How do I produce a Production Cost Report for my executive producers?

If you're producing an independent film or documentary, your executive producers will eventually ask for a cost report — one clean document showing how the money was actually spent. ExpenseBot builds it for you from the receipts you've already been collecting, so there's nothing to re-enter.

If your crew agreed to deferred pay (less upfront in exchange for a share of revenue later), this is also the document that proves the budget went into the production — the artifact execs look at before approving those payouts.

What you get

A polished Google Sheet you can share, print, or save as a PDF. The first tab keeps the concise production summary, followed by supporting tabs that let a reviewer inspect the underlying costs without cluttering the overview:

• Cost summary — your total spend, broken into seven production phases: pre-production, above the line, production, post-production, insurance, professional services, and distribution.
• Year-by-year spend — essential for productions that ran across multiple years.
• Top vendors — your biggest suppliers at a glance (camera houses, rentals, post facilities, and so on). Harmless legal-suffix and punctuation variants are grouped for display without rewriting your source rows.
• Cancellations to review — opposite-sign, same-amount transactions from the same normalized vendor within 14 days are flagged as candidates. The report does not delete either row or treat a similar name as proof of a refund.
• Anything needing a second look — receipts that don't clearly fit are listed separately so you can tidy them before you send.
• Signature line — a declaration row to sign and date for your records.
• Expense Detail — every underlying production expense, including its category, Film phase, payment status, evidence status, and source-document link when one exists.
• Optional Canadian worksheet — a separate Canadian production working view. It defaults on for Canadian accounts and off elsewhere, and you can change the checkbox before previewing.
• Contractors — added only when at least one expense is explicitly marked as a contractor or freelancer. ExpenseBot does not assume every vendor is a contractor.

Evidence status and source links are part of Expense Detail, rather than a second duplicate index. ExpenseBot recognizes links stored as a Sheet formula, a direct URL, or Google Sheets cell-level hyperlink metadata.

Making a documentary? The report adds the buckets only docs need — payments to subjects, archive and footage licensing, translation of foreign-language interviews, and research.

What controls the report

The report starts with all applicable expenses in your master sheet that fall inside the date range, even if an expense has already appeared in another report. Expenses marked Personal are excluded.

• A Film tag sets the exact production phase and takes priority over the expense category.
• If an expense has no Film tag, ExpenseBot still tries to group it from its expense category.
• Anything that cannot be grouped appears in the report's review section instead of being silently dropped.

Open Review Expenses to search, change a tag, or change a category. Then return to the Production Cost Report and run Preview again. Generated reports are snapshots, so you can rerun the report after making corrections.

Turn it on (one-time setup)

1. Sign in to ExpenseBot and open Settings.
2. Find "Set up ExpenseBot for what you track" and activate "Documentary / Indie Film Producer."
3. Enter your production name, the date range it covers, and whether it's a documentary, narrative, or commercial.

Generate your report

1. Open your Production Cost Report — the "View report" button on that same use-case card, or from My Reports.
2. Set the date range to cover your whole production (for example, your first year of spending through today).
3. Use Review and retag expenses if you need to correct a Film tag or expense category.
4. Choose whether to include the optional Canadian worksheet. It defaults on when your home country is Canada and off otherwise.
5. Click Preview to see your total spend, the phase breakdown, and anything flagged for review.
6. Click Generate — your report opens as a Google Sheet in a new tab. Use the supporting tabs when a reviewer needs the detailed expenses, contractor schedule, Canadian working-paper view, or source links.
7. Share it, print it, or save it as a PDF (File → Download → PDF) for your executive producers.
8. Sign and date the declaration line at the bottom, and keep a copy with your production records.

The report uses only information already recorded in ExpenseBot. A blank Canadian/non-Canadian field means residency was not recorded; it does not mean zero or ineligible. A statement-derived row may link to the statement rather than to an individual receipt. Add ACH proof or another file from the expense's Documents section in Review expenses. The report can add a Documents & Credits worksheet with those links without creating another expense or changing any total.

If anything looks off when you open it, just reply to any ExpenseBot email and we'll fix it on our side.

Why filmmakers use it

Traditional budgeting tools make you log every expense against a budget line as you go, and most cost hundreds of dollars or a monthly subscription. ExpenseBot builds the same executive-producer cost report straight from the receipts already in your inbox — no manual entry, no new software to learn.

Related guides

• Freelancer solution — most indie filmmakers file as sole proprietors; this covers the tax-filing side.
• Quarterly estimated taxes — paying as you earn when you're self-employed.
• Year-End Tax Workbook — combines your cost report with your year-end tax filing.