Track Production Costs by Episode, Location, or Shooting Day with Cost Item Labels

An Art Director Assistant works three days on Shooting Day 2, at Location A, for Episode 1. In most budget tools, that line collapses into a single total the moment it's entered: 1.350,00 €. The episode, the location, and the shooting day live somewhere else, on a call sheet or in someone's memory, disconnected from the number itself.

Splinde's new Cost Item Labels and Label Groups keep that context attached to the line. Here's what shipped, how it works, and how to start using it on your next budget.

What Are Cost Item Labels?

A Cost Item Label is a color-coded tag you attach directly to a line item in a Splinde budget. Labels live at the workspace level: create one in any budget, and it's immediately available in every other budget in the workspace, so a category like "Location A" only has to be created once per production company, not once per project.

Assigning a label takes one click. Open a cost item, click + Add Label, and either pick an existing label from the dropdown or type a new name and choose one of ten colors. A cost item can carry as many standalone labels as it needs: the Art Director Assistant line above carries three at once, each shown as a small color-coded chip next to the cost item row.

The label dropdown is fully keyboard-navigable: arrow keys move through the list, Enter selects or creates, Escape closes it. Typing narrows the list to matching labels, and if nothing matches, an + Add Label row appears so you can create one without leaving the keyboard.

What Are Label Groups, and How Are They Different From Labels?

A Label Group is a set of related labels where only one can apply to a given cost item at a time. "Episode" is a natural group: a cost item happened during Episode 1 or Episode 2, never both, so the group enforces single-select among its children while standalone labels stay multi-select and independent of each other.

In the dropdown, groups appear as their own row with a small group icon and a chevron. Clicking a group opens a flyout listing just that group's children, each sharing the group's color, with a checkmark on whichever one is currently selected. Selecting a different child automatically deselects the previous one, since a cost item can only hold one label from a given group.

Creating a group works the same way as creating a label: click + Add Label Group, type a name, pick a color. Add a child inside that group afterward and the color step is skipped entirely: the new label inherits the group's color automatically. Rename or recolor the group later, and every child updates instantly, everywhere it's displayed, without touching a single cost item.

Deleting a group only deletes the wrapper. Its child labels survive as standalone labels, keeping their color and every assignment they already had on cost items across the workspace. Because label and group deletion is workspace-wide and irreversible, both trigger a confirmation modal before anything is removed.

How Smart Subtotals Uses Labels

Smart Subtotals is Splinde's live-updating sidebar view of budget totals, and Labels get their own section in it, positioned below AddOns and above Currencies. Every label in use on the current budget shows up as a row with its percentage share and its euro total, recalculated the moment a labeled cost item's amount, days, or rate changes.

On a two-episode production, that section might show Episode 1 at 46,4% (65.235,22 €) and Episode 2 at 53,6% (75.365,22 €), against a combined budget of 140.600,44 €. A studio partner asking which episode costs more gets a live answer without anyone opening a single cost item.

Label Groups roll up the same way, but as one combined row: a group icon instead of a color dot, showing the group's total percentage and amount, with its child labels indented underneath showing their own individual share. The whole Labels section can be collapsed to a single header when you don't need the breakdown open.

Managing Labels in Workspace Settings

Every label and group created anywhere in the workspace is visible in one place: Workspace Settings → Cost Item Labels. Groups appear as collapsible rows, group icon and name up front, with a chevron to expand and see the child labels indented below. From here you can rename a label or group, change its color, add a child label directly into a group, or delete it, all without opening a budget.

Start Labeling a Budget

1. Open any cost item in the budget editor and click + Add Label.

2. Create or select a label. Type a new name and pick a color, or choose an existing one from the dropdown. To keep related labels together, click + Add Label Group instead and build a group like Episode or Location.

3. Repeat across the budget. Every label and group you create is available in every other budget in the workspace immediately, so the second budget starts with the library already built.

4. Open Smart Subtotals to see the live breakdown by label and by group, updating as the budget changes.

Every Line, More Than One Answer

A single cost item can already answer questions about its location, its episode, and its shooting day, all without anyone rebuilding that structure by hand after the fact. That's the point of Cost Item Labels: the categorization happens once, at the moment the line is written, and every subtotal it feeds stays current for as long as the budget does.