Production Accounting
Know what the day cost before the next one starts.
Most productions find out what a week cost about ten days after it happened, from a spreadsheet somebody rebuilt by hand. By then the money is gone and the only choice left is who to disappoint. ScenePaper keeps the daily cost report, the crew pay run and the tax that comes out of it in one place, on the same data the call sheets already use.
What is production accounting software?
Production accounting software tracks what a film production actually spends while it is spending it. It produces the daily cost report — the "hot costs" a producer reads the morning after a shoot day — and the weekly cost report that compares spend to date against the approved budget. It also handles crew payments, supplier invoices and the tax withheld on both.
What you get
Daily hot costs, by department
What yesterday cost, split the way a producer reads it: wages, the employer fringe on those wages shown separately, overtime, meal penalties, petty cash, equipment and invoices. Departments already past their approved budget are named. Spend that belongs to no department is named too, rather than quietly left out of the total.
The Friday cost report
Paid this week against paid to date, open commitments, forecast at completion and variance by account code. Those first two are different questions — one tells you whether the week went wrong, the other whether the picture has.
The call is the unit of money
A day of work is a call slip: one person, one production, one date, one fraction of a call. Half a call is half a call. Someone working two of your films on the same day is two slips, which is legitimate and gets caught rather than double-paid.
Overtime and meal penalties that price themselves
Overtime is worked out from the call and wrap times against your own rule, billed in whole blocks and rounded up, because that is how it is actually agreed. A missed meal break is booked across everyone on the day at your flat rate and stamped onto the slip, so raising the rate next month does not quietly restate what last month was worth.
Tax deducted at source, properly
Withholding carries the section it was deducted under — 194C for work and manpower, 194J for professional and technical services — at the right rate for who the payee is. Nothing is deducted below the annual limit, and when a payee crosses it the deduction catches up on everything paid to them earlier in the year. Record the deposit against its challan, mark Form 16A issued, and see anything still sitting past the seventh of the following month.
Money in, not just money out
What each investor or distributor has committed, and separately what has actually landed. Those are usually weeks apart. From the two: what is in the account, what is already owed to crew and suppliers, and what is genuinely free to commit.
Suppliers as companies
A vendor is a record with a GSTIN and a PAN, not a spelling on an invoice. What you have committed to them and what you have paid, across every production in the house. Near-duplicates are yours to merge — we will not guess that two similar names are one company.
Exports your accountant can open
A pay register with the withholding broken into its own columns, a cost ledger of every line of spend against its account code, and the per-payee per-quarter working a return is filed from. Missing PANs and undeposited tax are shouted rather than left blank.
Under budget and unable to make payroll
These are different things and only one of them is a fact. A budget is a plan; the bank balance is what is actually there. An investor tranche promised in July and arriving in September is how a production that is running comfortably under budget ends up unable to pay its unit on Friday.
Most tools model the spending in detail and the income not at all, so they can answer the first question and not the second. ScenePaper keeps both, and the figure it puts in front of you is receipts minus what has actually left the account — after everything already owed to crew and suppliers is taken off.
The report a producer can argue with
A cost figure nobody can take apart is a figure nobody trusts. Wages and the fringe on those wages are shown separately, not blended. Overtime and meal penalties are their own lines. Every total breaks down into what made it.
- Wages, fringe, overtime and meal penalties as separate figures
- Departments past their approved budget named, with the amount
- Days carrying no rate flagged — they read as free until somebody fixes them
- Uncategorised spend named rather than dropped from the total
Withholding is half the obligation
Deducting tax is the easy half. Until it is deposited you are holding money that belongs to somebody else, and interest runs from the due date rather than from the day you notice.
- The section recorded, not just an amount — a return cannot be filed from one number
- Nothing withheld below the annual limit, and a catch-up when it is crossed
- GST kept out of the amount tax is computed on
- Deposits recorded against a challan, with anything overdue flagged
An honest note on scope
The tax handling here is built for India: sections 194C and 194J, PAN and GSTIN, Form 16A, the quarterly return working. If you are shooting somewhere else, treat the cost reporting, crew pay and supplier tracking as the useful parts and the tax as something that will not apply.
There is also no bank integration. ScenePaper records that a settlement was paid, by what method and against what reference; it does not move the money. And nothing here produces a Movie Magic Budgeting file, which a studio or bond company on a union show will very likely still expect.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a daily cost report, or hot costs?
- The daily cost report is what a production spent on a single shoot day, produced the following morning while there is still time to act on it. It is read by department rather than as one total, because that is how an overage gets traced to whoever caused it. The industry calls it hot costs. In ScenePaper it covers wages, employer fringe, overtime, meal penalties, petty cash, equipment and invoices for the day.
- Is this for a line producer or a production accountant?
- Both, and they want different documents. The line producer reads the daily cost report and the cash position. The production accountant wants the weekly report by account code and the exports — a pay register with the withholding broken out, a cost ledger against account codes, and the per-payee quarterly working. Those come out as spreadsheets, because the books are almost certainly kept somewhere else.
- Does it handle TDS on crew payments?
- Yes, for India. A payee carries their section — 194C for work and the supply of manpower, 194J for professional or technical services — and their PAN. The rate follows from the section and from whether the payee is an individual or a company. Nothing is withheld until their year crosses the annual limit, and the payment that crosses it withholds on everything paid to them earlier that year, which is the part most systems get wrong.
- Can it tell me whether I can pay everyone on Friday?
- That is what the cash position is for. It shows what has actually arrived from your funding sources, what has actually left the account, and what is still owed to crew and suppliers. If the next fortnight of shooting costs more than you have free — worked out from what your own unit has been burning per shooting day, not from the budget — it says so on the screen you open every morning.
- Is it free?
- Every feature is free to use right now, cost reports and crew pay included, and there is no commission on crew you hire. There is no seat limit, so the size of your unit does not change what you pay, and no export paywall — the pay register and the cost ledger come out as spreadsheets whatever you are on.
Terms explained
- Cost report
- A cost report is the periodic statement, usually weekly, comparing what a production has spent and committed against what it budgeted, account by account. It carries the Estimated Final Cost and the variance, and it is the document a financier or guarantor monitors the production through.
- Scene budget
- A scene budget is the cost of a single scene, worked out by pricing the elements on its breakdown sheet — cast, crew, location, equipment, effects, art department. It is the figure a category-based budget cannot give you, because that one is organised by account and every account feeds every scene.
- Above the line
- Above the line refers to the budget section covering the creative principals whose deals are usually negotiated before production begins — story and rights, producers, director, and principal cast. It sits above a literal dividing line in the traditional budget top sheet.
- Below the line
- Below the line refers to the budget section covering the technical and logistical cost of actually making the film — crew, equipment, locations, construction, transport, catering and post-production. These are the costs that scale directly with the number of shooting days.
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