What sits in the 1000 series
In most charts of accounts, above-the-line lives in the 1000s. A typical breakdown:
| Acct | Category | What's in it |
|---|---|---|
| 1100 | Story and rights | Option and purchase price for the book or script, chain of title costs |
| 1200 | Writers | Screenplay fees, rewrites, polish |
| 1300 | Producers | Producer fees, associate producers, assistants |
| 1400 | Director | Director's fee, prep and post weeks |
| 1500 | Cast | Principal cast salaries, stunt coordinators on some charts |
| 1600 | ATL travel and living | Flights, housing, per diem for the people above |
| 1900 | ATL fringes | Payroll taxes and union benefits on the salaries above |
Account numbers vary between templates, so match whatever your production accountant uses. The groupings stay the same.
A worked example with fringes
Say the lead on a small feature is a SAG-AFTRA performer on the Low Budget Agreement, booked for 4 weeks at the weekly minimum of $2,896 in effect from July 1, 2026. Salary is 4 x $2,896 = $11,584. The union's pension and health contribution, 22% for performers as of September 6, 2026, adds $11,584 x 0.22 = $2,548.48. Payroll taxes come on top of that, so this single cast line is already over $14,000 before any overtime or travel. Those figures come from the SAG-AFTRA 2026 Low Budget rate sheet; see SAG-AFTRA tiers for how the agreements compare.
Why the line matters
Above-the-line deals are negotiated individually and usually locked before prep. That makes them hard to cut later. Below-the-line costs, by contrast, scale with the number of shoot days, so when a budget has to come down, schedules and crew sizes get squeezed first. Producers on low budget films often defer part of their ATL fees through deferred pay or trade cash for backend points. If you do that, show the deferral clearly on the top sheet, because SAG-AFTRA's low budget agreements count deferred compensation toward the total production cost that decides which agreement you qualify for.
Common confusions
"Above-the-line" describes where the cost sits in the budget. It says nothing about how important a job is. Some charts put the casting director or the stunt coordinator above the line, and some put principal cast travel below it. What matters is consistency within one budget, so the below-the-line totals and the ATL totals don't double-count anyone. The film budget template keeps the standard split, and the post on above-the-line vs below-the-line goes into more depth.