Most post-production budgets don’t break from one big overspend.
They leak from a thousand places no one’s tracking.

Not from a bad hire or a rogue episode.
But from tiny inefficiencies that feel normal until they add up.

The Mistakes We’ve Normalized

Every team has them.
They don’t show up in a line item.
They don’t trigger a Slack emergency.

But they cost real time. Real money. Real momentum.

• An editor waits 45 minutes because a link wasn’t sent last night.

• An AE preps a script, only to learn it was the wrong version. Two hours lost.

• A producer approves a cut… but no one logs it, and the mix starts late.

• A clearance request sits in someone’s inbox over a long weekend, and now legal’s in crisis mode.

We don’t call these budget problems.
We call them “Tuesday.”

The Real Problem Isn't Overspending. It's Unmeasured Friction.

What most people miss is this: post overruns often have clean receipts, but murky causes.

You can see the overtime payout.
You can see the rush fee
You can see the retainer extension.

But what caused it?
That’s where things get fuzzy.

Because nobody writes down:

• “4 hours spent finding that one missing Drive folder.”

• “2 people waiting on a mix export that hadn’t even been kicked off.-

• “Multiple re-deliveries because of a missed approval step.”

So we treat them as accidents, or worse, just part of the job
But collectively, they’re the budget.

How We Started Seeing the Churn

When we began auditing post workflows—not just the task list, but the actual sequence of what was happening—we noticed something consistent:
The biggest delays were never where people thought they were.

Most teams assume their problem is editing speed, staffing, or bandwidth.

But what we saw was this:

The real cost wasn’t in the work.

It was in the waiting between the work.

The 6-hour window between a cut being uploaded and someone flagging that it was ready.
The handoff gap between AE and editor.
The silent 3-day stall waiting for a producer who thought someone else had it.

These don’t feel like failures.
They feel like “just how post works.”

Until you run the math.

What Changed Once We Surfaced the Gaps

We didn’t add a new platform.
We didn’t build a better dashboard.
We just mapped the churn.

We built a structure that asked:

• Where are people pausing?

• Where are approvals silent?

• Where are people duplicating effort?

Then we made the gaps visible (quietly, without blame).
Once they were surfaced, most of them resolved themselves.

A Slack nudge here.
An auto-tracker there
A single place to see who was late without anyone needing to chase.

It wasn’t dramatic.
It wasn’t “transformational.”
It was efficient.

And it saved thousands without anyone realizing we’d changed anything.

The Real Win: Budget Kept on Screen

In one show, we cut rework time by 35%.
In another, we dropped the AE headcount by half.
In a third, we avoided two calendar revisions simply by flagging silent approvals in real time.

But beyond the numbers, here’s what really shifted:

• Teams stopped double-checking things that should’ve been obvious.

• Creative leads stopped micromanaging logistics just to protect the timeline.

• Post Sups finally had enough space to do the real work without playing catch-up.

It wasn’t about doing more.
It was about leaking less.

If It Feels Normal, It’s Probably Expensive

The churn I’m talking about rarely feels urgent.
But over time, it becomes the difference between running post… and reacting to it.

If you’re constantly behind despite a good team and a clear plan, this is likely why.
If your AEs feel burned out even though the workload looks reasonable, this is likely why.
If your show keeps running long and you can’t figure out where the money’s going, this is likely why.

None of it looks like chaos on paper.
But everyone feels it.

If you’re starting to suspect your pipeline isn’t broken, and it’s just inefficient in ways you haven’t named yet, you're not alone. We’ve seen it. We’ve mapped it. We’ve helped teams patch it.

Not by adding more.
By removing the churn.

Quietly. Strategically. Without disruption.

And yes, keeping more of the budget where it belongs: on screen.