Smart Suggestions

TL;DR — The budget detects unbudgeted team members, locations, and other entities and auto-calculates suggested line items using rates from your project data and shoot day counts from your schedule.

How Suggestions Work

When you have project data (team members, locations, characters, wardrobes) that isn’t yet reflected in your budget, the system surfaces smart suggestions. These appear as highlighted rows you can accept with one click or dismiss if they don’t apply.

Team Member Suggestions

For each crew member not yet in the budget, the system:

1 Looks up their crew position day rate from your team data.
2 Multiplies by the shoot day count from your schedule.
3 Suggests a line item in the appropriate department (e.g. Camera, Sound, Art).

For example, if your gaffer has a day rate of $450 and you have 15 shoot days, the suggestion is a $6,750 line item in the Electrical department.

Location Suggestions

For each location with a daily rate that isn’t budgeted yet:

1 Uses the location’s daily rate.
2 Calculates how many shoot days that location is needed based on scene page counts in the schedule.
3 Suggests a line item in the Locations department.

Accepting and Dismissing

Each suggestion has two actions:

Accept — adds the suggestion as a real line item you can edit further.
Dismiss — hides the suggestion. It won’t reappear unless you remove the entity and re-add it.

Schedule ↔ Budget Connection

Suggestions pull shoot day counts from your schedule. If you haven’t generated a schedule yet, multipliers default to 1. Once you generate or update your schedule, suggestion amounts automatically update to reflect the actual shoot day count.