Production Incentives Pain Point #3
It's pure agony, I know...but there's a cure!
In my last role with a major media company, part of my job involved encouraging production companies to use production incentives.
It was a tough sell.
Why? A hint:
If you guessed “the nightmare of record keeping and expense reporting,” you’re right!
I feel their pain.
These days, production managers and accountants are stretched to the limit, working across multiple projects with tight deadlines.
They barely have time to handle their regular workload, let alone sift through a mountain of expenses to separate those that qualify for an incentive from those that don’t, then file (not to mention all the pre- and post-work involved).
To quote the head of one production company, “It’s simply not worth it. We’d have to hire an additional production manager just to handle the additional work the incentive requires.”
If you’ve felt the same way, buckle your seat belt, because I’m about to rock your world.
Meet Incentiviiz, your new best friend in the world of incentives (I’ll settle for being second best).
Brought to you by the founders of the cloud-based production management system Conduiit (which is used by clients on productions for HBO, Netflix, Apple+, and Facebook Watch), Incentiviiz simplifies the production incentives application process.
How does it work?
I spoke with Conduiit and Incentiviiz founder Shawn Hamilton to find out. Shawn’s a former production accountant who’s worked at Amazon, Viacom, and HBO, so he knows our pain.
Shawn and team have made it easy. Simply link the platform to cloud-based folders (e.g. Dropbox or Google Drive folders) containing your production receipts and records.
Incentiviiz’s AI tool then goes to work, identifying and extracting expenses that qualify for the incentive in your selected jurisdiction.
Incentiviiz’s easy-to-navigate dashboard is simply elegant.
It tracks your progress toward the incentive’s minimum spend, flags any issues (like transactions lacking receipts or vendor details), and compares estimated versus actual qualifying expenses. It even keeps track of those pesky application milestones and deadlines for you.
What a dream!
How much do you pay for this magic?
NOTHING. As in NADA. ZILCH. SQUAT.
And while I’m no accountant, I’m pretty sure that’s less than the cost of hiring a dedicated production manager.
Instead of charging a fee, Incentiviiz retains a small (we’re talking single digits small) percentage of the incentive collected.
In short, it’s no risk, all reward.
And it makes the whole process easier, more accurate, and more accessible (especially for smaller production companies). When and if an audit rolls around, you can grant the auditor access to your Incentiviiz account to streamline that process as well.
The platform is customized for each jurisdiction’s program, and the Incentiviiz folks are constantly adding to their list of compatible programs.
If you’re an indie producer cash flowing your production, it gets better.
Through Incentiviiz, productions can borrow against their incentive at preferred lending rates via the platform’s banking partner. Funds are dispersed as needed rather than in a lump sum, reducing overall interest charges.
After years of hearing producers bemoan the incentives reporting process, we’re beyond excited to see this solution come to market, and can’t wait to see what the brilliant minds behind it come up with next.
Their Conduiit platform is loaded with cool features, too, including a production expense card and AI-assisted expense tracking and coding.
Want to give Incentiviiz a whirl on your next production? Drop Shawn a line at shawn@conduiit.com, and tell him Carrie sent you!
Have your own production incentives pain points you’d like to share?
Or a cool new product, like Incentiviiz, that addresses them?
We’d love to hear from you. Really!
Film commissions: Want to brag about your incentive in this newsletter?
Just drop us a line at carrie@globalcontentstrategies.com, or via our website.