Film Accounting Glossary
Cut-off date
What is a cut-off date?
Also called period cut-off, or book close.
A cut-off date is the point at which the books close for a reporting period, so everything after it falls into the next cost report.
Productions set a consistent weekly cut-off, usually a Friday or Saturday night, so timecards, purchase orders, and petty cash all land in the same window. Costs that drift across the cut-off, particularly weekend rentals and wrap-day labor, are the ones that make two consecutive reports look wrong.
Example
The books close Saturday at midnight. A weekend vehicle hold running Saturday into Sunday, and a wrap-day crew meal bought at 1am, both straddle the line. Split them consistently or two consecutive reports will both look wrong.
Figures are illustrative, chosen to show the mechanics rather than to quote market rates.
Where you'll see it
Set once for the whole show and applied to timecards, purchase orders, and petty cash alike, so every weekly report covers the same shape of week.
Common mistake
Moving the cut-off to make one week look better. It borrows from the next report, so two consecutive weeks both misrepresent the picture.
Related questions
- When do production books close each week?
- On a fixed weekly cut-off, commonly Friday or Saturday night, applied identically to timecards, purchase orders, and petty cash.
- What happens to costs that straddle the cut-off?
- They are split on a consistent rule, usually by the date the work was performed or the goods used, so the same treatment applies every week.