What is a Budget?

A Budget is Splinde's working file for one estimate: a tree of Sections and Cost Items priced in a single currency, with a status, one Main version plus any scenarios you add, and an Offer Document that turns it into something you can send. It's what a producer builds and works from day to day.

What it's for

A Budget holds every line of a production estimate in one structured place, with a running total that updates as you build. The numbers, the chapters they sit in and the documents sent to a client all come from the same source.

How it works

Read a Budget from the top down: the Budget itself, its Scenarios, the Sections inside them, the Cost Items inside those, and the currencies that price them.

A Budget lives inside a Project. You start one from scratch, from a Budget Template, from Explore a Demo, or by importing a SCoPE Excel file, and each path asks for a name and a Project. Its status, In Progress, Approved, Cancelled or Archived, is set from the Info tab in the sidebar. Every Budget also carries an Offer Document, the client-facing page built live from its numbers. Both Duplicate Budget in the editor header and Duplicate on a budget's row menu on All Projects copy the whole Budget family, Main and every Scenario together, into a new, independent Budget.

Scenarios

Every Budget starts as Main and can grow Scenario columns beside it, for example a four-day and a five-day version of the same job. Each Scenario is a full copy that you change without touching any other column.

Sections

Inside each column, the budget is organised into Sections: named chapters that can nest inside one another and each close with their own subtotal, which rolls up into whatever contains them.

Cost Items

Sections hold Cost Items, the priced lines. A Cost Item has three things:

• A name, such as a crew position or a piece of gear.

• Number fields: Amount, Days and Fee, with a unit column that says what the quantity is counted in.

• AddOns, the extra charges and uplifts that belong to that one line.

Currencies

One Budget Currency applies across the whole Budget. A single line's Fee can still carry its own currency, and Splinde converts it into the total automatically.