This is the top sheet for SALT FLATS, a 12-day road drama shooting around Bakersfield. Every account total on it comes from the line-by-line indie film budget, and the same totals appear with a labor and fringe split in the film budget chart of accounts. If you need the basics of what a top sheet is and who reads it, start with the film budget top sheet explained. This page covers how to fill one in, check it, and read it the way a financier will.
What goes in the header block
The header on this template answers the questions people ask in the first five minutes of a budget meeting.
Which script and schedule is it built from? SALT FLATS was locked on 9/25 to the white schedule of 9/23. The blue revisions came out three days later, and when the line producer compares the blue schedule to the budget, the header shows exactly which version the numbers belong to. A locked budget with no version date can't be compared to anything.
How are fringes handled? Here they're inside each account total. Crew carry an example rate of 18%. Cast carry SAG-AFTRA pension and health at 22% plus the same 18% for payroll taxes and fees. A reader who adds up the accounts gets the section totals without hunting for a fringe line.
What's left out? The "Not included" row lists the completion bond, financing costs, tax incentives, deferments, and deliverables beyond a festival package. If an investor's lawyer later asks why there's no bond fee, the answer is already on page one.
Reading the SALT FLATS top sheet
The percentage column is the fastest way to see how a film spends its money, and where someone will push back.
Above the line is $74,414, or 16.5%. The writer, producer, and director are on flat loan-out fees of $9,000, $15,000, and $15,000, so most of the above-the-line money that moves with the schedule is cast, at $33,834. That account is priced at the Moderate Low Budget minimums of $449 a day and $1,560 a week, with 22% pension and health on top.
Production is $262,364, or 58.3%. Production staff (12.6%), camera (10.1%), and electric and grip (8.7%) are the three biggest accounts, and all three are mostly crew labor with overtime allowances. Locations at 7.6% includes $9,600 of catering, which surprises people who expect it to be all location fees.
Post-production is $42,836, or 9.5%. Editorial is the largest post account at $18,936 because the editor starts assembling on Day 1 and stays for 10 weeks.
Other costs are $38,500, or 8.6%, and $16,300 of that is travel and living for the six crew who come from Los Angeles and the cast who travel in. That line is the one a producer can shrink most by hiring locally.
Contingency is $31,886, the amount left under the $450,000 total after every account. That's 9.3% of the $343,700 below the line, and the header says so, because a reader who assumes 10% will look for $34,370. For how producers decide on that percentage, see film budget contingency.
Filling in and checking your top sheet
- Fill in the header before any numbers. Write the schedule version, shoot days, union status, fringe method, contingency basis, and exclusions.
- Copy each account total from the detail budget, with fringes included if that's your method.
- Add each section and compare it to the section total on the detail pages. SALT FLATS production is ten accounts that sum to $262,364.
- Add production, post, and other to get below the line: $262,364 + $42,836 + $38,500 = $343,700.
- Add above the line: $74,414 + $343,700 = $418,114.
- Work out contingency on the basis you named in the header. SALT FLATS has a fixed $450,000 total, so contingency is $450,000 - $418,114 = $31,886, or 9.3% of $343,700.
- Add it for the grand total: $418,114 + $31,886 = $450,000.
- Calculate each percentage from the grand total, and don't be surprised when the rounded shares add up to 100.1% or 99.9%.
- Sign and date it. The approvals block is what makes this version the locked budget.
Top sheet errors a financier will catch
Totals that don't tie to the detail are the most common problem, usually because someone changed a line after the top sheet was printed. Re-run the section sums every time a version goes out.
Contingency calculated on the wrong base is next. If a header says "10% of below the line" and the math uses above and below the line together, the number is too high by 10% of the above-the-line total, which would be $7,441 on SALT FLATS.
A missing version date turns every later conversation into an argument about which budget people are looking at.
Rounded account totals look tidy, but they won't add up to the section totals. Keep the exact figures.
What the top sheet feeds
Once the budget is locked, the totals get spread across the calendar in the cash flow schedule, which tells the producer when each financing draw has to land. During the shoot, the hot cost report tracks daily overages against these account numbers, and the weekly cost report compares actuals and estimates to complete against each line on this page. The post on how to read a film cost report shows what that comparison looks like.
The top sheet in Storiara
Storiara's Budget module opens on a top sheet with account, description, quantity, unit, rate, fringe, and total columns, and a summary bar for above the line, below the line, post, other, contingency, grand total, and net total. Contingency and an optional completion bond are set in the budget setup wizard. If you apply an incentive estimate from the Funding module, the net total shows the budget after that estimate, and that estimate uses a simplified formula that leaves out program caps, so check it against the film office's own rules. The budgeting feature page has screenshots.