Production Mogul — film production budgeting and quoting software

Production budgeting software builds and prices a film, video or photo production budget: crew day rates, equipment, locations, post and overheads, in one document you can export as a client-ready quote. Production Mogul does this in a browser, with real market rates built in.

You break the production into departments, price each line at the going day rate for your market, add your margin and your terms, then export a quote the client can read. Production Mogul starts from a brief and builds that structure for you, so the first draft takes minutes instead of an evening.

Rates differ enormously by market. Production Mogul opens with median rate levels for Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Belgium, Shanghai, Dubai and Bangkok, each in its local price level and currency, with live exchange rates and an optional second currency for the client. They are a fast starting point, not a fixed price list, and every line is yours to adjust.

Mark that department pass-through. The cost stays out of your fee base and out of your deposit schedule, and the quote prints it as invoiced separately at cost, so there is no markup to defend.

Yes. Drop in a PDF, Excel, CSV or pasted text and it matches the supplier lines to your open quote. You can rebuild the whole budget from it, or update prices only, with a preview of every change first.

Production Mogul runs free in your browser with no signup and no card. You can build complete budgets in the trial. Exporting, saving and printing unlock with a licence at $19 per month or $190 per year.

No. It runs in any modern browser on Mac, Windows or Linux. After subscribing, a licence key arrives by email and activates in about ten seconds.

The benchmarks show anonymised, aggregated ranges from other quotes in the same market, so you can see where your rates sit against your peers before you send the bid.

It can build the structure and price it against market rates in minutes, which is the slow part. What it should not do is change things you did not ask for. Production Mogul only edits what you name: say remove the kit section and it removes the kit section. If a change strays outside the instruction, the whole edit is rejected and nothing is applied, with five levels of undo behind it.

The standard bid structure US agencies expect, lettered A to P, covering pre-production through post. Using it means your bid lines up line for line against the competition rather than making a client translate your format. Production Mogul can start a budget from the AICP form, a department template, or a blank sheet.

The employer costs carried on top of a day rate: pension, health and welfare, payroll tax, workers compensation and payroll handling. They vary by market, by union status and by department, and leaving them out is one of the most common ways a budget comes up short. Production Mogul carries them per department with editable defaults, which also covers French and Belgian social charges.

Above the line is the creative and rights side: director, producer, writer, talent. Below the line is everything it takes to shoot and finish: crew, equipment, locations, post. Clients and financiers expect to see them subtotalled separately, and Production Mogul does that by default.

Commonly five to ten percent depending on how locked the job is, but the number matters less than defining it. State the percentage, what it may be spent on, who authorises it and what happens to it unspent. Undefined contingency quietly becomes a discount at the end of the job.

The amount payable if a job is cancelled after you have committed time, crew or bookings. It usually sits inside a cancellation ladder: a percentage at fourteen days, more at seven, more at forty-eight hours, full fee on the day. Write it in days rather than dates so it survives a schedule change.

Yes. There are presets for film and video, AI video, photo and print, and AI print, each with its own crew roles, day rates and department structure ready to edit.

It runs in any modern browser, including on a phone, which is useful when a rate question lands while you are on the way to a recce. Nothing is uploaded and your quotes stay on your machine.

Start from the median rates for that market and adjust what you know. Production Mogul carries seeded rate levels for London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Bangkok, Cape Town and Dubai, 229 roles each traceable to a published source, with live exchange rates and an optional second currency for the client.

Your cost lines, your margin and your benchmark comparisons. The client sees a priced document with your terms, logo and colours. Internal numbers stay internal and never print.