Production budgeting
Know what the job made.
Bid against actual on every line, every cost backed by the invoice it came from, deposits and payment schedules tracked to the dollar, and a margin band that answers the only question that matters.
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Budget · Bright Water
Bid against actual, by line
Billed
$42,000
Job cost
$26,600
Margin
36.7%
The problem
The budget says you are $4,200 over, and nobody can say why, who, or against which invoice. 'Actual' is a number somebody typed three weeks ago, and the job closes without anyone knowing what it made.
Every line, bid against what it actually cost.
Set the bid for each line of the job. The actual fills itself in from the costs you log against that line, so the number is never somebody's guess from three weeks ago, and a line that runs over the bid turns red while there is still time to do something about it.
Actuals built from real costs
A line's actual is the sum of the invoices filed against it, and it shows how many there are.
Quick numbers still work
A line with nothing filed yet keeps a typed figure, so a fast estimate is never blocked.
Nothing slips through
A cost that has not been given a line yet still counts toward the job's total, because the money left either way.
Over the bid, in red
Lines that run past their bid, and the job's total, go red on the page.
On the project's front page
The bid-against-actual bar sits on the project hub, from the same numbers as this page.
Budget · Bright Water
Bid against actual, line by line
Bid
$35,900
Actual so far
$23,600
Left in the bid
$12,300
A cost is a record, not a typed number.
Every cost carries who it was from, what it was for, the invoice itself and where it stands. Pick the vendor from the people already on the job and the app knows the rate you agreed, so an invoice that does not match gets flagged before you pay it.
Vendor from the job's roster
Pick a crew member or supplier already on the project, with their agreed day rate shown beside them.
Rate checking
Enter the days and it compares days times the agreed rate against the invoiced amount, and flags anything over or under.
The invoice rides on the cost
Attach the PDF or photo, and open it later from the ledger with one click.
Status that means something
Received, approved, paid. Click the chip to move it along.
Invoice number and due date
Kept on the cost, so the list of what is due, and when, builds itself.
Budget · Bright Water
Cost ledger · every actual backed by an invoice
Log a cost
Vendor (from this job's roster)
Budget line
Days
Amount invoiced
Drop in the invoice. The form fills itself.
Attach a supplier's invoice or estimate and the app reads it for you: who it is from, the amount, the dates, the invoice number and which line it belongs to. It fills the form and tells you exactly what it filled. You check it and save, so no money figure is ever written without a person looking at it.
PDFs and photos
A PDF straight from the vendor, or a photo of a paper invoice taken on your phone.
Receipts land as paid
Photograph a receipt from the shoot and it is filed as money already spent, with the shop, the total and the date, not as a bill still owed.
It finds the right vendor
The name on the invoice is matched against the people on the job, including when the work was billed through an agency.
Reads estimates too
A vendor's estimate becomes the cost you are committing to, weeks before the final invoice arrives.
You always confirm
A banner names every field it filled, with Undo, and nothing saves until you press Save.
Straight from the email
An invoice attached to a Gmail thread on the project becomes a cost with Log as a cost, no downloading.
Foreign currency warned
An invoice in another currency is called out rather than quietly treated as dollars.
Budget · Bright Water
Attach an invoice and the form fills itself
Log a cost
Vendor
Invoice number
Invoice date
Due
Amount
Budget line
Deposits stop being a guess.
Vendors want a deposit up front and the balance later. Split any cost into payments with their own due dates, mark each one when it goes out, and the app keeps track of exactly what is still owed, on this job and across every job you have running.
Deposit and balance in one step
Choose a percentage and two due dates. The balance is the remainder, so the two always add back to the total.
Any schedule you need
Add as many payments as the vendor asks for, each with its own date and a note of how it was paid.
Still owed, exactly
A part-paid cost counts only what is left, on the budget page, the ledger and the dashboard.
The next payment date
Each cost shows when its next payment is due, and flags it when it is overdue.
Every job's unpaid bills in one list
A dashboard widget totals what you owe across all your live projects, overdue first.
Budget · Bright Water
A cost is a commitment, payments are what happened
Aurora CGI · Hero pack shot render
Post · committed on the vendor's estimate
Know what the job made. Only you.
What you billed and what the job cost sit on one page, from real documents on both sides, and the margin is worked out for you. None of it is visible to the crew you invite onto a project: they see the work, never the money.
Billed from your invoices
Only what you actually invoiced counts, never an estimate or a proposal. With no invoices yet, it uses the figure you entered on delivery.
Margin in dollars and percent
Worked out as profit on what you billed, the way a studio quotes it.
A bar that turns red on a loss
Cost shown as a share of what you billed, so a job going under is obvious at a glance.
Crew cannot see the money
Budgets, costs, invoices and day rates are hidden from collaborators by the database itself, not just by hiding a button.
One source of truth
The budget page, the project hub and the dashboard all work from the same ledger, so they never disagree.
Studio reports
Across every job for the year: what each made, where the cost went, how many shipped on time, and how fast each client signs off. Download it as a PDF.
Budget · Bright Water
Billed against cost, from real documents on both sides
Billed · from your invoices
$0
Estimates and proposals do not count. Only what you invoiced.
Job cost · from the ledger
$0
The difference
Provenance, all the way down.
Any spreadsheet can subtract bid from actual. The difference is that every number here can explain itself: click the cost, see the invoice, see the payment schedule, see who the vendor was and what rate you agreed. The budget stops being a claim and becomes a record.
- An AI assist reads the documents, a human confirms every figure
- The same roll-ups feed the page, the hub card and the dashboard, so they cannot disagree
- Built by an operator who runs real jobs on it, not imagined from a spec
More the money layer does
AI invoice reading
Attach a supplier invoice and the form fills itself, for you to check.
Rate checking
Days times agreed rate against the invoiced amount, flagged when they disagree.
Cost from an email
An invoice in a linked Gmail thread becomes a cost in two clicks.
Vendor from the roster
Costs pick their vendor from the job's crew, with the agreed rate shown.
Status that means something
Received, approved, paid, advancing by click or by schedule.
SOW reading
A received SOW's deliverables and fees become project rows, proposed first.
Crew cannot see it
Budgets and costs are structurally invisible to project collaborators.
Hub card
The bid-versus-actual bar on the project's front page.
One source of truth
The page, the hub and the dashboard all compute from the same ledger.
Also here
Lives alongside it.
Each of these is a page inside the project, on the same spine, so nothing is retyped between them.
Agreements
NDAs, MSAs, SOWs and change orders, both signatures tracked.
- Masters on the client, SOWs on the job, linked
- Which side has signed, stated instead of hunted for
- Expiry flagged before a lapsed NDA surprises anyone
Works with
Estimates & invoices
From estimate to signed to paid
See how it worksWorks with
Project contacts
One roster per job
See how it worksThe whole toolkit
You just read about one of seventeen.
The rest is already in the box: every plan carries the whole toolkit, and the tiers buy room, never permission. This is the part a point solution cannot say.
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