MULTI-CURRENCY BUDGETING BudgetMaker has FIVE working currency possibilities. MULTI-LANGUAGE BudgetMaker is simultaneuosly English, German, Italian and French. SAVE AS .pdf BudgetMakerhas a “Save as readable only” function, so that you can send it off as a PDF document, and know that the receiver CANNOT fiddle around with any of your calculations. USER-FRIENDLY BudgetMaker has a user-friendly menu system. Everything works off buttons. SECURITY BudgetMaker has a password-security system, so that only YOU need know the password of the budget you are working on - of course you can give this to others, so they can open the budget as well. This feature can also be disabled by simply erasing the password when saving the budget for any new user. PRINTING POSSIBILITIES With/without your company logo With/without Markup column With/without Total average Markup on Summary Page Short Version of Budget, printing ONLY USED LINES. Only entered items for the cover page will be printed, meaning no lonely titles on the cover page. Each page can be left out or included. Memorised personal settings for printing. Original entered foreign currencies for using BudgetMaker as working document in foreign countries. ANIMATION SECTION Pleanty of commercials involve animation – so we have included this as new feature in BudgetMaker STANDARD VALUES SETTING Simply press the Set Standard Values button. The budget opens with the names of all the Budget items and the Standard Values column – all you have to do is write in your particular standard values for any item e.g. Production Manager 600 (per day) and continue all the way down, entering the values you have "collected" in your company's experience. Once you are finished, hit the "Menu" button. BudgetMaker then does a whole lot of calculating, and then, when it returns to the Menu, you hit the "Start Budget" button - it will open to the first page of the calculations. You will now see all the fields which have Standard Values as GREYED - so you will know that entering a figure here will automatically insert your company's Standard Values. BUDGET RECONCILIATION BudgetMaker has a Budget Reconciliation feature. This has a column for local currency as well as one for foreign currencies so that your recon can be entered during or after the project – the balance is visible in your currency on your Summary page. VISIBILITY BudgetMaker shows the total production costs and the currency you are working in at the top right of the page all the time. WEATHER DAY BudgetMaker's weather day budget is perfect. The entire shooting day“ has been carefully anlalysed with insurance companies to determine exactly what we need on a daily basis as producers – only these items have been included in the Weather day calculations, making them really exact. Tips & Hints for using BudgetMaker We advise you to do the following: Automatic Saving: have this feature installed while budgeting. Excel offers a special feature to automatically save while you work – we think that Office 2001 should have had this feature automatically installed, but it doesn’t. If you go into Extras in Office Excel 2001, you will find it. Install it if you have not done so already. We recommend to have the Auto Save feature set to save automatically every 5 or 10 mintues. Please make sure your Excel 2001 or 98 version has a large amount of RAM assessed to it. We recommend 30.000kb. In Panther and OSX the amount of Ram is automatic. WHEN OPENING BUDGETMAKER, PLEASE CLICK ON THE OPTION "ACTIVATE MACROS" Try to set your screen to have at least 1024 x 768 resolution - this will reduce the amount of scrolling left & right while using BudgetMaker. Have the function “Automatic completion of cell values” de-activated in Office 2001, OSX and Panther – this is a helpful but sometimes annoying feature of Microsoft Excel, where, when you type in a word, it offers you a whole bunch of similar items to choose from which you have typed in the PAST. When budgeting however, this can be a pain in the neck. You will find the option under Excel preferences. Using foreign currencies: You can enter foreign currencies on “both sides” of the budget in BudgetMaker – in local as well as foreign costs. If, for example, you are based in Germany (EUR) and you are planning a shoot in Cape Town (ZAR) and you are flying in an English (GBP) director and a couple of New Zealand actors (NZ$) and you are doing some post work n America (USD) for a client who wants his figures all in Danish Crowns (KRO), you will probably work like this: Enter EUR as your default currency domestic. Enter ZAR as your default currency foreign. Enter ZAR, USD, KRO, NZ$, GBP to the currency settings, based against 1 EUR. Enter KRO as your currency for the entire printout Enter EUR as yur second currency for the printout – for your own records. All your foreign costs, when entered into the Foreign Costs area – the right side – will be automatically entered to BudgetMaker as ZAR – South African Rands. Because you are paying the director directly – you can enter his/her costs on the LOCAL side of the budget by simply typing in his/her fee in the original form – let’s say 10.000,00 and next to the figure, in the yellow column – you enter gbp – this will then be translated to the printout figure - i.e. KRO. The same applies to the actors - NZ$ - and to the post company – USD. But if you wish to include the Post work in Foreign Costs – then simply enter their figures in the right side of the budget and type in USD in the yellow column – the figures will translate to KRO as well…… Excel works cross-platform for Windows & Mac.