Budget Summary

An executive-level dashboard showing your production's financial health at a glance.

• Overview cards: Total Budget, Total Spent, Variance, Pre/Production/Post breakdowns
• ATL/BTL: Above the Line and Below the Line totals (when enabled)
• Charts: Pie chart (budget breakdown by category), bar chart (Estimated vs Actual)
• Alerts: Over-budget categories highlighted with variance amounts
• Top spenders: Ranked list of highest actual expenditures
• Navigation: Click any category to drill into the Detailed Budget

Detailed Budget

The core budgeting tool. Build your production budget line by line with a 4-level hierarchy: Categories > Accounts > Details > Sub-Details.

Building Your Budget

1. Navigate to Budget > Detailed Budget in the sidebar.
2. Add a top-level Category (e.g., "Camera", "Art Department", "Talent").
3. Inside each category, add Accounts (e.g., "Director of Photography", "Camera Rental").
4. Inside accounts, add Detail rows for individual line items with rate, quantity, and unit.
5. For more granularity, add Sub-Detail rows inside detail rows.

View Modes

• Tree View: Hierarchical expand/collapse showing all levels at once. Click the arrow next to any row to expand or collapse it.
• Drilldown View: Navigate level by level with a breadcrumb trail. Click into a category to see its accounts, click an account to see its line items. Use the breadcrumb to navigate back up.

Using Formulas & Global Variables

Instead of typing a fixed number, you can enter a formula in the rate or quantity fields. For example, type =ShootDays * 350 to calculate a daily rate across all shoot days.

Define global variables in Project Settings > Budget > Globals (e.g., "ShootDays = 18", "CrewSize = 25"). Reference them by name in any formula across the entire budget. When you update the variable, all formulas using it recalculate automatically.

Math Rows

Insert a math row to calculate a percentage of other rows. For example, add a "10% Contingency" row that automatically computes 10% of selected categories or line items. The value updates whenever source items change.

Units

Choose from time-based units (Days, Weeks, Months, Hours) or standard units (Allow, Flat, Per, Rate). You can also use shorthand like "10w 2d" (10 weeks and 2 days) and FilmBase will convert it automatically.

Multi-Currency

If your production spans multiple countries, assign different currencies to individual line items. Set up currencies and exchange rates in Project Settings > Budget > Currency.

Inspector Panel (Right)

The collapsible right panel has two modes: toggle between them using the icons at the top of the panel:

Item Mode: When you click a line item, the inspector shows its details:

• Applied Fringes: All available fringes are listed. Click to toggle a fringe on or off for that item. Shows the fringe name, rate (%), and whether it's statutory.
• Linked Global Variables: Shows globals linked to the item's Rate, Multiplier, or Amount. Click an available global to link it. Click the unlink button to remove.
• Total Override: For parent items or categories, apply a global variable to override the calculated total.
• Assigned Set & Groups: Manage set and group assignments for filtering.

Settings Mode: Create and manage globals and fringes without leaving the budget:

• Fringes tab: Click + Create New Fringe to add a fringe with a name, rate (%), optional cutoff, and statutory flag. A sub-tab lets you create Fringe Groups (bundles of fringes applied together).
• Globals tab: Click + Add to create a global variable with a name, value or formula, target field (Rate, Multiplier, Amount, or Total), and unit type. A sub-tab lets you create Global Groups.

Visual Indicators

Budget rows show icons so you can see at a glance which items have fringes or globals applied:

• % icon (green badge): Appears in the row's tags area when fringes are applied. Hover to see how many fringes.
• Globe icon (blue badge): Appears in the tags area when a global is applied as a total override.
• Small globe badge on columns: A small circular indicator appears on the Rate, Multiplier, or Amount column when a global variable is linked to that specific field.
• Database icon (green): Indicates the item is linked to a breakdown element.
• File icon: Indicates a sub-budget item.

Right-Click Menu

Right-click any budget row for a full context menu:

• Add Sibling / Add Child: Insert items at the same level or nested inside
• Insert Sub-Budget: Reference another budget scenario
• Import Elements: Pull in elements from the breakdown
• Duplicate / Cut / Copy / Paste: Standard clipboard operations
• Change Color: Apply a row color (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Teal, Blue, Purple, Pink)
• Set Section: Mark as Above the Line or Below the Line (categories only)
• Set Production Phase: Tag as Pre-Production, Production, or Post-Production (categories only)
• Apply Global Variable: Select a global to link to this item
• Apply Fringe: Toggle a fringe on this item (leaf items only)
• Set Currency: Assign a specific currency (leaf items only)
• Convert to Math Row / Formula Row / Standard Row: Change the row type
• Insert Subtotal Below: Add a calculation row summing items above
• Manage Groups / Assign Set: Organize for filtering
• Delete: Remove the item

Fringes

Fringes are payroll overheads (tax, insurance, pension, benefits) applied to line items, as a flat or percentage rate with an optional cutoff. Create them in the inspector panel's Settings mode, or in Project Settings > Budget > Fringes. To apply a fringe, select a line item and toggle it in the inspector's Applied Fringes section, or right-click and use Apply Fringe.

On a generated cast or crew member, fringes apply to the wage days (shoot, hold, travel, rehearsal, fitting) and not to reimbursements like per diem, kit, housing, or airfare. A capped fringe — one with a cutoff — is taken against the person's total wages rather than each day line, so the cap comes out right. Right-click any line to include or exclude it from its parent's fringe by hand.

The Budget Summary shows a Fringe Summary: every fringe rolled up to a per-fringe total across the whole budget, so you can see what each one costs at a glance.

Cost by Supplier

Your budget is organised by account — Camera, Grip, Lighting — but one vendor often supplies several of them. Cost by Supplier flips the view around and totals each supplier's committed cost across every account it appears in, so you can see how much you're spending with a vendor overall. Open it from the filter dropdown (the funnel icon) next to the search box. A supplier that spans more than one account expands to show the per-account breakdown, with a grand total for all suppliers at the bottom.

Suppliers appear here once you attach them to line items: right-click a budget account and choose Add from Supplier to pull in a vendor's items — those costs are what the rollup totals. It's a quick way to spot a vendor you lean on across departments before you lock a package rate.

Other Features

• Sub-budgets: line items that reference other budget scenarios
• Groups and sets for filtering and organizing line items
• Cut/copy/paste with full undo/redo
• Account code auto-generation with configurable numbering schemes (Settings > Budget > Account Codes)

Cast Budgeting & Tiers

FilmBase prices your cast straight from the schedule. Add a character to the budget and it reads their Day out of Days, charging each kind of day at its own rate — work, hold, travel, rehearsal, and fitting — from the assigned actor's rate card. Per diem, kit rental, housing and airfare are added on where the rate card defines them.

Adding cast to the budget

• On the Detailed Budget, right-click the category or account and choose Add Cast.
• The picker lists your characters with their assigned actor and a live cost preview, and flags anyone whose actor has no rate card yet.
• Each chosen cast member becomes a line showing the character with the actor (CHARACTER | Actor) and their avatar, expanding into a line per day type.
• Cast lines re-price automatically when the schedule, the Day out of Days, or the actor assignment changes. Edit a rate by hand and your override is kept on the next sync.

Hold threshold

Whether a gap between shoot days counts as a paid hold or a drop is set by the hold-day threshold in Project Settings > Region (Cast & Schedule). The Day out of Days and the budget share it, so they always agree.

Daily, weekly, monthly, or flat deals

A person's rate card sets how their deal bills — per day, week, month, or a single flat fee. A daily deal gives the full day-by-day breakdown; a flat deal is one line. Turn on auto-convert (on the contact's Rates tab) and a daily deal rolls full consecutive work weeks up to the weekly rate on its own. The leftover days after a full week bill by the day, capped so a partial week never costs more than a full one — or set the partial week to pro-rata, where half a week is half the weekly rate.

What counts as a week or a month comes from your unit settings (Project Settings > Budget > Units). A project default sets auto-convert and the SAG-vs-pro-rata choice for the whole show (Project Settings > Region > Billing Defaults), and any one contact can override it. On a budget line, switch the line's unit between day, week, and month to pull that person's matching rate; type a rate to override it and it stays until you clear the field. The same billing applies to crew.

Cast tiers

Tiers classify your cast — Lead, Supporting, Day Player, Background, or your own. They're defined once for your whole workspace in Global Settings > Cast Tiers and shared by every project. Assign a tier to a character on the Characters page, or in a contact's Cast Details; an actor who plays more than one part gets a tier per role. Tiers show as a colour chip on the character, in the contact list as Tier | Character, and on the budget.

Multiple shooting blocks

Cast cost is worked out per character from that character's shooting block, so each line reflects a single block's schedule — costs are never blended across blocks. If the same actor works across two blocks, you add each block's character as its own line; keep them under separate categories to track what each block costs.

Actuals

Track real expenses against your budget. Each expense is linked to a budget line item for instant variance analysis.

• Status tracking: Scheduled, Paid, Overdue, Due Soon
• Variance: Color-coded Estimated vs Actual comparison
• Expense panel: Add/edit expenses per line item with amounts, dates, and descriptions
• ATL/BTL sections: Above/Below the Line grouping supported

Payment Schedule

A matrix view tracking when budget amounts are due. Rows are line items (grouped by category), columns are dates.

• Zoom levels: Monthly, Weekly, or Daily granularity
• Cell data: Total amount, expense count, and status (paid/overdue/due soon/scheduled)
• Summary totals: Total Estimated, Total Actual, Total Variance, Overdue Count, Upcoming Count
• Actions: Add payments, mark as paid, bulk mark entire categories as paid
• Configurable date range for the visible window

Cashflow

A visual dashboard showing how money flows out over time.

• Burn rate: Weekly spending rate calculation
• Exhaustion date: Projected date when budget runs out at current rate
• Charts: Cumulative spending line chart over time
• Alerts: Overdue expenses panel and upcoming expenses (this week)
• Footer summary: Total Budget, Total Spent, Remaining