Payment Terms

What this is about

A production spends before it earns: deposits to rental houses, crew invoices after wrap, post costs in parallel. If the client pays long after delivery, the production finances the project in between, which is a real cost even when nobody prices it. Staged payments — on order, before the shoot, on delivery — spread that load and test commitment early. In corporate settings the payment period itself is often fixed by procurement rules, so negotiate the stages when the term will not move, and define precisely what each milestone requires before it can be invoiced.

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:

• Stages spread the financing load and reveal commitment before the expensive part begins
• Corporate payment periods are often fixed by procurement while the staging stays negotiable
• Define what triggers each milestone, or the last instalment waits behind an open feedback round

With TillyGen

TillyGen ties cost lines to project phases, which makes it easy to place payment milestones where the spending actually happens.

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.