The Best Alternative to Entertainment Partners
Meet Wrapbook: The Best Alternative to Entertainment Partners
Searching for an Entertainment Partners alternative? Then look no further than Wrapbook, a modern film payroll company, handling everything from onboarding, compliance, and running payroll – all in one intuitive app.
1. Tailored to Indie Filmmakers
Whether you’re working with Entertainment Partners in NYC or Burbank, EP can process your production’s payroll, onboard your cast and crew, and ensure you’re compliant with the law. By either dialing Entertainment Partners phone number or emailing a staff member, you can receive updates on the status of payments.
Wrapbook gives indie filmmakers and producers full access to their productions’ finances through easy-to-use software and a dedicated paymaster. After onboarding cast and crew through the app, timesheets and expenses appear in real time each time your crew submits them.
Approve invoices, and when you’re ready to run payroll, just click “Run Payroll.” Paying your employees and freelancers takes in seconds, since Wrapbook is one of the few entertainment payroll companies that supports direct deposit.
While Entertainment Partners does produce some software to assist with budgeting and scheduling, they currently do not for payroll.
What is Entertainment Partners Payroll Services?
If you’ve ever worked on a studio film, there’s a good chance you’ve received an Entertainment Partners W2. Since 1976, Entertainment Partners Payroll (or EP) has handled payroll and residuals for nearly every type of production from big budget films to even bigger budget films. As is the case with most film payroll companies, EP’s cost varies because they require you to request a quote.
Recently, Entertainment Partners was acquired by the same equity company that backs CAA, which represents most of the talent they send checks to.
2. Transparent, Affordable Pricing
Like most film payroll companies, Entertainment Partners requires filmmakers to get a quote for their production. This usually includes a weekly fee to use their services, a fee to cut checks, a fee per SAG pension and health report, a fee for onset accounting, plus a percentage of your gross wages.
Once you’ve finally raised enough money to green light your project, the last thing you want to do is spend it on entertainment payroll services.
Wrapbook only charges 0.75% of your gross wages and a one-time setup fee for unlimited access to their intuitive software. And that’s it.
While Worker’s Comp rates depend on the state you’re shooting in, Wrapbook is tailored to productions operating with medium to low budgets so you can stop worrying about paperwork and get back to creating. And since they’re no quote wall, you know you’re always getting the best deal.
3. Smart, Digital Onboarding
Hiring some extra crew members the night before a shoot? No problem. Just have them turn in hard copies of their I9s, fax them over to your payroll company, let a team of accountants approve them, and hope that everything is cleared before the call time.
At film payroll companies like Entertainment Partners, this is usually standard practice.
And perhaps even more frustratingly, onboarding crew and running payroll are treated as two separate entities – despite the fact that they share essential information.
Wrapbook automatically collects forms from your crew and actors when they join your production – all on the app. It then uses that same information whenever a timecard or a pension and health report is submitted to a union.
And when it comes time for tax season, Wrapbook will automatically send out W2’s and 1099s. Utilizing Wrapbook’s direct deposit feature, you can onboard and pay crew in the same hour, versus Entertainment Partner’s lengthy set up time.
4. Automatic Film Fringes
Your production company is based in Georgia, but you’re shooting in Oklahoma, and your cinematographer are based in Florida and union. How exactly do the taxes on that work on that?
After you have everyone on set fill out a stack of paperwork and fax it off to Entertainment Partners in Burbank, their team of accountants will review everything and then provide you with your estimated payroll fringes.
Wrapbook gives you the same answer in seconds.
Drawing from the latest tax codes, Wrapbook calculates employer taxes in the Wrapbook app automatically, so that you can preview your payroll instantly, without ever involving an accountant.
5. Union Approved
Both Entertainment Partners and Wrapbook are calibrated so you’re always up to date with every union regulation, keeping your production 100% compliant.
When onboarding crew, all you need to do is flag your crew members’ respective guilds. And when you run payroll, the Wrapbook app will automatically use this information to calculate pension and health in their payroll preview.
Wrapbook submits pension and health to:
6. Insurance + Payroll
In order to run a shoot, you typically need two things: production insurance to protect yourself from fault and a payroll company to keep yourself compliant with the law.
Besides making onboarding and cutting checks easy, using a payroll company is often required when working with unions like SAG.
While EP can process your payroll, they do not offer insurance at this time.
Wrapbook provides both services under one roof. In addition to providing some of the affordable entertainment solutions on the market, Wrapbook can customize unique insurance packages so you can stay compliant with any union for the lowest cost to you.
Drawing from the latest tax codes, Wrapbook calculates employer taxes automatically and provides worker’s comp insurance, which most insurance agencies do not.
These in tandem make Wrapbook one of the best film insurance agencies.
7. Wrapbook is free to get started
While you might have to wait to get a quote from Entertainment Partners, it’s absolutely free to demo Wrapbook until you process a payment.
Set up your production, collect timesheets, onboard your team, and get everything just the way you like it. Wrapbook only charges a fraction of a percent when you’re finally ready to cut checks or pay out via direct deposit.
And unlike Entertainment Partners Payroll, Wrapbook doesn’t require a payroll bond, so you can pay your crew each week without having to input your entire budget upfront.
Click here to sign up free.
Wrapbook Is The Best Alternative to Entertainment Partners Payroll…
Because it allows filmmakers and producers to put more money into their projects’ actual budget.
Producing a film is a long and difficult process. Entertainment payroll shouldn’t be.
