Budget Topsheet

What this is about

Decision makers rarely read a forty-line calculation. The topsheet compresses it into groups — crew, equipment, locations, travel, post, reserve, fee — so a client can see the shape of the money and ask where it should move. Everything below stays available for the people who need it. Two habits keep it usable: group totals have to be derived from the detail instead of typed over it, and each version needs a date plus a scope note, because a topsheet without its assumptions is a number waiting to be misread in a meeting.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Group totals must be derived from the detail; typing over them breaks the whole document
• Every version needs a date and the scope it prices, otherwise comparisons become guesswork
• It is a communication tool: the client discusses groups, the producer works in the detail

With TillyGen

TillyGen generates the calculation from the shot plan, so topsheet totals stay connected to the film being planned.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.