Project management and invoicing

The studio produces the episodes. This one tells you what they cost, what they earned, who must be paid and how much. Two tools, two trades.

What the module does

Projects and assignments

Each episode carries its duration and its contributors. The calculation follows the trade rule: everyone by the programme minute. A 42-minute episode is worth 42 minutes, whatever the amount of dialogue. Except voice actors, paid by the line or by a flat fee. Roles, their calculation bases and their rates are set studio by studio: nothing is hard-wired to our own organisation.

An approved amount is frozen. Correcting a project’s duration afterwards does not rewrite an already-approved assignment: a paid invoice must not change amount behind the back of the person who received it.

Invoicing

An invoice is generated from approved, not-yet-invoiced assignments, or filed freely by the provider. It follows an explicit cycle: draft, submitted, approved or rejected with a mandatory reason, paid. The number is assigned on submission, in the same operation as the counter increment: no gaps in the series, and an invoice rejected then resubmitted keeps its number. Each studio has its own sequence.

Payouts

A provider is paid by whatever means works where they are, not by whatever suits the studio: bank transfer or mobile money, depending on the country and the account. A dubbing crew is rarely in one place: that is the trade, not a region. And a tool that knows only one way to pay forces you out of the software for half the settlements.

An invoice moves to “paid” only on a signed confirmation from the payment provider, never on the mere response to a call: a failed transfer stays due, a reversed one returns to approved.

What the episode earned

Profit and loss per project: direct costs by trade, revenue, result. Fixed costs (salaries, rent, licences, advertising) are allocated by a convention you choose, and which is restated in the result: pro rata to minutes produced, or pro rata to direct costs. Two conventions, two figures, and neither is “the truth” unless you say which one was used.

Supplier invoices read themselves

Drop in a PDF invoice or a photo; the supplier, amount, date, number and category are proposed. Proposed, not recorded: an automatic reading is a proposal, and the dashboard counts only what a human has approved, while showing how many documents and what amount are still awaiting review, so a truncated total is never mistaken for a complete one.

An invoice in a foreign currency is never converted automatically: the amount stays at zero, the value read is flagged, and you enter the equivalent yourself. A €59.99 invoice recorded as 59.99 XOF is a correct number, a wrong unit, and a mistake you approve in one click without seeing it.

Who it is for