the same organizational challenges we have.

The horizon

Now I’ve come this far and it’s humbling to look out at the vista and realize, “wow, this is still just the beginning”. I’m loving the process of building something I care about from scratch and I can’t wait to share more of it as I press on.

I am not doing this the Silicon Valley way. No venture capital or equity funding this project. This is a 100% independent, bootstrapped operation.

That is exactly why I am launching this publication. I am building BandMath completely in public. If you subscribe here, you will get two things from me on a regular basis:

1. Touring Finance Playbooks: Hard-earned lessons on how to actually manage money on the road, from dodging terrible international exchange rates to handling merch inventory across borders.

2. The Solo Dev Diary: The raw, unfiltered reality of building a software company from scratch as an independent musician.

Right now, we are roughly a month away from launching our secure, multi-band architecture. To fund the final server costs and keep this project completely independent, I have opened up the Bootstrappers Club.

I am offering 100 Lifetime Passes for a one-time payment of €100. If you grab one, you get full, permanent access to the Tier 1 Merch POS and inventory tracker with zero monthly fees, ever.

If you want to see some actual demos of the product check out: itsbandmath.com.

Otherwise, drop your email below to subscribe to the journey. Let’s figure out the business of touring together.

Talk soon,

Tom Strike

Founder, BandMath

Digital payments are taking over, but the underground touring circuit still runs on physical cash. When the promoter hands you a thick envelope of small bills at 2:00 AM, you suddenly have a major security liability sitting in the van.

Here is how veteran touring bands handle physical cash safely.

1. The Immediate Audit

Never put the envelope in your pocket without counting it first. Count it directly in front of the promoter or venue manager. Once you walk away from the green room, any missing money is entirely your problem.

2. The Decoy Wallet

The person holding the band fund should never keep it all in one place. Keep a standard “street wallet” with a small amount of personal cash for buying coffee or food. The actual band fund goes into a secure, hidden travel belt or a lockbox bolted to the frame of the van.

3. The Deposit Strategy

Do not carry a massive cash float across borders. Customs agents can seize large amounts of undocumented cash. Try to deposit the cash into a local ATM that supports your home bank network before you cross into a new country.

4. The Ledger

The moment you take the cash, log it. If you spend €40 of the band fund on toll roads the next morning, log it. Memory is useless after three days of no sleep.

You need a system that tracks every cent. My app BandMath is the ultimate digital ledger for independent artists. It calculates the exact debts between band members so you only have to make a minimum of settle up transactions at the end of the run. Join our Bootstrapper’s Club today and support independent software and music at itsbandmath.com.

Playing international festivals is the dream. Losing 8% of your payout to a terrible currency exchange rate at the airport is the nightmare.

When you are routing a tour through different currency zones, standard bank accounts will bleed you dry with hidden conversion fees and awful exchange rates. You need a bank account that travels as well as your road cases.

Enter the Wise Business Account

Wise is the ultimate financial multi-tool for an independent band. It is not a traditional bank, but it acts exactly like one for international touring. I am not affiliated with these guys in any way, but as an American expat living abroad I use it all the time and it works great. The Capital One Venture card also does no-fee foreign currency transactions and I’ve had good experiences with them as well.

Step 1: Set Up the Account

Register your band as a business entity and open a Wise Business account. It takes a few days to verify your documents, so do not wait until the week of the tour.

Step 2: Open Local Currency Balances

This is the magic trick. Inside your single Wise account, you can open a “balance” in Euros, British Pounds, US Dollars, and dozens of other currencies. Wise gives you legitimate, local bank details for each one.

Step 3: Get Paid Like a Local

When you play a festival in the UK, you hand the promoter your UK account details from Wise. They deposit Pounds directly into your account with zero international wire fees.

Step 4: The Clean Transfer

When the tour is over, you can convert all those different currencies back into your home currency at the mid-market exchange rate. This is the real rate you see on Google, completely free of the massive markups traditional banks charge.

Band Math doesn’t support multiple currencies, yet. But it’s an aspiration. For the moment, if you leave your home currency you can still track your expenses and inventory but you’ll have to modify each transaction to account for the conversion. So if Pablo’s home currency is € but Lynxhead goes on tour in the USA and he logs a $60 transaction for gas, he’ll have to update it later to account for the difference in what he actually paid.

Managing different currencies is a headache, but tracking who bought the gas and who paid for the hotel shouldn’t be. Band Math tracks every band expense so you can settle up fairly at the end of the tour. Support my independent project and secure your lifetime pass at itsbandmath.com.

You just played a killer set in London. The crowd is swarming the merch table. You confidently pull out the Square reader you bought back home, plug it in, and watch your phone screen flash an error.

Your reader is geographically locked. You are now a cash-only band in a cashless venue.

This is the “Card Reader Trap,” and it catches thousands of independent bands on their first international run. Here is how to avoid it and keep the merch money flowing.

The Problem with Domestic Readers

Most standard point-of-sale systems are locked to the country where you registered your bank account. If you set up your system in France, the hardware and software are expecting to process transactions within that specific banking jurisdiction. The second you cross into the UK or Switzerland, the system flags the foreign network and shuts down to prevent fraud.

The European Tour Solution: SumUp and Zettle

If you are touring across Europe, you need a system built for borderless commerce.

• SumUp: This is a massive favorite for DIY bands. Their hardware is cheap, their transaction fees are transparent, and most importantly, they offer easy ways to process payments across different European borders without your account getting instantly frozen.

• Zettle (by PayPal): Zettle is another incredibly robust option for European tours. Because it is backed by PayPal, it handles currency conversions natively.

The Golden Rule of Merch

Never assume your tech works until you test it on foreign Wi-Fi. Always email your payment processor a month before the tour and tell them your exact routing.

Once the gig is over and the card reader is packed away, you still have to figure out who gets what cut of the profits. That is exactly why we built Band Math, the first ledger and merch POS built specifically for touring bands. Stop fighting over the cash box and join the Bootstrappers Club today at itsbandmath.com.