What the percentage is made of
- Payroll taxes the employer pays on wages.
- Workers' compensation and any statutory insurance on payroll.
- Pension, health and welfare when the person is hired under a union or guild agreement. Those rates are published by the agreement. They are not the same for every department, and they change when the agreement does.
- Payroll service fees, when you pay a company to crew the job. Sometimes this is inside the fringe, sometimes it is its own line. Say which.
A single blended rate is a shortcut. It works when the whole crew is hired the same way. It is wrong when a union camera department and non-union production assistants share one percentage.
How to set it on the budget
The AICP-format template starts fringes at 35% on labor sections A, B and G. That number is a starting point, not a union scale and not a tax rate. Change it.
- One rate for the job, in budget settings, when everyone is hired the same way.
- A different rate per section, when one department is union and another is not.
- A different rate per line, for a single person whose deal is different.
- A second fringe, when you want payroll tax and pension and welfare shown apart. The template's second fringe starts at zero, because the standard AICP workbook uses one combined rate. Each section can rename the two fringes.
Talent is not crewed this way. Agency fees and talent payroll are their own settings. See production fee and markups.
Fringes in actuals
When you log payroll, the fringe posts to the section as its actual fringe. A section can override that actual if the payroll report and the budget percentage do not land in the same place. Compare them during the shoot, not at wrap.
Confirm the current agreement and your payroll company before you lock the bid. A template cannot know this year's pension rate.