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You’ve assembled the perfect cast, hired a film crew, and enlisted a small army of PAs. But before the camera starts rolling, you’re going to need everyone to fill out a tree’s worth of tax forms. This is just one of the reasons filmmakers use entertainment payroll services.
But distinguishing one entertainment payroll company from another can be daunting as it is boring. While EP and Cast & Crew have been the standard for many years, there’s plenty of other options available to ensure your productions are paid out both on time and according to the law.
Sifting through the benefits and features of each payroll company, we’ve compiled a list of the 8 best entertainment payroll services of 2024.
Wrapbook is a powerful entertainment payroll service that allows you to pay your cast and crew all from your browser, which now has a mobile app for crew.
With your entire production neatly organized on one dashboard, you can easily review expenses, spin up custom time cards, pay people with a click, and share important documents like call sheets with your entire production.
Plus, save on mountains of paperwork with digital onboarding. But a digital onboarding solution goes beyond being wasteful and opting for paperless.
Wrapbook allows you to customize and select the necessary startwork ahead of time.
Choose from existing standardized industry forms or create your own on the fly.
Unlike most entertainment payroll services, Wrapbook is easy to use, fast to wrap, and provides competitive pricing.
Cast and crew love Wrapbook’s direct deposit feature along with the ability to submit invoices and timecards directly from their phones.
If you’re producing a feature film, short, or commercial, then you may have already thought about ABS Payroll.
Tailored to independent filmmakers, ABS Payroll can accommodate everything from explainer video shoots to live theater with its payroll and accounting staff.
In terms of pricing, ABS charges a weekly fee to use its services and a gross percentage based on your project’s scope.
Along with Entertainment Partners, Cast & Crew has one of the most well-known names. Offering a full HR experience, it can run payroll for film and a variety of other industries including television, theater, music tours, and music festivals.
If you’re looking to produce a play or theater experience, consider Cast & Crew, as many Broadway shows use it as their entertainment payroll company.
In terms of pricing, you have to request a quote for your production. That’s why it’s crucial to get a quote from each company on this list to ensure you’re getting the best deal.
Purchased by Cast & Crew in 2016, CAPS Payroll is trying to make the entertainment payroll industry more transparent.
In addition to accounting, it offers electronic time cards and CAPSPay, a digital hours-to-gross tool, where users can spin up reports and submit payroll to CAPS.
While retaining its original name, CAPS is more or less Cast & Crew.
Unlike other entertainment payroll services on this list, your software may not be included for free in your package.
For years, Entertainment Partners (EP) has been the industry standard for entertainment payroll. Handling productions like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to The Office, it’s a well-known name inside studios and Hollywood agencies.
An entertainment payroll company located in Los Angeles, EP can handle onboarding, tax information, and cutting checks for your next production.
You may already be familiar with Entertainment Partners through its production management software Movie Magic Budgeting and Movie Magic Scheduling.
Reach out to EP for a quote.
While some entertainment payroll companies may require you to fax your paperwork off to your paymaster, Greenslate is pushing the entertainment payroll industry paperless.
Much like Wrapbook, Greenslate offers a software backend for timecards, email onboarding, and a digital interface so you never have to scramble for a report.
Plus, Greenslate offers printed checks on site.
The entertainment payroll service has run payroll for big budget features such as I, Tonya and Sorry to Bother You.
Created by veteran production accountants, Media Services offers entertainment payroll services as well as both in-house accounting and on-production accounting.
Like the other entertainment payroll companies on this list, Media Services has run payroll on countless productions for studios like Netflix and HBO.
In addition to its accounting services, Media Services also offers a line of entertainment apps called ShowBiz, which can help tackle budgeting, SAG timecards, and cash flows.
If you’ve worked on a commercial shoot before, there’s a good chance you’ve been paid by The Team Companies. Like Cast & Crew, it’s one of many entertainment payroll companies that supports live music tours and theater.
If you’re working on a project that crosses many mediums, like a stand up special or a live reality event, it’s worth getting a quote from The Team Companies. Among other payroll services, it prides itself as an expert in residual payments.
Outside of its entertainment payroll services, The Team Companies also features software such as StudioBinder to better manage your pre-production.
Entertainment payroll companies can handle everything from paying out your crew to acting as a full-stack HR department.
Unlike traditional payroll, Wrapbook is easy to use, fast to wrap, and loved by crews. The software automates mundane tasks like onboarding, timecard collection, and hours-to-gross calculations, all while giving you access to a supported paymaster to handle complex scenarios.
Ultimately, no two entertainment payroll services are alike. Each will claim it’s offering you the best deal, but it is worth looking through the nuances of digital payments and the real software (or non-existent software) you will be using before deciding who to ultimately work with.
To see for yourself the many services and tools Wrapbook has to offer, check out our demo.
At Wrapbook, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding free resources to producers and their crews, but this post is for informational purposes only as of the date above. The content on our website is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for legal, accounting, or tax advice. You should consult with your own legal, accounting, or tax advisors to determine how this general information may apply to your specific circumstances.
The Wrapbook Team consists of individuals who are thrilled about building modern software tools for creators. We’re a team of compassionate and curious people dedicated to solving complex problems with sophisticated solutions. You can find us across the U.S. and Canada.
