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Saturation
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Accounts payable built for production

Invoice capture, approval routing, vendor payments and audit-ready reporting, automated. Your accounting team stays focused on the budget.

80%Less manual AP processing time

AP teams reclaim hours previously spent on data entry, email follow-ups, and chasing approvals.

2xFaster vendor payment cycles

From invoice submission to payment in days, not weeks. Vendors get paid on time, every time.

100%Audit-trail coverage on every payment

Every transaction is logged, timestamped, and export-ready for tax filings and insurance audits.

Everything your AP department needs

Purpose-built for entertainment and media companies. Saturation handles the unique AP challenges of production accounting, from deal memos and vendor onboarding to cost report reconciliation.

Automated Invoice Processing

Capture vendor invoices automatically, match them to purchase orders, and route approvals to the right department heads. No manual data entry required.

Vendor Payment Management

Pay vendors, crew, and suppliers via ACH, check, or wire transfer. Schedule payments to optimize cash flow while keeping every production on budget.

Purchase Order Tracking

Create, approve, and track purchase orders from request to fulfillment. Link every PO to the correct budget line for real-time spend visibility.

Three-Way Matching

Automatically match invoices to purchase orders and receiving reports. Flag discrepancies before payments are processed to prevent overspending.

Audit-Ready Records

Keep approval decisions and payment status on every bill, and export transactions to CSV or PDF for tax filings, insurance audits, and investor reporting.

Multi-Production Support

Manage accounts payable across multiple simultaneous productions from a single dashboard. Allocate shared vendor costs across projects with configurable split rules.

Why film and TV production needs its own accounts payable software

Accounts payable on a production is the job of getting every vendor bill entered, coded, approved and paid, and of making sure each one lands correctly on the cost report. The steps sound like AP anywhere. The conditions are not. A production is usually a single-purpose company with a fixed budget and a short life: it opens in prep, spends most of its money over a few months of shooting, and closes at wrap. Crew wages usually run through a payroll company, so AP covers everything else: stages, camera and grip rentals, purchases, locations, loan-out companies and independent contractors, many of them vendors the production has never paid before and each needing a W-9 on file before the first check goes out.

Coding is the first big difference. A corporate AP clerk codes a bill to a general ledger account and a department. A production accountant codes it to a budget account in the production's chart of accounts, and on a series often to an episode or block as well, because the producer, the studio and the bond company read spend against the budget line. Spend that qualifies for a tax incentive may also need to be tracked by where it was spent.

Approval authority is the second. At a normal company it follows an org chart that rarely changes. On a production, the department head who ordered the work confirms the bill, the UPM or line producer approves it against the budget, and larger commitments go up to a producer or the studio. Crew turn over between prep, shoot and wrap, so the approval chain has to change with them.

The third is time. Corporate AP runs on a monthly close and net terms. A production reports weekly, and many vendors want a deposit or payment before they deliver. Every open purchase order and unpaid bill still counts toward the estimated final cost, so AP is not only a payment function; it is the main input to the cost report. Paying the bill is one step. Production AP software has to keep vendor paperwork, purchase orders, approvals, payments and the budget in the same system, through wrap and the 1099s that follow.

The production accounts payable cycle in Saturation

  1. Step 1

    Paper the vendor before the first invoice

    Before a production can pay anyone, it needs a W-9, bank details and any signed agreements. With vendor onboarding, you send one secure link. Each vendor picks a type (Company, Contractor or Employee), uploads their W-9, signs your NDA or startwork form, enters routing and account numbers that connect to Saturation Pay, and, when payment requests are turned on, submits an invoice as the last step. A dashboard shows who is still missing paperwork, and completed records stay in your workspace contacts for the next production.

  2. Step 2

    Commit the spend on a purchase order

    Stage leases, camera packages, catering and other big commitments belong on paper before the vendor delivers. A purchase order captures the vendor, line items with quantities and rates, the budget category and any supporting documents. Once it is approved, the budget shows it as committed spend, so the numbers reflect money that is promised but not yet billed. Any PO downloads as a PDF for the vendor.

  3. Step 3

    Take in the invoice, code it and match it

    Vendors submit invoices through a payment link or their vendor portal, or you upload them yourself. Project, vendor and budget context travel with the bill from intake onward, and attaching a document fills in the vendor's contact details. When you upload an invoice, Saturation reads the vendor, amount, dates and line items for you to review, and linking the bill to its purchase order means the payment draws down that commitment.

  4. Step 4

    Route it to the department head and the UPM

    Invoices and POs follow approval flows built around who actually holds authority on the show. Conditions route by amount, project or vendor: for example, anything over $10,000 goes to the line producer and then the production accountant, while smaller bills need one approval. Approvers decide from Tasks, one at a time or in bulk, and any rejection reason is recorded with the decision. Flows can also wait a set time or send a notification before the next step.

  5. Step 5

    Run the payment

    Approved bills move into bill pay, which handles the payment itself. Send ACH or domestic wire (international vendors are not supported yet), and pay now or pick a send date. Each payment passes its approval workflow before funds are released, and its status stays visible from needs approval to scheduled, in flight and settled. Vendors follow their own payment requests from a vendor dashboard instead of emailing the office to ask when they get paid.

  6. Step 6

    Post to actuals and feed the cost report

    When a payment linked to a purchase order is actualized, its amount moves from committed to actual on the budget line, and the Committed phase keeps a living ledger of what is still owed, so cost reporting starts from current actuals and commitments instead of a weekly spreadsheet rebuild. Purchase orders and payments keep an activity history, approval decisions are recorded with their reasons, and transactions and bank statements export to CSV or PDF for tax filings, audits, investor reporting and the year-end 1099 work.

Accounts Payable FAQs

Common questions from production accounting teams evaluating AP automation.

Vendors submit invoices through a secure payment link, or you upload them yourself and Saturation reads the vendor, amount, dates and line items for you to review. Each bill is assigned to a project and budget account, and a payment linked to a purchase order draws down that commitment once it is actualized.

Saturation pays US vendors by ACH or domestic wire, typically within one business day, at $0.50 per ACH payment and $15 per wire. You can pay now or pick a send date, and each payment follows your approval flow before funds are released. International vendors are not supported yet.

Yes. A flow can be limited to selected projects, and Condition blocks route each request by amount, project or vendor. Each approval step goes to named members, any Admin or any Editor, and can require one, all or a set number of approvers, who approve or reject from Tasks with any rejection reason recorded.

Every bill and payment is assigned to a project and budget account. Approved purchase orders appear in the budget as committed spend, and when a payment linked to a purchase order is actualized, that amount moves from committed to actual, so the budget shows where each production stands.

Yes. Purchase orders keep an activity history, approval decisions are recorded with any rejection reason, and each flow run shows the path a request took. Transactions and bank statements export to CSV or PDF for tax filings, audits and investor reporting.

Yes. One workspace holds every production, each with its own budget, and the Transactions and Purchase Orders pages filter by project. A single charge can be itemized across several budget accounts when it covers more than one.

Accounts payable in film production is the process of entering, coding, approving and paying every vendor bill on a show, from stage leases and camera packages to location fees and loan-out companies. It differs from corporate AP in three ways: bills are coded to budget accounts in the production's chart of accounts (and often to episodes on a series), they are approved by department heads and the UPM or line producer rather than a fixed org chart, and they are reported weekly on the cost report as committed or actual spend. Crew wages usually run through a separate payroll company.

Usually the department head who ordered the goods or services confirms the invoice is right, the UPM or line producer approves it against the budget, and the production accountant checks the coding and backup before payment. Larger amounts often go on to a producer, an executive producer or the studio. In Saturation you set that chain in an approval flow: conditions route by amount, project or vendor, and approval steps run in order, so each invoice reaches the right people and the decision stays on the record.

Collect a W-9 from every vendor before the first payment. It gives you the legal name, taxpayer identification number and tax classification you need at year end. Form 1099-NEC reports nonemployee compensation paid to unincorporated vendors such as independent contractors, and Form 1099-MISC reports rents such as location fees paid to individuals, once a vendor's payments for the year reach the IRS reporting threshold. The 1099-NEC is due to the IRS and the vendor by January 31. Payments to most corporations are exempt, though attorneys' fees are reportable either way; card payments are reported by the card processor on Form 1099-K; and crew paid through payroll get W-2s from the payroll company. Saturation collects the W-9 during vendor onboarding, attaches it to the vendor's contact record, and keeps payment records exportable for tax filings. Confirm thresholds and edge cases with your tax adviser.

Look for software that codes bills to budget lines rather than only a general ledger, matches invoices to purchase orders and receipts, and routes approvals the way your production assigns authority. It should collect W-9s and bank details before the first payment, catch duplicate bills, pay by ACH or wire, and move paid amounts from committed to actual so the cost report stays current. Saturation does each of these in the same workspace that holds the budget, purchase orders and cost reports, with an activity history on purchase orders, approvals and payments.

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Join hundreds of production companies already using Saturation to manage vendor payments, automate approvals, and keep every dollar accounted for.

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