Cost Report

What this is about

A budget is a forecast; the cost report is the reality check running beside it. Three columns matter: what was planned, what is already committed through bookings and orders, and what has actually been invoiced. The committed column is the one teams forget and the one that predicts the outcome, because a booked crew is money spent long before an invoice exists. Updated after each milestone instead of at the end, the report leaves room to act — dropping a setup, renegotiating a supplier or asking the client for a decision while a decision still helps.

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:

• Three columns: planned, committed, actual — the committed one is the early warning system
• A report written at the end of a project documents the problem instead of preventing it
• Update after milestones rather than by calendar habit, so the numbers stay decision-ready

With TillyGen

TillyGen holds plan and calculation in one place, so committed and planned figures can be compared without rebuilding a spreadsheet.

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.