How-to · Budget
How to read the savings panel
Open the Savings panel in Storiara, read what the Producer Room found in your schedule and budget, apply or decline a suggestion, and see why some close.
Storiara keeps re-reading the schedule and budget and looks for money: a company move that can go, or a cast hold day that a reorder drops. What it finds shows in the Savings panel, opened with the lightbulb button at the top of every page. A badge on the button counts what there is to look at.
Everyone on the project except the Crew (view) role can open the panel. Figures in dollars, and the Producer Room itself, are only shown to roles with budget access.
What the panel shows
The headline is the total found, for example "$18,400 found for you, plus about $6,000 to negotiate". The first figure is savings that were tested against your own schedule and budget. The second is estimates.
Under it is Your producer room: six specialists (1st AD, Line Producer, Locations, Casting & Labor, Post & VFX, and Incentives) that each look at their own part of the project. They meet on their own after the schedule or budget changes, and Ask the room starts a meeting now.
The list has two tabs, To do and Done.
Read a card
Each card is one suggestion: what it saves and what it changes. There are three kinds.
| Kind | How the figure is worked out | Main button |
|---|---|---|
| A schedule change | The strips are moved on a copy of your board. Company moves, cast paid days, and location days are recounted and priced with the project's own rates. | Apply |
| A budget change | The change is run through the budget's own calculation, so fringes and contingency are included. | Apply |
| Advice | An estimate tied to specific budget lines, shown with "≈" in front. It depends on a negotiation or a decision, so it is never shown as a tested saving. | Open budget |
A suggestion is only shown when it saves at least $250. The three-dot menu on a card has Show the math, which lists the lines behind the figure.
Below those, Schedule and budget checks lists rule findings such as short turnarounds, heavy days, split locations, accounts over budget, and untagged incentive spend.
Act on a suggestion
- Click Apply. The schedule or the budget opens and the change is made as a normal edit, so undo reverses it.
- Or click Done if you made the change yourself.
- Or open the three-dot menu and choose Not for us..., then type why, for example "the diner is only free on days 1 and 2". The room remembers the reason and will not suggest it again.
Checks that are not from the room have Dismiss in the same menu.
Why a suggestion disappears
Suggestions close on their own. You do not have to tidy the list.
- If the change is already in place, whether through Apply or by hand, the card moves to Done and reads Already in place.
- If it no longer applies, it leaves the list. That happens when the budget line it was about is deleted or edited so the saving is gone, when a scene it moves is taken off the schedule, when a day it uses is emptied, or when the budget itself is deleted.
- Unrelated edits never remove a suggestion. If you change a line that a suggestion refers to and the saving still holds, the card stays and shows the new figure.
Under Done, Back to to-do is only offered for a suggestion that still applies.
Say the room suggests moving scenes 14 and 15 from Day 6 to Day 3 to save a company move, $2,150. Drag those strips to Day 3 yourself and the card moves to Done. Take scene 15 off the schedule instead and the card goes away.
If it doesn't work
- No lightbulb button: you are in the sample project, or your role is Crew (view).
- No Ask the room button: your role has no budget access.
- "The room did not meet" after Ask the room: the room has a daily limit per project, and it skips a meeting when nothing has changed since the last one.
The Schedule and Budget guides cover the pages the suggestions act on. For the terms, see company move and hold day.
Last updated October 4, 2026