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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.

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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.

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Itemize an element with multiple items

Some elements are really several things bought separately. A Props element like “Horror movie posters” might be three posters at different prices. You can list each one and let the budget add them up.
  • Open the element on its board (for example a prop).
  • On its Cost / Budget card, click Itemize this element (or Manage line items if it already has some).
  • Add a line for each item with a description, quantity, and unit cost.
  • The card’s Estimated becomes the running total of those lines.
In the budget, the element stays a single line showing that total. Expand the line to see each item. Log a payment against an individual item from the expanded view. The element’s paid and remaining amounts add up from those items. Leave an element without line items to track it as one cost, which is right for a rental or a single purchase. In that case you type the Estimated on the Cost / Budget card directly.

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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.
Contact pages can also show a payment summary card and a read-only payment summary page when your role has access to budget payment information.

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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.

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Who can see and edit the budget

Budget access is gated by permissions on each member. By default a plain member added to a project sees no budget information.
  • Owner and Admin: full read and write on the budget, payments, rates on contacts and cast members, and ancillary line items.
  • Member with View budget: read-only. Can open the Budget page, see line items, see cost and budget cards on element boards, see rates on contacts and cast members, and download every export (CSV, PDF, Excel, Topsheet, Fringe report). Cannot add lines, edit lines, delete lines, log payments, or change rates.
  • Member with Manage crew contacts: full read and write, same as Admin for budget surfaces. Use this when someone needs to log payments and edit rates.
  • Plain member: no budget visibility. The Budget link is hidden from their navigation, cost cards on element boards are hidden, and rate fields on contact and cast member pages are hidden.
See Team and invitations for how to grant these permissions.