How to export a budget to Movie Magic

Financiers, bond companies, and studio finance departments usually want the budget as a Movie Magic Budgeting file or as its standard reports. Storiara's budget uses the same structure, so it can write both.

Export the budget file

1. Open Budget under Financing and stay on the Budget tab.
2. Click Export .mmbx in the toolbar above the grid. Any unsaved edit is saved first.
3. The file downloads with the budget's name. Open it in Movie Magic Budgeting 10.

The file carries the full budget: categories, accounts, detail lines, fringes, globals, groups, sets, locations, units, currencies, and charges. It should open there with the same totals you see in Storiara, because both calculate lines, fringe cutoffs, and charges the same way.

Incentive tags go with it as groups. A budget tagged with Auto tag keeps its per-program groups, such as "GA QW". Lines you marked by hand with the simpler Incentive qualified tag export in a single group for qualified spend.

Print the reports instead

If the person on the other end wants paper, not a file:

1. Click the three-dot menu in the page header and choose Movie Magic reports...
2. In Budget reports, pick a Report: Topsheet, Account Details, Category Summary, Chart of Accounts, Budget Summary, Budget Info, Notes, Group Totals, or one of the setup lists (fringes, globals, groups, locations, sets, currencies, units, credits).
3. Choose PDF, Excel, or CSV.
4. Tick the Options you want, such as Suppress zero total accounts or Summary totals only, and any Extra columns, such as Fringe, Original, and Variance.
5. Click Download.

On a TV show's budget the list also has an Episode Totals Report, which gives each episode its own lines plus an equal share of the shared ones.

Bring a file back in

A round trip works both ways. If the budget is revised outside Storiara, click Import .mmbx in the grid toolbar and choose the new file. A confirmation titled Replace the current budget with the file name shows the total stored in the file and the recalculated total. Click Replace budget to accept. Undo brings the previous budget back.

An imported budget is kept as it is, so the Sync button goes away after an import. See how to upload an existing budget for what that means.

Other formats

The three-dot menu also has Export to Excel, which writes a plain .xlsx of accounts and lines with the grand total, estimated tax credits, and net total, and Print, which opens a print view.

If it doesn't work

• Could not export the file with a message that Movie Magic files are not set up means the file format is not available on your account yet. Contact support.
• Movie Magic reports... greyed out means the budget has not finished loading.
• The totals differ after import by a dollar or more? The confirmation says so and tells you the grand total will be the recalculated one. Compare the two topsheets category by category to find where they part.

The Budget guide covers the grid and the film budget top sheet template shows the layout a topsheet report follows.