Entertainment Partners (EP) vs Saturation (2026): Studio Suite vs Cloud-Native Finance

Entertainment Partners (EP) is the largest production technology and payroll company in the entertainment industry. Its software suite includes Movie Magic Budgeting, Movie Magic Scheduling, EP SmartAccounting, and the EP Mobile app. Saturation is a cloud-native production finance platform built for collaborative budgeting, expense tracking, and contractor payments.

This comparison covers EP's core budgeting and accounting tools against Saturation, including who each is built for, where they differ, and how they are priced.

The EP Production Software Ecosystem

Entertainment Partners operates as both a technology provider and a production services company. On the software side, their flagship products for production finance are:

Movie Magic Budgeting

Movie Magic Budgeting (MMB10) is the most widely used production budgeting software in the film and television industry. It is desktop software that runs on Mac and Windows, used by line producers on major studio productions, streaming originals, and network television. MMB supports complex multi-level budget structures, comprehensive fringe calculations, pattern budgeting for episodic content, multi-currency, and tax incentive modeling.

Movie Magic Budgeting's widespread adoption in studio and network production means that many agencies, studios, and completion bond companies expect budgets to be delivered in MMB format. For productions working within the major studio ecosystem, this de facto standardization makes MMB the default choice regardless of its other limitations.

Pricing: $39.99/month or approximately $299.88/year. No free plan.

EP SmartAccounting

EP SmartAccounting is EP's cloud-based production accounting platform, designed to complement Movie Magic Budgeting for large-scale productions. It handles accounts payable, cost coding, general ledger, purchase orders, and cost reporting. SmartAccounting integrates with Movie Magic Budgeting to create a budget-to-actuals workflow for studio-level productions.

SmartAccounting targets the same market as GreenSlate and Cast & Crew's production accounting products: major productions with full accounting departments and complex reporting requirements. Pricing is quote-based and typically bundled with EP's payroll services for large productions.

EP Mobile

The EP Mobile app provides mobile access to budget and schedule data for productions running Movie Magic. It allows producers and department heads to view (but not edit) budget and schedule information from a mobile device, filling the gap left by Movie Magic's desktop-only architecture.

What Saturation Does

Saturation is a cloud-based production finance platform built for producers who need real-time collaborative budgeting and integrated expense management. Unlike Movie Magic Budgeting, Saturation runs entirely in a browser and allows multiple team members to work on the same budget simultaneously from any device.

Core Saturation capabilities:

• Collaborative budgeting: Line producers, coordinators, and department heads work on the same budget in real time. No file sharing, no version conflicts, no waiting for someone to close the file.

• Fringe calculations: Automatic fringe application to crew labor lines, covering payroll taxes, union health and pension contributions, and workers compensation. Updated for your production's specific rates and union agreements.

• Expense tracking and actuals: Purchase orders, petty cash, daily cost reports, and weekly cost-to-complete reports, all tied to the approved budget and visible in real time.

• Saturation Pay: Direct contractor and vendor payment processing, with each transaction automatically logged against the budget. Note: Saturation Pay handles contractor and vendor payments, not W-2 employee payroll.

• Production banking: The Saturation production card earns 3% cash back on production expenses and feeds directly into expense tracking.

• AICP template support: For commercial and music video productions, Saturation includes AICP account code templates matching the industry standard bid format.

Saturation offers a free plan covering full budget building for a single active project. Paid plans from $25/month add unlimited projects, expense tracking, collaboration, and payment management.

EP vs. Saturation: Feature Comparison

The Core Distinction: Studio Ecosystem vs. Modern Workflow

Movie Magic Budgeting's greatest strength is also its most significant limitation from a modern workflow perspective: it is deeply embedded in the studio and network production ecosystem. Major studios, streaming platforms, and completion bond companies have standardized on MMB format. Producers working on those productions often have no choice but to use MMB because it is required by the financier or studio.

For productions outside that studio ecosystem, including independent features, commercials, music videos, branded content, and emerging platforms, the requirement to use MMB format is significantly weaker. These productions can choose based on workflow fit rather than institutional inertia.

Saturation is optimized for these modern workflows: real-time collaboration across distributed teams, browser-based access from any device, integrated payments, and expense tracking that does not require a production accountant to manually reconcile bank statements against a desktop file.

Real-time Collaboration: Where EP Falls Short

Movie Magic Budgeting is a file-based desktop application. Only one person can edit the budget file at a time. When a line producer and a production coordinator are both working on the budget, they are working on separate copies and reconciling changes manually. When a department head submits a revised estimate, it goes through the production office, which manually enters it into MMB.

This workflow was acceptable when the alternative was paper budgets. Compared to cloud-native tools where collaboration is built in, it creates significant administrative overhead on any production where the budget touches more than one or two people.

Saturation eliminates this friction. Every team member with access sees the same current budget. Changes by the line producer, coordinator, or department head are visible immediately to everyone else. Budget meetings stop being exercises in reconciling different versions of the same document.

For a complete breakdown of how collaborative production budgeting works, see our guide to how to create a film budget.

EP SmartAccounting vs. Saturation Expense Tracking

EP SmartAccounting is designed for major productions with full accounting departments: network television, streaming originals, and studio features. It handles full production accounting including accounts payable, general ledger, and cost coding at the level of complexity those productions require. SmartAccounting integrates with Movie Magic Budgeting to pull approved budget data and track actuals against it.

Saturation's expense tracking is designed for a different scale. It covers what a line producer and production coordinator need to manage spending against the budget during production: purchase orders, petty cash, daily hot costs, and weekly cost reports. It is not a replacement for full production accounting software on a $50M studio feature, but it is the right tool for the vast majority of independent productions that do not have a production accounting department.

For productions using Saturation for budgeting and expense tracking, contractor payments through Saturation Pay are automatically logged against the budget. Production card charges categorize automatically. The result is actual tracking with minimal manual data entry, which is the right approach for productions without a dedicated accountant entering every transaction.

For more on how expense tracking works across production sizes, see our guide to managing film production expenses.

Tax Incentives and Multi-currency: EP Advantages

Movie Magic Budgeting's tax incentive modeling tools are among its strongest features for major productions. MMB allows producers to model the financial impact of shooting in different locations and under different incentive structures directly within the budget, which is essential for international co-productions and productions that are evaluating location choices based on incentive value.

Multi-currency support in MMB similarly serves international productions that are budgeting in multiple currencies and need to manage exchange rate assumptions within the budget itself.

Saturation currently does not include dedicated tax incentive modeling or multi-currency budgeting. For productions where these features are critical, EP's toolset has a meaningful advantage. For productions based in the United States working in USD, these features are rarely needed.

Who Should Use EP Movie Magic Budgeting

EP's tools are the right choice when:

• Your studio, network, or financier requires budgets to be delivered in Movie Magic format

• You are budgeting an international co-production and need multi-currency support within the budget

• Tax incentive modeling is central to your location decision-making and financing structure

• You are on a production large enough to have a dedicated production accountant and accounting department running SmartAccounting

• You need the major studio account code templates that MMB includes

Who Should Use Saturation

Saturation is the better choice when:

• Your production does not have a studio or financier requirement to use Movie Magic format

• Multiple people need to access and edit the budget simultaneously from different locations

• You want expense tracking that connects directly to actual payments rather than manual entry

• You are producing commercials or music videos and need AICP format support

• You want to start without paying, using the free plan for a single project

• You are paying contractors and vendors and want those payments to automatically log against budget categories

Pricing Comparison

Movie Magic Budgeting costs $39.99/month or approximately $299.88/year. There is no free plan and no trial period. For a production company running multiple projects, each person who needs to build budgets needs their own MMB license.

Saturation offers a free plan for a single active project, with paid plans starting at $25/month. For productions running multiple projects simultaneously, Saturation's team and production company plans add unlimited project access and collaboration features.

The cost comparison is closer than it might appear: a line producer and production coordinator both needing MMB access spend $80/month combined on licenses. A production company with three producers each needing access spends $120/month on MMB licenses alone. Saturation's team plans consolidate this cost.

For a direct comparison of Movie Magic Budgeting's features and pricing against Saturation in detail, see our full Movie Magic Budgeting vs Saturation comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Movie Magic Budgeting cloud-based?

No. Movie Magic Budgeting (MMB10) is desktop software that runs on Mac or Windows. It requires installation on each computer and does not run in a browser. EP offers a cloud library feature for file storage and a view-only EP Mobile app for mobile access, but the budgeting software itself is desktop-only. Saturation is fully cloud-based and runs in any browser.

Does Entertainment Partners have a cloud budgeting tool?

EP's main budgeting software is Movie Magic Budgeting, which is a desktop application. EP SmartAccounting is cloud-based but serves the production accounting function (accounts payable, general ledger, cost coding) rather than budget building. There is no EP cloud-based budget builder equivalent to Movie Magic that allows real-time collaborative editing in a browser.

Can Saturation import Movie Magic Budgeting files?

Not directly. Budgets can be exported from Movie Magic in various formats and rebuilt in Saturation, but there is no one-click import of MMB files into Saturation. Productions migrating from MMB to Saturation typically rebuild the budget structure in Saturation using the MMB export as a reference.

Does Saturation have major studio format templates?

Saturation includes AICP account code templates for commercial production and standard production budget structures for film and television. Major studio-specific account code formats are available in Movie Magic Budgeting, which has built-in templates for major studio and network formats. Productions with specific studio format requirements should verify template availability before switching tools.

What does EP SmartAccounting do that Saturation doesn't?

EP SmartAccounting provides full production accounting including accounts payable, general ledger, cost coding, check printing, and comprehensive accounting reports. It is designed for productions with dedicated accounting departments on major network and streaming productions. Saturation provides expense tracking and cost reporting for line producers and coordinators at the production management level, not the full accounting level. Both tools track actuals, but SmartAccounting operates as the production's books of record while Saturation provides the production finance view.

Is Entertainment Partners the same company as Movie Magic?

Yes. Entertainment Partners (EP) is the company that makes Movie Magic Budgeting and Movie Magic Scheduling. EP also provides entertainment payroll, talent payment, residuals management, and SmartAccounting. Movie Magic is EP's production software brand, while EP is the parent company providing both software and production services.

What is the best alternative to Movie Magic Budgeting for indie filmmakers?

For independent filmmakers who do not have a studio requirement to use Movie Magic format, Saturation is the most direct modern alternative: cloud-based, collaborative, with integrated expense tracking and free access for a single project. For more on this comparison, see our full guide to Movie Magic Budgeting vs Saturation.