Invoicing for film and photography crew

Crew invoices get held up for reasons that have nothing to do with the work. Production accounting is its own discipline, the person approving your invoice was not on set, and a line reading “DP — 2 days” does not tell them which two days or against which budget line.

This is written from the production side of the desk, because that is where the delay happens.

Bill by the day, and name the days

“Director of photography, 2 days, $1,400” is an invoice someone has to investigate. “DP — 14 Aug, 10hr day” and “DP — 15 Aug, 10hr day” as separate lines is one they can match against the call sheets they already have.

This matters more than it sounds. Production accountants reconcile against shooting days. Dated lines match; a lump sum does not, and it sits in a pile until someone has time to ask.

Overtime is its own line

If you agreed a 10-hour day and shot 13, that is not a bigger day rate — it is three hours of overtime, and it belongs on its own line at the agreed multiplier.

Burying overtime inside a rounded-up day rate is how rates get quietly renegotiated. Show the arithmetic and the number is defensible.

Kit, rental and consumables, separated

Your labour and your equipment are different things to a production, often paid from different budget lines and sometimes taxed differently. Never merge them.

• Kit fee — your own gear, per day. Say what it covers.
• Rental — anything hired in, at cost, with the invoice attached.
• Consumables — media, batteries, gaffer tape. Small, but unrecoverable if you do not bill them.
• Mileage and per diems — at whatever was agreed, itemised.

The fields that get a crew invoice paid

• The production title, exactly as they write it. Not your shorthand for it.
• The PO number if one was issued. On a production with a PO system, an invoice without one does not enter the queue at all.
• Who hired you — the line producer or production manager by name. The person paying is rarely the person who booked you.
• The legal entity, which is usually a numbered production company rather than the studio you think you worked for. Get it off the deal memo.
• Your GST/HST number if registered.

Deposits, and why to ask

For a multi-day booking, a deposit is normal and protects both sides — it holds your dates and it commits theirs. 50% on booking and 50% on wrap is standard for owner-operator work.

For a shoot with significant rental you are fronting, ask for the rental up front separately. Financing someone else’s camera package on your credit card for 60 days is a real cost that nobody is paying you for.

Kill fees

Shoots move and shoots collapse. A cancellation clause agreed before the job — 100% inside 48 hours, 50% inside a week — is the difference between a lost day and a paid one. It is a sentence in the booking email, not a contract.

When you invoice a kill fee, describe it plainly: “Cancellation fee, 14 Aug, per booking terms of 2 Aug”. Vague kill-fee lines get challenged.

When to send it

The day you wrap, not the end of the month. Production accounting runs in waves and the wave closest to the shoot is the one with budget attention on it. An invoice arriving three weeks later lands after the production has mentally closed that period.

What this looks like on the page

Dated lines, overtime separated, kit and rental on their own rows, the production title and PO at the top, and a payment method that is not a mailed cheque.

The Bindery invoice generator has a date column for line items — switched off by default, because a fixed-fee job does not need it, and switched on in a click when you are billing shoot days. It is free, needs no account, and the document is built in your browser.

Bindery is made by a film company, which is why this page exists. The paperwork a shoot day itself runs on — call sheets, releases, breakdowns — is deliberately not ours; see the on-set page for where that lives.