Overview

This Standard is about authorising and monitoring production expenditure and preparing and presenting routine and exception reports to decision makers. You will need to confirm the financial monitoring is needed for the production, authorise and monitor routine expenditure against budget.

This Standard is for Production Accounts Assistants.

 

Performance criteria

You must be able to:

  1. check and confirm the production's requirements for processing, recording, storing and retrieving financial and related information
  2. check suppliers’ payments, invoices and reconciliations against purchase orders
  3. authorise expenditure in line with agreed budgets
  4. identify and deduct available balances on purchase orders
  5. obtain additional authorisation for expenditure when the amount requested exceeds the limits of your authority
  6. monitor expenditure against budgets to anticipate and prevent or correct cost over-runs for the duration of the production
  7. clarify the reasons for significant variations from budget and corrective action
  8. check that reports are accurate and up-to-date, whether you or someone else produces them
  9. present reports in the required format and at the required time for different stages of production
  10. identify and report any significant variations from budget, and the reasons for them
  11. maintain communications with suppliers regarding accounts
  12. make recommendations and proposals for action which are realistic and presented in a manner most likely to gain support
  13. summarise and record agreed action
  14. communicate decisions to those who need the information

 

Knowledge Criteria

You need to know and understand:

  1. the types of financial and related information which may be required by a production, and how this may vary with different types of production including feature film versus episodic television drama production or factual/broadcast television
  2. key aspects and industry terminology of each stage within end-to-end production workflows during the production lifecycle.
  3. the roles and responsibilities which colleagues will have in relation to systems
  4. different stages of production and typical spends within pre-production, production and post-production
  5. the difference between above- the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) costs and when they occur
  6. different types of expenditure resources, logistics, cast and crew
  7. processes for authorising expenditure
  8. the difference between the transactions charged to the balance sheet versus those posted to the cost of the production
  9. sources and types of production recording and accounting systems and packages and their suitability to different productions
  10. what controls are needed to ensure the accuracy, validity and integrity of information produced and processed by the systems
  11. why it is important to monitor expenditure against budgets
  12. when expenditure needs additional authorisation and who should give this
  13. what constitutes a significant variation from budget
  14. script and script breakdowns and how these impact on the budget
  15. regional or international budget implications