Budget
The project budget is built from your breakdown: categories (e.g. Above the Line, Cast, PROPS, Wardrobe, Locations) and line items with estimated, actual, and paid amounts. You pull breakdown elements into the budget, edit amounts, add fringe, and export reports. Production → Budget.- Pull from breakdown and categories: Create lines from props, characters, locations, and equipment; manage categories and add manual lines. See Pull from breakdown and categories.
- Equipment: Cameras and lenses are managed under Production → Equipment and are pulled into the Camera Equipment category when you open the budget. See Equipment.
- Line items and board sync: Edit line items, use DOOD days for cast, and sync with the Cost card on item boards. See Line items and board sync.
- Fringe and export: Define fringe types, assign to lines, and export CSV, PDF, Topsheet, or Fringe report. See Fringe and export.
Cast / schedule summary
When the project has a schedule, the top of the budget shows a Cast / schedule card: total shoot days, cast count, and across-all-cast work-days and hold-days (summed from the Day Out of Days report). These numbers are derived from the stripboard. Hold-days in particular are auto-calculated, not something you type in. For the full breakdown of how the DOOD is built, what each code means, and how it feeds cast budget lines, see Day Out of Days (DOOD). The first time you open the budget (or when it is empty), the app may run Pull from breakdown automatically so lines are created from your tagged elements and cast.Payments and remaining balance
Paid amounts now come from payment transactions on each line, not from typing a paid value directly in the table.- In the budget table, expand a line and click Manage payments.
- On the payments page, review the full transaction history first.
- Add a payment with amount, date, and a required note. You can also attach files.
- The Paid amount in the budget always reflects the sum of those transactions.
- Payable is estimated minus paid. If paid is higher than estimated, payable shows as a negative amount so you can spot overpayment quickly.
Crew contact prefill and coverage warnings
- In line descriptions, type
@to search crew contacts by name. - Selecting a contact fills the description, links the line to that contact, and fills rate and unit defaults.
- If you manually change rate or unit before saving, your values are kept.
- The budget page can show a warning panel for call-sheet crew with a non-zero rate who still do not have a budget line. This helps catch missing labor budget coverage before wrap.