Your essential tools for managing the money with which your
programme is made are:
- The programme budget
- The cashflow schedule
- The cost report
If you are making an in-house programme for the BBC or an
ITV company, you will prepare your budget and cashflow schedule, and produce
your periodic cost reports, in the forms required by their own internal procedures.
If you are an independent producer commissioned by a broadcaster,
you will prepare your budget, and negotiate and agree it with your commissioning
broadcaster, in a form
originally produced by Channel 4 in the early 1980s (in turn
based on a budget form then used in the UK film industry), and since adopted
for independent commissions by the BBC and the ITV companies. The Channel
4 budget form, again formatted as an Excel document, appears under the Budget
form icon at the end of this page.
Having agreed the budget for your independent production,
you will then have to agree the cashflow schedule, which puts dates on each
category of expenditure in your budget, and thus dictates when you will get
each instalment of your funding from your commissioning broadcaster. The
