Creating a New Project
Click the "New Project" button on the Projects page.
In the pop-up, you can:
Upload a cover image (optional)
Enter the project title
Choose a template or start from scratch
Click "Create Project" to finalize.
💡 Tip: We recommend creating your own workspace template for a consistent chart of accounts across projects. To do this, click "Templates" on the Projects page, go to "Workspace Templates", and click "Add New Template".
Adding Line Items and Accounts to the Budget
Once the project is created, you can add line items and accounts to the budget table.
If you're starting a budget from scratch, you can add line items by simply hitting "enter" on your keyboard after typing in an ID or Name on the first row of budget table. Other ways to add a new line item is to click the purple "+" at the bottom of the table or right mouse click on an existing line and click "Insert".
💡 Tip: The mouse menu gives you access to many functions you can do on your budget, such as adding a subtotal or markup row, duplicating or deleting a line item, and adding a comment to a line item.
To add accounts (which are containers to hold multiple line items like a folder), right mouse click on a line item and click "Expand". This will open up a view of the account where you can insert line items or additional accounts. Note: Saturation supports nested accounts up to 3 levels. Example: You can have a "Prep Crew" account, which contains a subaccount called "Line Producers", which contains line items "Line Producer 1" and "Line Producer 2".
💡 Tip: Accounts are highlighted in blue on the budget. Simply click on the account to view and edit its details. You can easily navigate from one account to another by using the breadcrumb at the top of the screen.
Moving Line items and Accounts
To move line items and accounts around in your budget, click and hold the vertical dots icon on the left of the row and drag it above or below another row.
Note: Moving line items or accounts from one account to another is not supported at this time.
💡 Tip: Saturation provides a number of keyboard shortcuts to help you access and update the budget efficiently.
Deleting a Line Item or Account
To remove a line item or account from the budget, right mouse click over the item and click "Delete". Deleting an account is irreversible.
Filling in Line Items or Accounts
Once the line items and accounts are set up in your budget, you'll populate your estimates by entering the Quantity, Unit, Rate, Multiplier, and Overtime columns for each item.
Notes:
Quantity is associated with the Unit. So if Unit = "Day" and Quantity = 3, this means 3 days.
Multiplier is associated with the line item itself. So if the line item is "Line Producer" and Multiplier = 2, this means 2 Line Producers.
Overtime calculator is currently based on a Day rate. See this article for more information about calculating overtime in Saturation.
Best Practices
Organize projects into spaces for better management of multiple productions.
Include unique IDs for all line items and accounts to easily reference them. For line items inside an account, we recommend using the ID format of "accountID-#" (e.g., 2000-1).
See it in Action
Check out our YouTube tutorial to learn more about line items and accounts in Saturation.