Kit Fee vs Day Rate: Separate Labor, Gear, and Reimbursements
A crew invoice can carry four different kinds of money, and most billing confusion comes from treating them as one.
The client is paying for you, paying to use things you own, covering things rented for their job, and paying you back for costs you fronted. Four different transactions. When they blur into one number, your labor looks overpriced, your gear looks free, and reconciling the invoice becomes a negotiation about things that were never supposed to be negotiable.
The four kinds of money
Labor — your day rate
Money for the worker: your skill, your hours, your responsibility on set. Exists whether or not you bring a single piece of gear. Where this number comes from is its own guide: film crew day rates.
Owned kit — the kit fee
Negotiated money for equipment you own and provide: the camera package, the lighting van, the sound cart. Priced on what the package actually is — there's no standard percentage of labor, and anyone quoting you one is guessing.
Outside rentals
Gear brought in specifically for this production — from a rental house, through you or directly through production. How it's billed (at cost, with an agreed markup, or never touching your invoice at all) follows the agreement.
Reimbursable expenses
Approved costs you fronted for the job: parking, mileage per the agreement, expendables, media. Paid back at cost, receipts attached when required. Not labor, not kit — it's money you fronted for the job coming back to you. How reimbursements are treated for tax purposes depends on how they're handled and reported.
Why blending them costs you
Say a client offers "$1,300 for the day, all in" to a DP with a camera package. Fine — until the next client, who has camera covered, hears "$1,300" as your labor rate and balks at $850. Or until this client's accountant asks why a day of camera work costs $1,300 with nothing itemized. Or until tax season, when your reimbursed parking is buried inside income lines. One blended number creates three future arguments. Separated, each number defends itself.
What it looks like on the deal memo
| Labor: Director of Photography | $850 / 10-hour day |
| Kit: camera package (body, lenses, support, media) | $450 / day |
| Additional gear | Rented by production directly |
| Expenses | Parking & approved expendables, reimbursed with receipts |
Four lines at the deal stage, and every later document inherits them. That's the whole discipline, and it's why the deal memo is where this separation gets locked in — not invented at invoice time.
What it looks like on the invoice
| DP labor — 2 shoot days @ $850 | $1,700.00 |
| Camera package — 2 days @ $450 | $900.00 |
| Parking, stage lot (receipt attached) | $38.00 |
| Total | $2,638.00 |
Anyone reading it — the producer, their accountant, you in eight months — can see what was labor, what was gear, and what was reimbursement. The full anatomy, with deposits and terms, is in how to invoice a production company.
Settle these before you say yes
- What gear is included in the booking, and what's the kit fee?
- What's not included, and who rents it if it's needed?
- How do outside rentals get billed — through you, or production-direct?
- Who carries insurance and risk on each piece, per the actual agreement? Your own gear list and values live in tracking your kit.
- Which expenses are pre-approved, and which need receipts?
- Do prep, travel and extra days carry the kit fee, or labor only?
- How are kit days counted — days on set, or days the gear is committed?
Keep the four kinds of money separate by default
In Production Ledger, labor and kit are separate lines from the start — your kit list drops onto the invoice with its own fee, expenses carry their receipts, and nothing has to be untangled later because nothing got tangled.
Add my labor and kit separately →