A budget holds the estimated costs of a production, organised in cost categories and budget lines. Every project can have several budgets: a first estimate, a client version, a revised version after the recce.

Projects in budgeting with drafts and quotations

Three ways to start

  • From a template: your standard production structure with phases, activities and items. You adjust quantities and prices.
  • From an existing budget: Duplicate creates an independent copy as the starting point for a new version.
  • With AI: Generate AI Budget drafts line items, quantities and prices from your project description. You review and adjust. See Let AI draft a budget.

You can also import a budget from Movie Magic Budgeting. See Import a Movie Magic budget.

Budget and Sales

Two totals update instantly as you add or change lines:

  • Budget is your cost total: what the production is expected to cost you.
  • Sales is what you charge the client. Sales prices per line, additional costs, discounts and fees determine the difference, which shows as Margin.

The budget toolbar

Each budget has its own set of screens:

  • Budget setup and Build budget: the details and the editor. See Build a budget.
  • Planning: the activities of this budget, the days they run on and the crew booked for them.
  • Documents: create and send quotes or cost confirmations to the client for review and approval before publication.
  • Compare: this budget side by side with other budgets.
  • Analysis: cost breakdown by phase and category, with variance reporting.
  • Overview & Export: dashboard with totals, key metrics and export.
  • Publication: publish the approved budget to make it available to the production team.

Statuses

A budget moves through statuses such as Concept, Active, Approved, Completed and Cancelled. An administrator can rename these and add others under Settings > Budget statuses. Approving a budget can also create the work budget for production; see Publish a budget and create a work budget.

Tip: Keep one budget per purpose. A quotation, a published version and a work budget are all derived from a budget, so a clear name ("Client v2", "Post-recce") saves confusion later.