Production budget template

What this is about

Two numbers define every production: what it costs and what was quoted. The budget template exists to keep them from meeting as strangers at the final invoice. Its structure mirrors how the money actually leaves: concept and prep, crew fees, equipment, locations, travel, post. Each line is unit times quantity times rate, never a lump that resists questioning. Assumptions live in the document itself — which weather risk, which overtime rule — because a number without its assumptions is just a mood with decimals.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Sections that follow the production phases — development, shoot, post — so a client question about any phase lands on one block, not a hunt
• Line items structured as unit, quantity and rate, which turns negotiation into a talk about scope instead of a talk about trust
• Contingency as its own visible line, sized to the risk of the shoot, never smuggled into padded day rates
• An assumptions block naming what the numbers presume — shooting days, overtime rule, weather risk — and a version header with number and date

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Break the project down before pricing anything: setups, shooting days, locations and post scope come first, numbers second.
2. Fill in rates from confirmed booking confirmations and rental quotes, not from memory of what things cost last year.
3. Build each section bottom-up, sum it, and sanity-check the total against the shooting days the schedule actually shows.
4. Add contingency as an open line and size it to the specific risks — exteriors, animals, moving vehicles raise it, a studio day does not.
5. Write the assumptions block: what happens on a weather day, when overtime starts, what the client provides for free.
6. Version the document the moment scope changes, keep every version, and compare the final actuals against it at wrap — that comparison is next year's accuracy.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Hiding contingency inside padded lines, which makes every line negotiable and the reserve invisible
• Treating post as a footnote and discovering in the edit that the film is half financed
• Sending a revised total without a version number, so nobody knows which promise is current

With TillyGen

TillyGen gives your budget its basis: the briefing becomes a setup count and a day structure before you quote, so every number in the sheet has a plan behind it.

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.