Groups, templates, and export

Beyond the core structure, the budget has three conveniences that save time on bigger productions: groups for cross-cutting views, templates for reusing budget structures, and export for taking a budget out of CrewGrid. All three live in the budget toolbar: Snapshots, Groups, and Templates on the left each open their own side panel, and the Export ▾ menu sits on the right.

Groups

Chapters and sub-chapters organise costs by category. Groups let you tag line items across that structure so you can view them together — for example, gathering every line that belongs to a particular unit, vendor, or cost centre, wherever it sits in the budget.

Create a group and add items

Select line items in the budget table. A selection bar appears at the bottom showing how many items you've picked and their combined total. Your selection persists as you switch between chapters, so you can gather lines from anywhere in the budget.

Click Add to group… in the selection bar. The Groups panel opens with a prompt to add your selected items.

Pick an existing group (Add N here), or click + New group, type a name, and choose Create + Add selected to create the group and file the items in one go.

You can also open the panel any time via the Groups toolbar button. From there, Edit lets you rename a group and give it a colour dot, and View items expands the member list — each item shows which budget, chapter, and sub-chapter it lives in, and you can remove it from the group with the ×.

What a group shows you

Each group card carries three figures side by side:

Budgeted — the sum of what you've budgeted across the group's member items.
Allocated — when the group is linked to a crew role, the live cost of that role, split proportionally across the member items in an Allocation table (each line's share, plus a Drift line showing how far the role's cost sits above or below the group's budgeted total).
Actual — the sum of actual spend recorded on the member items.

Deleting a group removes only the grouping — as the confirmation puts it, "The line items stay in their budgets."

📷 Screenshot: /images/docs/budget/budget-groups-panel.png The Groups panel with a group card showing Budgeted, Allocated, and Actual figures. Alt: A side panel listing budget groups, one expanded to show its member line items and totals.

Templates

Templates let you reuse a budget structure rather than rebuilding it each time. If your productions tend to follow a familiar shape, a template gives you a head start. Templates are shared across your organisation, so a structure saved on one project is available on every other. Manage them from the Templates panel in the toolbar.

Save the current budget as a template

Open the Templates panel and click + New template. Give it a name and an optional description.

Choose what to include. Chapters are always included; Sub-Chapters and Line Items are on by default. If you include line items, you can additionally tick Rate, Quantity, Prep Days, Shoot Days, and Wrap Days — all off by default, so a plain save captures structure only, with no figures.

Click Save template.

Apply a template

Select a template from the Available templates list and click Apply Selected Template. Applying adds the template's chapters, sub-chapters, and line items to your current budget — it doesn't replace anything that's already there. A confirmation tells you exactly how many of each were added.

The Templates panel also hosts the Active price list picker, which controls the typeahead used when adding line items — see Price lists.

Exporting

The Export ▾ menu in the budget toolbar lets you take the budget out of CrewGrid — for sharing with people who don't use the app, or for your records:

Download PDF — a formatted document for sending or printing.
Download JSON — the full budget data in a machine-readable file.
Copy JSON for AI… / Download JSON for AI — the same data with an added explanation of the schema, so you can paste it into an AI tool and ask questions without describing the structure yourself. The copy option asks for confirmation first, since the budget may contain personal details you're about to paste elsewhere.

Under Scope (PDF + JSON) you can trim the export before downloading: untick Include markup, Include actual spend, Include notes, or Include surcharges to leave that facet out — useful for a client-facing copy. The choice applies to whichever format you then pick, and resets each time you open the menu.

You can also export a specific snapshot rather than the live working budget — each snapshot in the Snapshots panel has its own Export ▾ menu — handy for sending "the version we agreed". And there's a print-friendly view of the budget for a clean paper or PDF copy.

📷 Screenshot: /images/docs/budget/budget-export.png The budget export menu. Alt: An export menu open on the budget toolbar with export format options.