Project and client portal software for media production companies

Where does a production company lose time and margin?

A production runs across too many places. The brief is in an email, the schedule is in a spreadsheet, the cuts are in shared links and the feedback is in a messaging app. Producers become the glue between them.

• Producers spend their day answering "where is it up to?" in place of producing.
• A client comments on an old cut, so the editor does a round nobody quoted for.
• Approval arrives as a voice note, and three weeks later nobody agrees on what was signed off.
• Margin on a job is only known after it has wrapped, when it is too late to act.

These are system problems, not people problems. Our media and entertainment page covers the sector more widely.

Which three solutions fit a production company?

What is it worth? Do the sum

The leak, in an owner's words: "My producers spend half the week chasing files and feedback, and the answer always seems to be another coordinator." This is what the internal tool and portal do about it.

1. A confirmed job becomes a project with its shoots, edit stages and tasks already laid out.
2. Each task has an owner and a due date, so status is read from the tool and not asked for.
3. A finished cut is published to the client portal as a numbered version.
4. The client leaves feedback on that version. It lands as tasks for the editor.
5. The client approves in the portal, and the project moves to the next stage without a producer relaying it.

The lever is time back. The sum is hours a week, multiplied by hourly cost, multiplied by 52, and it has to end in pounds.

What to count	Example figure
Producers	3
Hours a week each spends chasing status, files and feedback	5
Hourly cost of a producer	£30
Weeks in a year	52
Worth (3 × 5 × £30 × 52)	£23,400 a year

Example figures. Swap in your own. These are made-up round numbers that show the method. They are not a result, an average or a benchmark.

Time is never the last line. In this example, £23,400 a year is a large part of a coordinator hire you do not make, or it is more projects carried by the team you have.

To get your own number, ask each producer to log one week: hours spent finding files, chasing feedback and updating status. Then count the revision rounds on your last ten projects that went beyond the quote. Bring both to a call. The paid audit then prices each problem in its written report.

When an off-the-shelf project tool is enough

A custom build is not always the right first step. A standard project tool and a file-review subscription are enough when:

• You run a few projects at a time with a small team. A project board and a shared drive do the job.
• Clients are happy with review links. If versions rarely get confused and approvals are clear, there is nothing to fix.
• Your accounts package already shows margin per job. You do not need a second dashboard.
• Your process changes from job to job. Software built around a process that is still moving will be wrong by the time it launches.

A build earns its place when the same job is typed into three tools, when clients need one branded place to approve, or when margin depends on data that sits in separate systems. Our guide to custom software vs SaaS covers the trade-off. If a subscription suits you better, we will say so on the first call.

What does it cost?

Every build starts with a paid audit at £3,000 plus VAT, with a written report within 10 working days. The fee is credited against the build when the build deposit is paid within 14 days of the report. Before the audit we give a range, never an exact price.

Scoped builds run from £5,000 to £20,000. A client review portal for one client type sits between £4,500 and £10,000. Adding staff and freelancer roles, approvals or integrations moves it to between £10,000 and £20,000. An internal tool, portal and dashboard built as one system sits at the upper end, and larger projects are priced separately. See custom software pricing and client portal pricing.

Hosting, storage and software are paid directly to the providers from your own accounts. Video files are large, so the scope sets out whether the portal stores them or links to where you already keep them. The timeline is agreed in the written scope.

What have we built that works this way?

TMMB Academy is a TikTok Shop academy, a different industry from production, but the mechanism is the same: several kinds of people working from one portal. It came to us with fragmented processes, rising software subscriptions and no single system. We built one portal with role-specific workspaces for admins, coaches, creators, sales, assistants and brands, covering onboarding, messages, deliverables and operational alerts.

TMMB was able to take on greater capacity, improve scalability and retention, and reports generating six figures within roughly two to three months (client-reported, shared with permission). Read the TMMB Academy case study.

Your build sits in your accounts, and you own the code and the data. Each stage is set out in our approach.