Reasonable expenses

[finchy]

Hey guys,

This is abit of a random question... but i was working for a massive London production company who were shooting a big budget TV commercial in my city last week.

They got me/my company in to undertake the casting (videos) and also street casting of extras for this commercial. I basically wanted to know if you would consider this as a reasonable expenses to give to them....?

Basically i had to street cast around 40 people in about 7 hours and because it was so hectic and so manic i was on my phone, texting and emailing from my phone allll day. Basically it was coming to the end of the day when i needed to deliver the details of all these extras....
This meant that i was on my phone ALOT and basically as some of you will know iphone batteries die quite quickly with use. I basically had to dash to the apple store and buy a 2nd charger to plug my phone into my macbook while i was compiling all of the info etc etc.

Is it reasonable of me to issue that receipt to the Prod' comp as an expense considering i wouldn't have needed to purchase it if i wasn't working for them...?


Sorry for the long winded question but i basically don't want to send it to them and have them think i am taking the piss... haha

Thanks for any input

Tom

 

[Tommy K]

My opinion is no. I don't know your financial agreement with them or how you were hired although. But.. Your equipment expense was the cost of doing business and delivering the job as agreed upon. Unless they agreed to a cost plus type arrangement...

Did this charger make a dent in your profit? I just bought a charger for a family members phone for $15 USD...

I never charge someone extra unless it was mentioned or agreed upon up front...

 

[finchy]

They are covering the costs of our camera tapes, dvds, travel etc
It only cost £15 but it was money that i didn't need to spend as i mentioned and although it will be useful to me in the future no doubt... i would have been phone-less at a critical time of the day when i needed to be in contact with people etc and would have caused problems and hassle for me and others.
It was an unforeseen expense but under the pressure of the day, it was the only way that i could keep myself mobile and in contact when i needed to be.

Thanks

Tom

 

[MPB]

i agree with Tommy. although i would charge extra if extra equipment or service is required. but not for my phone.

 

[finchy]

I understand what you guys are saying and thanks!

Its just that working as a freelancer for a company... from my pov, they should cover my expenses that i incurred from doing the job. Obviously it is on the board line of what i 'needed' but in that situation it was required... It's not like i went for a 3 course meal and claimed that i 'needed' it for work haha.

If i was a camera operator on the day then of course a phone charger wouldn't be needed, but the fact is that i was making a receiving phone calls constantly to arrange cast and extras for the production....

Cheers

Tom

 

[Huy Vu]

Its just that working as a freelancer for a company... from my pov, they should cover my expenses that i incurred from doing the job.

If you were hired to shoot an all day event and you run out of battery for your camera half way through and were forced to buy another battery to keep going, would you bill that to the client or would you blame yourself for not having enough battery? I feel like these types of things needed to be anticipated well in advance and planned for by you. I mean, they told you the amount of hours you would be working and you're aware of the amount of work that you have to do right? So as long as you don't end up having to do anything extra beyond the agreement, how you do it and how much it will cost to do it should have been accounted for in advance.

 

[JonathanLB]

That is not a reasonable expense, no. That's your problem you ran out of battery not theirs. You agreed to do something in a business where this happens often. I've had the week leading up to production on a music video where I was on the phone 6-8 hours per day, every day, with like 10 different people over and over, trying to get details finalized, or vendors and locations, etc. That's just how it goes.

You are acting like anything you possibly needed to finish the job is "an expense." Well if your pants tore, and you couldn't walk down the street without pants, so you had to buy new pants to finish the job, how is that their problem? Or maybe you are allergic to pollen and you had to go get some allergy medicine mid-day to keep doing your job. That's still your problem. Or you blew a tire while driving from one place to another "on the job." It's not a reasonable expense unless it's something like, "We needed 5 tapes to record all of this footage and here is the receipt for the 5 tapes."

I've had plenty of times where I have to sacrifice some profits to get equipment or software I need to do my job. It's not the client's problem that I don't have CS3 and I need it (back in '08, this happened) to do the job, that's my problem, I'm the production company and agreed to do the project. But at least the next time we needed it after that, I had it.