Step 5: Build the budget
Add chapters and line items, link a booking, and watch the Allocated column track your plan.
The Budget tool is your project's cost plan, organised the way production budgets usually are — big groupings broken down into smaller ones, down to individual costs. In this step you'll build a small structure and connect it to the booking you sent, so the budget starts tracking what your plan actually costs.
A budget has three levels:
- Chapter — a large grouping, such as "Staffing" or "Equipment".
- Sub-chapter — a grouping within a chapter, such as "Camera Staff".
- Line item — a single cost: one person, one piece of kit, one expense.
Open the budget and add a chapter
In the project sidebar, open Budget. Use Add chapter in the chapter list on the left — "Staffing" is a natural first chapter for this tutorial.
Add a sub-chapter and line items
Inside the chapter, use Add Sub-chapter (for example "Camera Staff"), then add line items in the table — one line per person or cost. For each, set its name, day count, quantity, rate, and markup. You can pull item names and prices from your price lists as you type.
📷 Screenshot:
/images/docs/tutorial-producer/budget-table.pngA budget with chapters, sub-chapters, and line items in the table. Alt: A budget table organised into chapters and sub-chapters with line items and cost columns.
Link a line to your booking
Link the line item for your crew member to the booking you sent in the previous step. This is the connection that makes the budget live: CrewGrid adds up what the linked bookings cost — using their rate cards and schedules — and shows it in the Allocated column.
Watch Allocated
Allocated is live. Edit the schedule, and the next time the budget renders, Allocated reflects it — nothing to refresh. It always answers: "based on where the plan stands, what would this cost?" (If the Allocated column is hidden, show it with the View control at the top.)
Its counterpart, Actual, is the figure you enter by hand after the shoot wraps — the real, final cost. Allocated looks forward from your plan; Actual records what happened. Comparing them, line by line, is how you see where a production came in over or under.
One more thing you may see later: an amber drift chip on a line. It means a linked booking is holding an older schedule than your current plan would produce — you've moved things on the timeline but haven't pushed the change to that booking yet. Click the chip to see each booking's cost difference, with a Re-seed button to bring it up to date. Drift is a prompt, not a problem.
Your budget now tracks the plan. Last step: turn the plan into a call sheet and get it to people.
Where to go next
- Next: Step 6: Publish a call sheet
- Go deeper: Budget basics and Allocated vs Actual