Best Budgeting Software for Commercial Bids
A Practical Rundown for Commercial Producers, Bidders, & PM's
Primary Audience: Production
Site Tags: Filmmaking, Bidding, Practical
Intro
When you're bidding (or actualizing) a commercial film shoot, there are a couple of different budget software’s you can use. But it's worth mentioning, almost everyone uses Hot Budget. Regardless, it merits a rundown to see what's out there, how they compare, and what any industry context might be.
Occasionally someone new to the bidding world (whether they be in-house or outer-market) may try to use a format that is a bit outside the lines. Something that's 'more intuitive' to them. These typically don’t work out well.
And it’s worth keeping in mind— if you're bid can't actualize correctly, you're not actually bidding correctly.
Principally a commercial budgeting software does the following with ease.
Work easily w/ the AICP Bid Format
PO's
PC
Freelance day-rates -> Payroll
Top Line Costs with detailed tier and client breakdowns.
To date, there are primarily 2 options for commercial bidding. Hot Budget or Showbiz. And although there are others, they are lesser known, and lesser used.
Hot Budget
The industry standard
As stated, Hot Budget is the industry standard. At this point it's what every other bidding software is modeled after. It's built on top of Excel, and is therefore lightweight and efficient. Utilizing JavaScript Hot Budget utilizes Excel's VBA software and macro plugins to make a straightforward budgeting software.
Context-
Created by Hot Bricks, an expendables company based out of LA. I find it very interesting that the industry’s leading standard for commercial budgets, is also a place that you can rent folding tables from.
Rundown-
Hot Budget does all of the things you want a commercial bidding software to do, with none of the glam. Hot Budget boots up with the AICP template built in, and although I think there's a way to insert other templates (feature-lengths, etc.) I've never had the call to.
Top Page recognized as the industry norm
Easy CSV import / export
General ease of navigation.
Day-rate calculations w/ various Base + OT + Fringe adjustments
Travel Bids, Overage Logs, PO Logs
PC Grids, Payroll Log, Etc, Etc,.
Cost
Hot Bricks charges $100 per year for subscription access to bidding software, per device. For most freelancers in the production game, this cost is written off on the first job of the year. However, I’ve also had the lovely peeps at Hot Bricks throw in an extra subscription, when renting expendables from them.
The Gossip
It's worth noting, that prior to 2023 Hot Budget was prone to bugs. It's 2023 update seems to have solved all of that. The bugs were seldom serious enough to be detrimental to the use of Hot Budget. In fact they were somewhat part of its charm. It's 2023 update (Hot Budget version 3) has been impressive in terms of how uncharacteristically smooth it has made the application. No longer do you see runtime errors, so long are the days of 2014, or 2022 for that matter.
Showbiz
The Visual Alternative
Showbiz is the graphical counterpart to Hot Budget. It of course does everything that Hot Budget does, but with more buttons, more colors and more buttons.
It's level of options are probably what some find frustrating about it. Of course, if you're a grownup this learning curve will pass.
Context-
Showbiz was made by the payroll company Media Services, which was acquired by payroll company Cast & Crew some years back. I don't have many positive things to say about Media Services, but Showbiz is definitely one of them. And the other would be its super useful Showbiz Labor Guides.
Rundown-
Everything that Hot Budget does
Sophisticated Customization Display Options
Sophisticated Customization Calculation Options
Sophisticated Customization Export and PDF Options - PDF a bid side by side with an actual. PDF an actual with costs displayed in various formats.
Vast detail input panes for any line item
The ability to itemize detailed costs in your Working, or Bid
Sophisticated Fringe & OT Presets you can save and apply as needed
A standalone Detail Browser
The PO log is ALSO the PO book.
More sophisticated PC reconciliation
Colors & Buttons..
Everything mentioned is fun. But for me the biggest advantage is its PO book function. From a PM standpoint this eliminates the redundancy of an external PO book, which is the standard Hot Budget workflow.
It should be noted Showbiz also has a standalone PC app, PO app, and Timecard app. It's PC and PO app being free. All three of these seem needlessly superfluous to me, as Showbiz already captures everything you could want in a budget program.
Cost-
The cost has gone up recently. From $350 to $400 for 2x lifetime installations.
Media Services is pretty flexible with the installations. I've removed old installations from old macs, and i've bought extra subscriptions to give out on loan. Giving said subscriptions out, as well as revoking them has been a pretty seamless process, requiring nothing more than a single email to showbiz@mediaservices.com
I've also been able to email Showbiz support staff about technical questions, with pretty quick response times.
Showbiz vs HotBudget
I don't take a hard position for either. Considering Hot Budget's most recent update, I have no complaints about it. Hot Budget is simpler, cheaper, more lightweight, and universally understood., So in that sense it's easier to work with. Showbiz is more sophisticated, and allows for more iterative detail exploration. Its PO log doubling as a PO book is definitely a bonus as well
Preferences:
For jobs 1M ↑, definitely Showbiz. On these occasions, the more sophisticated browsing comes in handy.
Otherwise, no preference.
The Lesser Known Alternatives
There are a handful of alternatives worth mentioning.
Point Zero
Point Zero feels like a knockoff of Hot Budget, but only if it was procured from the Hackney Market in East London.
It's best described as Hot Budget with less functionality and appeal. This tracks though, considering the software dates back from the 90's, and it's likely the very thing Hot Budget was modeled after.
The Tech-
Like Hot Budget, Point Zero it is built on top of Excel via Visual Basics Application of Macro's. However it's an older version of excel, so it uses the old school excel .xls, instead of the modern .xlsx's or .xlsb's. For those with a modern 365 subscription, this difference is minutia. But from an architectural standpoint, the old school excels were comprised of binary and did not translate well across software’s or formats. The modern Excel formats are comprised of XML an opensource format, and easily open up on different systems or software types.
Function
Point Zero is essentially Hot Budget with much less functionality. If it "had" any pro's, it would be that it was less buggy than Hot Budget. That is until the Hot Budget 2023 update came around.
Context
Point Zero dates back into the 90's. I've been able to find no official arbiters or odes to its origins. Not so much as a website, or a LinkedIn page exists. After doing some digging into the Point Zero files that I have, I've been able to find this tiny bit of meta data. See screenshot below.
All Rights Reserved to who? I attempted to reach the phone number hidden in the meta data, but unfortunately it seems to be dead.
What i've heard.
Point Zero and Hot Budget were made by the same person
Point Zero was made by a fellow named Jay Wakefield.
If you're familiar, or would like to corroborate some context, shoot me a message or a drop a comment.
True Budget
True Budget is essentially an improved version of Hot Budget. It's smoother, more intuitive, slightly more graphical, and has a handful of added features.
Rundown
It does everything that Hot Budget does
No bugs
Ribbon buttons and functions
Fixes broken sheets
Importable/Exportable Chart of Accounts functionality
PO log to PO book seamless PDF functionality
Travel Budget is built in, and doesn't require appendage like Hot Budget
Crew Headcount Feature
Fine point adjustment of Prod. Fee Feature
The PO Log to PO Book feature is the real standout feature. Especially considering Hot Budget's PO workflow was the number one con, when comparing it to Showbiz.
Context-
Murmur is, that the designer(s) of True Budget, were motivated by none other than repeated Hot Budget runtime errors. Regardless, each of the features comes across as thoughtful and well designed. To date True Budget is very much a lesser known budget software in the commercial bidding game. It's available for free, possibly because of how unknown it is? It's also backed by the folks at Revolution payroll.
Also. Also. I have the sneaking opinion- that Hot Budget's version 3 update came only after the emergence of True Budget. Likely very much because of True Budget.
The Less Relevant Alternatives
I've seen some blogs list other budget software’s, but I’m yet to meet anyone in the commercial world who actualizes their bids in the likes of Movie Magic or Celtx. While they might make good for blog fodder, (or features ?) let's be realistic…
There's also GetActual. It's pitch is that it's a live budget software, and multiple parties can work on the same budget at once. Personally I haven't known cloud limitations to be a significant challenge in my workflows. My concern would be the potential for any lag. I've seen bookkeeping applications suffer from this same feature in Zoho & Quickbooks.
GetActual could hold up though. 🤷♂️ I'm not sure as I haven't used it.
Thoughts
I would be curious to know what live time functionality would look like on Hot Budget or True Budget? Excel itself, does have real time functionality, but this is yet to be implemented in either application.
Recently Python was announced as being available within Excel. Exciting news for programmers. I'm curious to see what affects (if any) it has on bidding excel formats.
All in all, my favorite mentioned is definitely True Budget. It's simple, light weight, efficient, and just graphical enough to increase it's functionality. Also it's an underdog, so you have to root for it. But in all seriousness Hot Budget and Showbiz are always great options as well, they're both well maintained, and remain industry standards. In all practicality, this is typically determined by the EP, or the bidding producer anyway, so if that’s not you, it's helpful to be fluid with all of them.