Cash
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | All the physical money and bank account money a business, or a movie production, actually has on hand right now. |
|---|---|
| Category | Finance |
| Related | Asset, Costs, Cash-Flowing |
Add up every coin and bill in your piggy bank, plus whatever is sitting in your savings account, and you get a single number: how much money you could spend right this second if you needed to. That is what "cash" means for a business too.
Cash is the sum of all the physical currency and all the money sitting in a company's bank accounts, ready to be spent immediately. For a movie, that means the actual dollars the production has on hand or in the bank, separate from its other assets like cameras or trucks. A camera is valuable, but you cannot hand a camera to the crew as their paycheck. Only cash can pay a bill directly, which is why cash is treated so differently from a company's other assets.
Why it gets watched so closely
A movie can look successful on paper, with lots of money owed to it and plenty of valuable assets, and still run into serious trouble if it does not have enough actual cash on hand at the right moment. Payroll, equipment rental, and daily expenses all have to be paid in cash, not in promises or in equipment. That is why production accountants track a film's cash balance closely, sometimes daily, during filming: a single missed payroll can shut a whole set down.
Fun facts
- Cash is often called the most "liquid" asset a business has, meaning it is the easiest one to actually spend, since it does not need to be sold or converted into anything first.
- A production that is confident it will be reimbursed later can sometimes spend its own cash now to keep filming moving, a practice called Cash-Flowing the budget.
- Running out of cash, even briefly, can stop a film production just as fast as running out of ideas, which is why cash is watched more closely than almost any other number during a shoot.