A production is a company that exists for eleven weeks and pays a hundred people.
Productions pay crew at day rates plus kit fees and per diem, department by department, every week, alongside background, vendors and location fees, to people who are contractors on this job and gone by the next. DiscoFi calculates the week, pays it, and keeps a year of records per person so wrap does not become a filing problem.
Every week is a payroll run for a company that will not exist in three months.
A crew member has a day rate, sometimes a kit fee for their own gear, sometimes a box rental, per diem on location days, and overtime that depends on the call sheet. Multiply by eleven departments. Add background, the vendors, the location fees and the loan-outs, each on their own paperwork. The production accountant assembles that every week from timecards that arrive late.
Then the show wraps, everyone disperses, and in January someone has to produce accurate annual totals for a hundred contractors who have moved on to three other productions and changed their bank details twice. The payout system that made the weekly run bearable is usually not the system that remembers any of this.
The week, and the year, in one system.
- Build the weekDay rates, kit fees, box rentals and per diem resolve per crew member into one payable amount, department by department.
- Approve by departmentDepartment heads and the production accountant approve what they own, and every approval is recorded against the week.
- Pay the crewEveryone on the call sheet is paid to their own account, built for instant delivery.
- Carry it to wrapPayments roll into an annual total per person with their tax information attached, so wrap is a closing rather than a reconstruction.
Every payout is built for instant delivery.* See Instant Pay disclosure Your team decides who gets paid and how much; the payout API handles everything after that.
What a production week settles like.
Production week, illustrative
- Crew day rates84 crew, 11 departments$318,400.00
- Kit fees and box rentals31 crew$27,900.00
- Per diemLocation days$19,600.00
- Background46 performers$16,100.00
- Vendors and locations9 invoices$44,300.00
- Settlement$426,300.00
170 recipients · One week · Annual totals carried
Illustrative figures for a hypothetical operation, not a DiscoFi customer or a DiscoFi metric.
Questions this raises.
Can DiscoFi handle kit fees and per diem alongside a day rate?
Yes. Each is a line in the calculation for that crew member, so a single payment reflects the rate, the kit fee and the per diem rather than three separate runs.
What happens to the records when the production wraps?
They stay. Every payment sits on the recipient record with tax information attached, so the annual totals are already assembled when reporting comes due rather than rebuilt from bank exports.
Does this replace our production accountant?
No. It removes the retyping between the timecards they approve and the bank, and it removes the January reconstruction. The judgment stays with them.
What about crew who are paid through a loan-out company?
The loan-out is the recipient, with its own tax information and its own payment details. The distinction matters for reporting, so the system keeps it rather than flattening it.
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