Backlot reconciles what each platform said it sent against what your bank actually received, holds back the tax nobody took out, and will not let an undocumented shoot go ahead.
Opens in this browser with a worked example set of books already in it. No account, no email address, nothing installed.
Open the free demo →
The problem
Four platforms with four different cuts, deposits landing days later at amounts that never quite match, customs paid outside any of it, and a tax bill at the end of a year in which nobody withheld a cent. Meanwhile a shoot goes ahead on somebody's word that the paperwork is fine.
withheld. Every platform pays gross, every quarter is yours to estimate, and the bill arrives in April for a year you have already spent.
The platform's cut is computed from what each statement actually charged, never from a rate card — so terms that quietly changed show up as a flag on the row rather than as a shortfall you absorb.
On platform deductions →Clearance is asked as of the shoot date, never as of today. A test that is current this morning and was sixteen days old on the day is a failure, and Backlot says so in those words.
An unexpired identification, a release dated before the shoot, a scene rider, and a test inside the window — as of the shoot date, never as of today. A release signed afterwards is a failure, not a tick. A title inherits its shoot's clearance, and nothing schedules out of an uncleared shoot.
How it works
A file the platform gave you. Never a password — nothing here logs in as you, so your income-producing account can never be suspended because of something we did.
What they said they would send against what actually landed. Everything interesting in this business lives in the gap: the short payment, the deposit belonging to nothing on file, the cut that moved by two points in the last two periods.
A set-aside from every payout at a rate you choose, kept as a number you can see, so the April bill is a transfer rather than a catastrophe.
What it will never do
Not the title bar, not the tab row, not the taskbar, and not the line on your bank statement. You get asked what you do for a living by landlords and loan officers, and this program does not answer for you.
Pricing
This is the only program in the family sold to an individual rather than a business, and it is priced like it.
Your books, your shoots, your tax set-aside.
The same thing, two months cheaper.
For when somebody else does your return.
Flat fee. Your bank statement says Backlot Software — that is deliberate, and it is not a decoration. Your licence key is emailed to you within two working days of payment.
Checkout is our own bitcoin server, not a card processor — nobody we had to apply to and nobody who can close the account. The button takes you straight to it. Give your email address there — that is where your key is sent.
Questions
No, and there is nowhere to put them. You import a file the platform already gives you.
Every tool that asks for your login is asking you to bet your income on their security and their behaviour. We will not ask you to make that bet.
In the page and in the browser you opened it in — and in a file you export whenever you want one. There is no Backlot server holding your clearance dates or your earnings.
That is not an omission. We cannot lose, leak or be subpoenaed for what we were never given.
No. It is bookkeeping software, and it is not tax advice.
What it does is arrive at the end of the year with every statement matched, every deposit accounted for, and the set-aside already held — which is the difference between an appointment and an emergency.
So that nobody ever has to take somebody's word for it on the day.
Open the demo and look at the Neon Room shoot: blocked by two people. Fix both records and the shoot clears, and the title behind it unblocks on its own. Then look at Marcus, who reads clear today and is still blocked, because his test will be sixteen days old on the shoot date.
The demo on this page is the whole program, running on invented records. Paying gets you a licence key — one line of text, emailed to the address you give at checkout within two working days. Paste it into the program and from then on it keeps your own records. Until then, nothing you type into it is kept.
The key is checked inside the page, on your own machine. It never calls us, so there is still no account and nothing about your business goes anywhere. If you ever stop paying, your records stay exactly where they are, read-only, and Export still hands you every one of them.
Open the demo, clear the invented ones, and import a single statement. Ten minutes tells you whether the gap between what they said and what arrived is one you have been absorbing.