15 field guides
Guides for the business side of production.
For the people who bid jobs, get them approved, and keep them on budget. Each guide ends with steps to try on one real job and a plain account of what Production Engine does and doesn't do.
No made-up customers, results, or competitor claims. Where a guide describes the product, it says only what Production Engine does today.
Bidding and budgets
Bidding, rate cards, client approval, and turning an awarded bid into a budget.
- Estimating software should make the handoff safer, not just the math fasterA plain guide to picking estimating software for production companies, covering rate cards, approvals, and getting bids into the budget without retyping.
- Your rate card should be the one place rates live, not a copied tabHow a production company keeps crew, gear, post, and markup rates in one place so every estimate prices off the same numbers.
- Give clients two or three real options, not a stack of confusing filesHow to build a good, better, best estimate and give the client one clear link to approve, so the job starts on solid ground.
- The approved estimate should become the job's first budgetHow to hand a won commercial estimate to production as a real budget, keeping the scope, assumptions, options, and sign-off intact.
- Get one money system right before you buy an all-in-one suiteA buyer's guide for 2 to 10 person commercial production companies deciding what software to run their jobs on first.
Comparing tools
Compare tools by the work they take off your plate, not by the length of the feature list.
- Compare production tools by the job they actually runA plain framework for comparing production suites, specialist tools, spreadsheets, and a custom stack of your own tools.
- Keep the spreadsheet until it costs more than it savesWhen a production company should move its estimates and budgets off spreadsheets, and how to switch without losing what works.
- Keep notes in Notion. Keep the job's money somewhere with rules.How to decide what stays in Notion or a flexible workspace and what needs real production software with rules around it.
- Weigh AI estimators against what it takes to write a bid you'd stand behindA plain comparison of spreadsheet templates, experienced estimators, generic AI, and production-specific AI tools for building estimates.
Common problems
Where jobs lose money or track, and how to fix it before adding another tool.
- An estimate version is a client promise, not a filenameA plain way to version production estimates so revisions, options, assumptions, and approvals all stay tied to the number the client saw.
- A stale rate rides into your next bid inside an old fileWhy crew, gear, post, and markup rates drift apart across estimates, and how to catch it and correct it job by job.
- Paid invoices arrive too late to save a job that's going overWhy waiting for paid invoices hides budget overruns until wrap, and what to track instead while there's still time to act.
- Let email deliver the estimate, not decide what got approvedHow to get client approval out of long email threads, while keeping the message to the client short and simple.
- The costliest line in a bid is often the assumption nobody wrote downA practical assumptions checklist for commercial video and photo estimates, covering scope, schedule, labor, locations, post, usage, and client dependencies.
- Margin leaks before the shoot, when risk gets sold as a sure thingA step-by-step way to find where margin leaks in your bids: the hand-off, price overrides, assumptions, and how changes get approved.
Read a guide, then try it on your next job.
Start free with a job you have already bid. If the estimate, the budget, and the wrap don't hold up against how you actually work, you've lost an afternoon.
Plans from $149 a month. If you cancel, your work stays readable.