Streamlining Production Budgets

It’s all fun and games until you’re over budget. To be honest, if the finance team are using excel or a desktop-based solution – it’s easy for the production crew to go over or lose track of the budget. In this blog, I’ll discuss how modern finance systems can revolutionise your film and TV production business, tackle any industry pain points, and bring your business together. Let’s dive into it.

Operations vs Finance

A tale as old as time. The crew wants to spend money; finance wants to save it. Natural born enemies…

Jokes aside, this age-old beef can be squashed with modern finance systems. In film and TV production, the budget tracker is often a point of contention. In a manual business, budget reports need to be sent daily to ensure that productions are on track, which requires a large amount of admin on the finance team. Manual tracking is also ripe for error, and these errors compound, potentially resulting in going over budget. Moving your accounting system to the cloud and using modern operational dashboards can create a single source of truth in your business that is updated in real time. Pair that with some integrations, and the data doesn’t need to be touched by staff, ensuring the stats aren’t afflicted by human error. This can be accessed by both finance and operations. No more disagreements over costs and budgets – everyone is working with the same data!

Receipt Scanning

Some of the best movie and TV props were bought on the fly. For instance, the original Michael Myers mask was a cheap mask of William Shatner. There will always be a need for random purchases (duct tape, props, etc.), but keeping track of them and submitting them to finance can be tiresome and prone to error if handled manually. With a modern finance system, production teams can scan receipts on the go, and the information will be automatically added to the finance system. Easy.

Pre-paid Cards

Businesses like Navan and Pleo allow media production businesses to generate pre-paid cards. These systems can be integrated with the accounting application, ensuring that the information is transferred with no human input. Not only will this save time and errors, but it will help keep the production dashboard accurate in real time, offering true visibility across the business. What’s more, like regular pre-paid cards, there is no option to overspend. Paired with the dashboard, the business will be able to manage spend and keep to the budget.

Forecasting

With all the finance and operational systems integrated, there should be minimal human influence on the data. This has a knock-on effect on the forecasting. With air-tight data collection processes, forecasts will be more reliable, allowing for better decision-making and understanding of the current business trajectory.

These areas all work in tandem to provide a serious boost to film and television production businesses. Operations and finance have laid down their weapons and are all working with the same single source of truth.