Film Accounting Glossary
Cost to complete
What is cost to complete?
Also called CTC.
Cost to complete is the estimate of everything still left to spend from today through delivery, and it is the judgment call at the heart of the cost report.
It is not simply budget minus actuals: it has to reflect the real remaining schedule, known overages, and department heads' revised estimates. An estimate to complete built by subtraction rather than by asking the departments is how productions get blindsided in the final weeks.
Example
Budget minus actuals says $840,000 remains. Asking the departments produces $1,020,000: construction has a rebuild coming, transportation needs three extra vehicles for the finale, and post has not priced the final VFX shot count. The second number is the real one.
Figures are illustrative, chosen to show the mechanics rather than to quote market rates.
Where you'll see it
The forward-looking column of the cost report, rebuilt weekly from department head input rather than derived by subtraction.
Common mistake
Deriving it by subtracting actuals from budget. That produces whatever number keeps the report tidy, and hides every overage the departments already know about.
Related questions
- How do you calculate cost to complete?
- By asking each department what its remaining work will cost against the current schedule, then summing those estimates. Not by subtracting spend from budget.
- Why is budget minus actuals the wrong way to estimate?
- Because it assumes the remaining work matches the original plan. Any schedule slip, scope addition, or known overage is invisible in that arithmetic.