Departments & Line Items

The 24 Default Departments

The first time you open Budget, these industry-standard departments are created for the project, numbered 100–510:

Showing and Expanding Departments

Departments with line items are expanded automatically. To reach the rest, click Show All Depts in the Top Sheet Summary to list every department, then click a row to expand its card and jump to it. Toggle Hide Empty to collapse the summary back to just the departments you’re using.

Creating Custom Departments

Need something that isn’t in the defaults? Click Add Department below the Top Sheet Summary, type a name (for example “Visual Effects”), and confirm. You only supply the name — the department code is assigned for you automatically. Custom departments carry a small custom tag and behave exactly like the built-in ones. Only custom departments can be deleted (via the trash icon in their header); the 24 defaults can’t be removed.

Renaming a Department

Double-click a department’s name in its card header to edit it in place. Press Enter to save or Esc to cancel. This works for both default and custom departments.

Line Item Columns

Inside an expanded department, each line item is a row you edit directly — click a cell, type, then click away or press Enter to save. The columns are:

• Description — what the expense is (e.g. “Director of Photography”)
• Unit — a dropdown: day, week, or flat
• Rate — the cost per unit
• × — the multiplier (e.g. number of shoot days)
• Allow — the estimated total, calculated for you as quantity × rate × multiplier (read-only)
• Actual — what you really spent (optional; leave blank until you know)
• Savings — Allow minus Actual, filled in automatically once you enter an actual

Units and the Multiplier

The Unit is a label describing what the rate is measured in; the × multiplier is how many of those units the line covers:

• day — a daily rate; set the multiplier to the number of shoot days
• week — a weekly rate; set the multiplier to the number of weeks
• flat — a one-off cost; the multiplier is usually 1

Tracking Actuals and Savings

As real costs come in, type them into the Actual column. The line’s Savings (Allow minus Actual) fills in automatically, and any line that’s over budget shows its savings in red. Department totals and the Grand Total each roll up an Actual and Savings figure once at least one line in that department has an actual, so the Top Sheet Summary doubles as an estimate-versus-actual report.

Deleting and Restoring Line Items

Hover a line item and click the trash icon. A confirmation appears — deletes are soft, so nothing is lost permanently. To bring a line back, click Show Deleted in the header: removed items reappear struck-through with a restore (undo) icon. Click it to reinstate the line, or Hide Deleted to tuck them away again.

Department and Grand Totals

Every department card header shows its running Allow (and Actual/Savings once you’ve entered actuals). Those subtotals feed the Grand Total row in the Top Sheet Summary, giving you a single production budget figure that updates the moment you change a cell.