PLYNT for video production companies

A production is budgeted line by line in a spreadsheet — day rates, camera package, location fee, catering, colourist, music licence. The client approves it. From that moment the spreadsheet and reality start to separate.

The gaffer works an extra half day. A second location is added and the first is still paid for. An invoice from the sound recordist arrives three weeks after delivery, when the project is closed in everyone’s mind and the profit has already been counted.

Production companies rarely lose money on the shoot. They lose it in the two weeks after, when costs land against a project nobody is watching any more.

1. The approved budget on the project, not in a file named final_v4.
2. Committed cost as it is agreed, not when the invoice arrives.
3. Freelance crew as a cost per project, with their invoices attached to the same project.
4. Internal hours too. A producer’s three weeks of pre-production is real cost even though nobody invoices for it.
5. Deliverable versions and approvals, so “the client asked for a 30-second cut as well” has a date on it.
6. Receivables. Production is cash-heavy; knowing what is owed and when is not an accounting question, it is a scheduling one.

A production is a project with a value and a client. Crew invoices, kit hire, licences and travel are expenses on that project, entered when they are agreed. Internal time — producing, editing, revisions — is recorded against tasks and approved before it counts, so the film’s cost includes the people on staff, not only the ones who sent an invoice.

Payments and receivables sit on the same client, so the question “which productions have not paid” has one answer rather than three.

Companies that run a separate entity for equipment hire, or a second brand for commercial work, can keep each in its own workspace.

It is not a production management tool in the call-sheet sense: no scheduling board, no release forms, no shot lists, no media asset management, no review-and-approve player. Footage and cuts stay in your storage and review tool and are linked from the task.

It is not accounting software. AI analyses, the sales CRM and private desktop time capture are in development.

Can I compare the approved budget with what was actually spent?

Yes, at project level: the project value against approved hours and recorded expenses, with the basis of each figure visible. It does not model a budget line by line the way a dedicated production budgeting tool does.

We hire most of the crew freelance.

Freelancers are a cost on the project rather than members of the workspace, so the plan price does not move with the size of a shoot. Only people who need to work inside the workspace count as members.

Does it handle per-day rates?

Costs are entered as amounts against the project, so a day rate is recorded as what it cost. There is no day-rate scheduling calendar.

Still choosing between tools? The 2026 comparison guide reads fourteen of them on their own published prices, and the comparison pages go tool by tool.