Turn 5 Years of Production Receipts into an Executive-Producer-Ready Cost Report
ExpenseBot scans your Gmail for production receipts — B&H Photo, Adorama, RED Digital Cinema order confirmations, travel, catering — and imports PDF statements from closed cards. Auto-dedup, AICP bucketing, Refund Pair detection. The cost report your EPs expect, built from receipts you already have.
Free trial • No credit card • $10/mo flat after
The Problem Every Indie Producer Faces After Wrap
Production wraps. Your executive producers send the email: "Can you get us a cost report by Friday?" And suddenly you're trying to reconstruct two years of production spending from four different credit cards, two of which are closed, a PayPal account you used for festival submissions, and a Venmo history you exported before it expired.
Movie Magic Budgeting is excellent at pre-production budget building — you enter estimated costs by line item before the camera rolls. But it doesn't help you reconstruct what you actually spent from receipts after the fact. If you weren't logging actively during production (and most indie producers aren't), Movie Magic gives you blanks where the numbers should be.
ExpenseBot starts from the other end: your actual receipts. Gmail order confirmations from B&H Photo and Adorama. PDF statements from the Amex card you closed after picture lock. Bank exports covering pre-production through delivery. ExpenseBot pulls them in, deduplicates across sources, and builds the AICP-formatted cost report your EPs recognize.
How ExpenseBot Reconstructs Your Production Budget
Most production spending leaves a digital trail — you just need to find it and consolidate it.
ExpenseBot scans your Gmail for production vendor receipts going back 5+ years — B&H Photo, Adorama, RED Digital Cinema, airline and hotel confirmations, catering invoices, location rental receipts. All pulled automatically.
Upload PDF bank or credit card statements from closed accounts. ExpenseBot extracts transactions via OCR (even from scanned PDFs) and adds them to your production ledger.
The same camera purchase may appear as a Gmail confirmation AND a credit card line item. ExpenseBot matches merchant + amount + date and deduplicates so the same expense isn't counted twice.
Months of personal spending mixed with production spending? The Personal Identifier wizard flags charges that don't belong in the cost report — personal meals, home expenses, non-production purchases — and excludes them before the report generates.
The Production Cost Report
The output is an AICP-formatted spreadsheet your executive producers will immediately recognize — not a custom CSV, not a raw expense dump.
| AICP Phase | What Goes Here |
|---|---|
| Above the Line (ATL) | Producer fees, director fees, principal cast, story / script rights — creative team negotiated before budget lock |
| Production (Below the Line) | Camera, sound, lighting/grip, art dept, wardrobe/HMU, locations, travel & living, catering, equipment rental & purchase, expendables |
| Post-Production | Editorial, sound mix / ADR / foley, music & licensing, VFX, color / DI, archive footage |
| Other | E&O insurance, legal, publicity, festival submissions, deliverables, production overhead |
For documentary productions, the report adds four documentary-specific line items: Subject Releases (payments to film subjects and location release fees), Archive Licensing (Getty, AP Archive, network desks),Translation / Captioning (Rev, GoTranscript for foreign-language interviews), and Research(development phase, scouting, expert consultations).
The report also includes a year-by-year spend breakdown (critical for multi-year productions) and a top-15 vendor table. The Refund Pair Detector automatically flags purchase/refund pairs from the same vendor within 90 days — cancelled flights rebooked, camera bodies returned, rental deposits refunded — so you can review and confirm before signing off.
At the bottom: a Signed Driver Declaration with IRS-compliant substantiation language ("I declare under penalties of perjury that the information provided is true and correct to the best of my knowledge") — the line-item certification your executive producers need before approving deferral payouts.
For a deeper walk through the AICP topsheet format, see our guide to AICP topsheets for indie filmmakers.
Built for How Documentary Filmmakers Actually Work
Not every filmmaker tags expenses meticulously during production. ExpenseBot handles both workflows:
Use the Film tag bundle: Film – ATL, Film – Production, Film – Post, Film – Other (plus 4 documentary-specific tags). Tag created on the Filmmaker tag bundle auto-creates all 8 tags for you. The cost report buckets by tag directly — fastest, most accurate path.
Already have 5 years of expenses in generic categories? The report uses a category-string heuristic to map them: Equipment/Travel/Meals → Production, Software/Music → Post, Insurance/Legal → Other, Professional Fees → ATL. Anything unmatched lands in the Drift Audit section for manual review.
The tag bundle auto-creates with 4 base production tags + 4 documentary-specific tags on first use. No manual setup — open the Filmmaker tag bundle and all 8 categories appear in your tagging panel.
$10/mo vs $500 for Movie Magic
These tools solve different problems at different stages. Here's where each fits:
| ExpenseBot | Movie Magic Budgeting | Saturation.io | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $10/mo flat | ~$500+ (desktop, one-time) | ~$30/mo subscription |
| Platform | Web / cloud | Desktop (Windows/Mac) | Web |
| Primary use | Post-wrap reconstruction from receipts | Pre-production budget building | Active expense logging during production |
| Starts from | Receipts you already have | Blank budget template | Manual entry or import |
| AICP cost report | Yes — generated from actual receipts | Yes — from planned budget | Limited |
| Gmail receipt scan | Yes — 5+ years back | No | No |
| PDF statement import | Yes — closed cards | No | No |
| Tax filing (Schedule C/T2125) | Yes — included | No | Limited |
Honest framing: ExpenseBot complements Movie Magic — it doesn't replace it. Movie Magic is the right tool when you're building a budget before production starts. ExpenseBot is the right tool when production has wrapped and you need to reconstruct what actually happened from receipts. Many producers use both. See our comparison of Movie Magic vs post-wrap receipt reconstruction for the full breakdown.
What You Also Get: The Freelancer Companion
Most indie filmmakers file as sole proprietors or single-member LLCs on Schedule C (US) or T2125 (Canada). The same $10/mo subscription that generates your production cost report also gives you:
Schedule C / T2125 ready. All production expenses already categorized from the cost report — no re-entry at tax time.
Year-to-date net income, suggested set-aside, and countdown to your next 1040-ES payment (Apr 15, Jun 16, Sep 15, Jan 15) or CRA installment deadline.
Catches forgotten recurring charges — Avid, Pro Tools, Adobe Creative Cloud, Frame.io, DaVinci Resolve Studio — the subscriptions you kept running after the project ended.
Track grant income from Sundance Institute, MacArthur Foundation, ITVS, NEA, and other funders. Stripe, PayPal, and direct deposit income captured automatically from Gmail.
See the full freelancer expense tracker for the complete Schedule C / T2125 workflow, including how to separate production income from grant income and deferred crew payout documentation. For a full walkthrough of building the executive-producer cost report, see Documentary Cost Report for Executive Producers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I prepare a cost report for my executive producers?
Walk through ExpenseBot's Production Cost Report: first run a Gmail scan to pull in all production receipts (B&H Photo, Adorama, RED Digital Cinema, travel, locations). Categorize receipts to the four AICP buckets — ATL, Production, Post, Other — using the Film tag bundle. Open My Reports → Summaries → Production Cost Report, enter your production name and date range. Review the Refund Pair Detector — it flags cancelled flights and returned equipment before you sign off. Click Generate Report, sign the Driver Declaration at the bottom, export to PDF, and hand to your executive producers.
Can I track expenses from credit cards I no longer have access to?
Yes — upload PDF statements from closed accounts. ExpenseBot extracts transactions from PDFs (even scanned ones via OCR) and de-duplicates against Gmail receipts to avoid double-counting. This is specifically designed for post-wrap reconstruction where production cards have been closed, accounts consolidated, or years have passed since principal photography. Request a PDF export from your bank's online portal — most banks hold 7 years of statements.
How does ExpenseBot handle cancelled flights or returned equipment?
The Refund Pair Detector automatically flags refund transactions that match an earlier charge from the same vendor within 90 days. Common examples: a flight booked then cancelled in the 24-hour window, a camera body purchased then returned within store policy, or an equipment rental deposit refunded. The report lists every detected pair so you can review and confirm before signing. It does not auto-delete — you decide whether to remove both rows or keep them with a "Cancelled — refunded" note for the audit trail.
Is ExpenseBot a replacement for Movie Magic Budgeting?
No — different stages of the production lifecycle. Movie Magic Budgeting (~$500+, desktop software) is for pre-production budget building: you enter estimated costs by line item before the camera rolls. ExpenseBot is for post-wrap reconstruction from actual receipts: you start with what you actually spent and build the cost report backward from your Gmail inbox and PDF statements. Many producers use both — Movie Magic during production for budget planning, ExpenseBot after wrap for the actual cost report and tax filing.
Your Receipts Are Already in Gmail. The Cost Report Is 3 Clicks Away.
Free trial. No credit card. $10/mo flat after. Every AICP phase, every vendor, every refund pair — in one report.
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