A production is a company that exists for eleven weeks and pays a hundred people.
Then the production disappears. The record can’t.
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.
Temporary company. Permanent obligations.
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 and everyone disperses. In January somebody 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 production can end. The crew can scatter. The records still have to tell the truth.
The week. The wrap. The record.
- Build the weekDay rates, kit fees, box rentals and per diem resolve into one approved amount per person from the timecards the accountant already reviews.
- Approve by departmentEach department head approves their own crew, and the approval stays attached to the payments it authorized.
- Pay the crewEveryone on the week is paid over the fastest delivery method their account can accept, loan-outs included and kept distinct.
- Carry it past wrapEvery payment stays on the recipient record with tax information attached, so annual totals are assembled continuously rather than rebuilt from bank exports.
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
- Crew day rates115 crew, 11 departments$318,400.00
- Kit fees and box rentals31 crew$27,900.00
- Per diem68 location 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
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.
Wrap should be a closing.
Not the beginning of a reconstruction. Payments resolved, approvals on the record, annual totals current, tax information attached, nothing left open, on the day the crew leaves rather than in January when they are three jobs away and hard to reach.
Worth reading next.
Let wrap mean wrap.
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