Four readers, one set of books
A production's chart of accounts is designed backwards from its outputs. The cost report follows the approved budget's account numbering line by line, so the ledger is coded to that structure from the first prep invoice, not remapped in a spreadsheet later. The credit claim needs every dollar split into eligible labour and everything else. The corporate T2 needs the picture across productions and the overhead that belongs to none of them. End-to-End Accounting for a production company means building all three structures into the coding on day one, because the refund that finances the show is only as fast as the file behind it.
| Reader | What they read | What the ledger must produce |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario Creates & CRA | The credit claim | Eligible labour by individual, with residency support |
| Broadcaster or funder | Cost report vs budget | Costs coded to the approved budget's account lines |
| Completion guarantor | Estimate to complete | Commitments and a defensible estimated final cost |
| Your lender | The credit receivable | A claim clean enough to size an interim loan against |
Eligible labour is tagged when it is paid, not reconstructed at wrap
The Ontario credits are computed on labour paid to Ontario residents, tested at the end of the calendar year before the work, so residency evidence is collected at onboarding while the crew member is still answering emails. Loan-out corporations get documented as loan-outs, because amounts paid to a worker's company are treated differently from wages and the paperwork decides whether they count. Kit rentals, per diems and mileage get split out of deal memos at coding time, since none of them are labour no matter which line of the invoice they arrive on. Do this weekly during the shoot and the claim becomes a report you print; leave it to wrap and it becomes archaeology through paymaster PDFs while the refund waits.
Crew payroll carries fringes most payroll setups have never seen
Film payroll is its own discipline. ACTRA performers carry Insurance & Retirement contributions calculated on gross fees. IATSE and DGC Ontario crew carry their own benefit and retirement remittances under the collective agreements. On top of the union layer sit the statutory ones: CPP, EI, vacation pay accruing show by show, WSIB premiums, and Ontario Employer Health Tax once total payroll clears the $1 million exemption. Most productions run crew through a specialist paymaster such as Entertainment Partners Canada or Cast & Crew, and the accounting job is to reconcile those registers into the ledger, fringe by fringe, so the cost report and the labour schedules agree with what was actually remitted. Dailies who worked three days in February still need a correct T4 a year later, which is a wrap-paperwork problem you solve in February, not the following spring.
Revenue waits for delivery; development costs wait for a green light
Licence fees are earned on delivery and acceptance of the contracted materials, not when milestone cash arrives, so instalments received during the shoot sit as deferred revenue until the deliverables clear. Service production work for another producer is recognized as the work is performed, a different pattern with different HST consequences that our film tax filings handle in detail. On the cost side, development spending on the slate is carried on the balance sheet while projects are alive and written off when they die, so the books show a real slate rather than a museum of dead pilots. Where a funder or broadcaster agreement requires an independently reported cost statement, we prepare ledgers that pass through that process cleanly and can support the corporate side with Compilation & Review Engagements.
Month by month, the company still needs a corporate picture
Between the production ledgers sits the company: overhead payroll, development spend, producer fees flowing in from each show and HST returns that are usually in a refund position while spending runs ahead of revenue. We run the corporate side on QuickBooks Online with receipts captured through Dext and payables released through Plooto, close the books monthly, and keep interproduction balances reconciled so producer fees, assigned development costs and repaid advances all agree from both sides. What you hand a lender in Mississauga or anywhere else in the GTA is a statement they can read without a translator, and that matters because the next show's financing usually depends on how the last one looks on paper.
