What Burn Rate Shows You
Burn Rate reads your schedule, cast, crew, and breakdown, then estimates what each shoot day costs. The top of the tab gives you three numbers: total estimated burn, average per shoot day, and your peak day. The peak day is usually the one worth looking at first, because it is where a schedule change saves the most money. The table below lists every shoot day with its date, scene heading, location, and scene count, then splits the cost into five columns.
| Column | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Cast | Performers working that day, at their day rate, plus P&H and payroll tax |
| Crew | Crew scheduled that day, at their day rate, plus P&H and payroll tax |
| Extras | Background performers on the day, at your per-extra cost |
| Items | Set dress, SFX, props, vehicles, and other breakdown line items |
| Overhead | Location cost and anything else that is not per-person |
Setting Your Rates
Burn Rate needs rates before it can produce a number. It reads the rates on individual crew and cast records first. Where a record has no rate, it falls back to the defaults you set for the production. You configure the fallbacks and the percentages in the production's Burn Rate settings.
- Fallback crew day rate, used for any crew member with no rate on their record
- Fallback cast day rate, used the same way for performers
- Fallback crew count, for early planning before the crew list is filled in
- Per-extra cost, per-prop cost, per-vehicle cost, per-element cost
- Location cost
- Crew P&H percentage, cast P&H percentage, payroll tax percentage
Per-Scene Breakdown
Click any scene to open its cost detail. The dialog shows how that one scene's number was built: which performers and crew it draws, the background count, base camp headcount, and the P&H applied on top. Location cost is editable here. If a particular location costs more than your production default, override it in the dialog and the override sticks between opens.
By Shoot Day and Scene Views
Alongside the table there is a card view. Day cards summarise each shoot day; scene cards do the same per scene. Producers tend to prefer the cards for a schedule review conversation and the table for actually finding numbers.
Exporting to Excel
The Export button writes the whole projection to an Excel file, including the overhead column. Use it when the numbers need to go to someone who does not have G-Casper Pro access, or into a budget you keep elsewhere.
What Burn Rate Is Not
These are estimates for planning, and they are only as good as the rates you enter. Burn Rate does not know about deal memos, kit fees, box rentals, turnaround penalties, or anything negotiated outside the app. It will not match your accountant's cost report, and it is not meant to. What it is good for: seeing which days are expensive before the schedule locks, and knowing what moving a scene actually costs you.