Every term explained

Money

Field	What it means	When you’d use it
Rate	The base figure paid, in the rate type’s unit.	Always. It’s the only mandatory money field.
Rate type	What the rate buys: daily, weekly, or flat for the whole job.	Daily for most crew; weekly for long engagements; flat for a fixed deliverable.
Overtime rate	What’s paid beyond the standard day.	Whenever you’ve agreed one. Blank means the memo says nothing about overtime.
Per diem	Daily allowance for meals and incidentals, separate from the rate.	Location shoots and anything requiring an overnight stay.
Mileage rate	Paid per mile or kilometre for use of a personal vehicle.	Crew driving their own vehicle for production purposes.

Kit

Kit terms exist because a crew member’s own equipment is a separate commercial arrangement from their labour, and conflating the two is how disputes start.

Field	What it means
Kit rental	What the production pays to use their equipment, usually per day on top of the rate.
Kit description	What is actually being rented. Specific beats vague: “2x 2K HMI, distro, stands”, not “lighting kit”.
Kit replacement value	What the production owes if it’s lost or damaged. The field people skip, and the one that matters when something goes wrong.

Credit

Field	What it means
Credit	Whether a credit is given at all.
Credit title	The exact wording: “Gaffer”, “Chief Lighting Technician”. The wording is often the negotiation.
Credit position	Where it falls: main titles, end crawl, a specific card. Agree it now or argue about it in post.

Union, loan-out, hours and turnaround

Field	What it means
Union	Which agreement, if any, governs the engagement. Drives the terms below and is worth recording even when the answer is “none”.
Loan-out / DBA	Whether they’re engaged through their own company rather than as an individual, and its trading name. Changes who is invoiced and how tax is handled.
Max hours per day	The agreed cap before overtime or penalties apply.
Max hours per week	The weekly equivalent.
Minimum turnaround	Guaranteed rest between wrap and the next call. The term crew care about most and productions record least.

Clauses

Beyond the structured fields, a memo carries the clauses that make up its body text, the standard paragraphs a production applies to everyone. They’re reusable, so your terms are written once and applied to every memo rather than retyped and quietly diverging.

Notes is for the one-off, the thing agreed with this person that applies to nobody else.