Both of these belong to payroll companies. Movie Magic Budgeting (MMB) is sold by Entertainment Partners (EP), and Showbiz Budgeting is sold through Cast & Crew's store under its Media Services brand. That matters more than it sounds, because each one connects most smoothly to its owner's payroll and accounting products. If your show already has a payroll company, check which side of that line it's on before choosing.
What each budget looks like on screen
Both are traditional account-level film budgets: a top sheet, accounts, and detail lines with amount, units, x, rate, subtotal and fringes, organized by the usual chart of accounts (above-the-line in the 1000s, production in the 2000s and 3000s, post in the 4000s and 5000s, depending on the template).
MMB 10's selling points on EP's page are flexibility and control: custom reports you build by dragging elements and columns with a live preview, windows you can resize and rearrange, cloud-synced libraries so your most-used setup items are a click away when you start a new budget, and online and offline access to the same data. It requires an EP account login with multi-factor authentication.
Showbiz Budgeting 10 ships with more than 100 customizable templates, which it says cover AICP, major studio and independent formats, and it adds visual helpers: highlight colors on account lines, a SubGroups column that shows which cost area a detail belongs to, and an OT Translator pane that shows straight and overtime rates side by side.
Fringes, globals and overtime
This is where line producers spend their time, and both are deep.
MMB describes infinitely customizable rule sets for fringes, cutoffs and globals, which you can toggle on and off to watch the budget update. That toggle is handy when you're testing a union and a non-union version of the same crew.
Showbiz has globals, sub-groups and fringes, and adds fringe ranges so a cutoff applies correctly over the course of a project for each employee, fringe grouping to apply a set of fringes in one click, and five overtime tiers per detail item with editable multiples.
A worked example of why cutoffs matter. Say a crew member earns $2,500 a week for 20 weeks and a fringe applies only to the first $50,000 of wages. Gross is $2,500 x 20 = $50,000, so the cutoff lands exactly at week 20. Stretch the shoot to 24 weeks and gross is $60,000, but the fringe still applies to $50,000. A budget without cutoffs overstates that fringe on the extra $10,000. Both programs handle cutoffs; the difference is presentation, with Showbiz's ranges set per employee.
Series, locations and incentives
MMB's page lists amortization and pattern budgets managed from one dashboard, which is how episodic series spread costs like standing sets across episodes. It also lets you compare budgets across multiple locations and estimate incentives, useful when a studio is weighing Georgia against New Mexico.
Showbiz uses phases to break a budget and its actuals into distinct parts, for example the portion shot in one state and the portion shot in another, which it says makes it easier to provide qualifying evidence for production incentives. It also has dynamic currency links, where detail items are tied to a currency with an editable exchange rate that updates across the budget. For a co-production spending in dollars and euros, that is useful.
Actuals: Showbiz's clearest advantage
Showbiz Budgeting 10 is built to follow the budget into production. It calls this actualization:
- import payroll expenses from Media Services, CAPS or Showbiz Timecards
- enter credit card, check, EFT and invoice expenses
- import digital petty cash envelopes and purchase orders (Showbiz's PC Envelope and PO Log apps are free)
- tally expenses against each PO and send the PO to the vendor
- export cost reports and calendars as PDF
MMB's product page connects actuals to EP's SmartAccounting, which brings the budget into the accounting environment so actuals are tracked there with a matching chart of accounts. On a studio show with a production accountant, that's the normal split. On an indie where the producer is also the accountant, having hot costs and POs inside the budget program is simpler.
Collaboration
MMB describes cloud-synced budgets you can check in on during production, and managing multiple budgets anytime.
Showbiz Cloud lets you share every part of a budget in real time, even when the owner is offline, with permissions per collaborator: view-only or edit, limited to specific phases, and control over functions like printing, duplicating and saving. It requires the desktop version plus a monthly or annual cloud subscription bought inside the app.
What it costs over three years
| Year 1 | Three years | |
|---|---|---|
| Movie Magic Budgeting, 1 seat annual | $299.88 | $899.64 |
| Movie Magic Budgeting, 1 seat monthly | $515.88 | $1,547.64 |
| Showbiz Budgeting 10, 2 installs | $399.00 | $399.00 plus any Showbiz Cloud subscription |
The MMB figures are $299.88 a year and $42.99 x 12 = $515.88 a year. The Showbiz page doesn't say how upgrades to a future version will be priced, and the cloud subscription price is shown only inside the app, so the three-year Showbiz number is a floor. For a team of three budgeters, MMB is 3 x $299.88 = $899.64 a year, and Showbiz is $548 for three installs.
When to pick Movie Magic Budgeting
Pick MMB if:
- your studio, financier, bond company or accountant asks for an MMB file
- you're budgeting a series and need amortization and pattern budgets
- the production runs payroll and accounting through EP
- you schedule in Movie Magic Scheduling and want elements to transfer
When to pick Showbiz Budgeting
Pick Showbiz if:
- you'd rather buy software than rent it
- you want actuals, POs and petty cash tracked inside the budget
- you budget commercials, live events or multi-currency co-productions
- payroll runs through Media Services, CAPS or Showbiz Timecards, or you have Movie Magic budgets to import
For a small production's first budget
Storiara isn't a replacement for either on a studio show. Its budget is for small productions: a setup wizard, a top sheet with film-style accounts, rates taken from your cast, crew, equipment and locations with gaps filled from tier tables, cast paid days from the schedule's Day Out of Days, and Excel export. It has no actuals, POs or Movie Magic import. Producer is $39.99 a month and includes the breakdown, stripboard and call sheets. See film budgeting software compared, the film budget template, the film scheduling software roundup, and the compare hub.