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Budget vs Final Costs… Face-off!

February 26, 2010 by Deb 2 Comments

You want the best reference document for when you manage future productions… do you look to the Budget or the Final Costs Report?

Round 1… The Budget displays the calculations, so you know how each line item was created, the Final Costs Report does not. Round 1 to the Budget.

Round 2… The Final Costs Report show you what was actually spent, the Budget shows you estimates from the before the fact. Round 2 to the Final Costs Report.

Round 3… The Budget is an electronic file in the software you are going to use to write other budgets, the Final Costs Report is not. Round 3 to the Budget.

Round 4… The Budget has a contingency budgeted, whereas the Final Costs Report has the contingency spent on line item(s) unique to the that particular production – and in time you may not remember on which line item(s) or on how many line items are affected. Round 4 to the Budget.

Round 5… The the Budget were poorly written, the Final Costs Report would expose those weaknesses with large variances. Round 5 to the Final Costs Report.

Hmmm. 3 to 2 for the Budget. Can you think of any other rounds these two could go?

Happy budgeting!

Cheers,
Deb

Filed Under: Budgets, Management Tagged With: costreport

Comments

  1. Joe T. says

    March 3, 2010 at 11:17 pm

    Not sure about “rounds” but as a Line Producer/PM I would definitely give it to the Final Cost Report. It is after all the final document that determines as you put earlier whether there were “weaknesses in the budget”. I wouldn’t call them weaknesses because there are always variables that you can’t always budget for no matter how big the contingency is. Weather days for instance that have no cover no matter how hard you try. There are also Director and crew variables that could make days longer than initially budgeted for, as well as idiosyncrasies that exist within each budget that can go sideways unexpectedly. One always tries to budget enough contingency for these items by padding but many times Exec Producers force you to cut the pad out leaving you with only the official line item Contingency. If something unexpected happens that you cannot reallocate budget items for – you are hooped. Therefore all votes go toward the Final Cost Report in being the ultimate reference document for new budgets.

  2. debpatz says

    March 5, 2010 at 5:30 am

    Good comments! Thank you, Joe.

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