Decide where the money goes
before you do the math.

It depends on which stage you are at. For the formal budget itself, Movie Magic Budgeting is the industry standard, with fringes, globals, and the account structures financiers expect. Google Sheets is free, handles formulas well, and is the honest answer for most micro-budget films' final tally. StudioBinder ties budgeting into call sheets and the rest of the production office. Storyflow covers the stage before all of those: deciding which departments get money, what the trade-offs are, and what gets cut when the number drops, laid out visually as cards you move between funded, stretch, and cut with references beside the numbers. Many productions decide the shape in Storyflow and then tally it in one of the others.

Yes, the total, not the accounting. The AI's budget workflow builds one table of items, categories and costs with a live total row, and it can export the table as an Excel file whose totals stay live formulas. There are no fringes, globals or cost reports, so the formal budget a financier reads belongs in Movie Magic Budgeting or a full spreadsheet. Storyflow is where the departments, priorities and cuts get decided.

Not during early access. Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with plans from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). A free plan launches before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free, so your producer and department heads can work on the budget canvas. If you need a free option today, Google Sheets is the honest answer for the tally.

They solve different problems and are not really competitors. Movie Magic Budgeting is professional accounting software for film: chart-of-accounts structures, fringes, globals, subgroups, and the output formats studios, bond companies, and financiers expect. If a financier asks for a topsheet, Movie Magic is the tool, and nothing on an infinite canvas replaces it. Storyflow works on the stage before that document exists, when the question is not what the total is but where the money should go. It holds the departments, the funded, stretch, and cut states, and the creative references as movable cards. A common workflow is to decide the shape in Storyflow, then have your line producer build the Movie Magic budget from a plan that is already agreed.

Yes, and that is the intended workflow rather than a compromise. The canvas holds the decision layer: department blocks, line-item cards in their funded, stretch, and cut states, the trade-off connections, and the references that justify each cost. The spreadsheet holds the arithmetic layer: rates, quantities, totals, and the version you send when someone asks for numbers. Drop a link to the sheet on the board so the two stay one click apart, and when a decision changes on the canvas, update the corresponding rows. Keeping the layers separate is clarifying in practice, because a budget meeting about priorities stops being derailed by formula errors, and a spreadsheet session stops reopening arguments that were already settled.

The usual departments are above-the-line costs (rights, writer, director, producers, principal cast), camera, lighting and grip, art and production design, wardrobe, hair and makeup, sound, locations, transport, catering, insurance, post-production (edit, color, sound mix, music), deliverables, and marketing or festival costs if you are carrying them. Indie budgets most often go wrong in the unglamorous rows: insurance, catering, transport, and deliverables are chronically underestimated, and contingency, usually ten percent, is the first thing raided and the thing that saves the film. Laying every department out as a block on a canvas makes the forgotten categories visible as empty space, which is a surprisingly effective way to catch what the spreadsheet template quietly left out.

Investors fund a plan, not a grid. What convinces them is seeing that you know where the money goes, why it goes there, and what happens if less of it arrives. A Storyflow board shows exactly that: departments with visible weight, a funded column that matches the raise, a stretch column that shows ambition with discipline, and references attached to the costs that need justifying. Share it as a view-only link, no account needed, or export it as an image or PDF for the pitch deck. Bring the formal numbers too, as a topsheet from your spreadsheet or Movie Magic, because serious investors will want them. The board answers why, the topsheet answers how much, and you need both in the room.

The honest answer is whatever you decided in advance, which is exactly why the cut column exists. Productions that decide the cut order early, in daylight, protect the film; productions that improvise cuts under pressure tend to shave every department equally, which weakens everything and saves nothing. The usual candidates are the extra shoot day, specialty equipment like cranes and Steadicam, location upgrades, the size of background casts, and original score versus licensed library music. The wrong candidates are insurance, sound, and contingency, which are cheap relative to the damage their absence causes. Keeping the cut order as a visible, ordered column means the twenty-percent-light phone call triggers a rehearsed move instead of a panic.

Yes. Invite them to the canvas and everyone works on the same board, so the budget has one shape rather than a director's version, a producer's version, and a DP's assumptions that never quite reconcile. Invited collaborators join free during early access. Department heads can leave comments directly on the line items they dispute, which keeps the argument attached to the cost it is about instead of scattered across a text thread. For people who only need to see the plan, like investors or an executive producer checking in, a view-only link shows the whole board in a browser with no account. When the shape is settled, export it or hand it to whoever builds the formal budget.