Budgeting
You know what separates an extra cost from a wage premium, and why that decides which one to use.
Extra costs are the costs a person causes without being paid for them — per-diems, hotels, flights, travel. They attach to the same accounts as wages and are defined and applied the same way, but they are calculated completely differently.
A wage fringe and a wage supplement are both **percentages of the wage**. An extra cost is not derived from the wage at all:
**Total = Quantity × Price**
A hotel night costs what the hotel charges, whether the person sleeping in it is a runner or the director of photography. That independence is the whole distinction.
Ask what the cost would do if the wage doubled.
| The cost | Then it is | | ---------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | Doubles with the wage | a **fringe** — statutory on-costs scale with pay | | Rises with the wage, but only when a premium applies | a **supplement** — overtime, night work | | Stays exactly the same | an **extra cost** — per-diems, hotels, travel |
[How fringes and supplements differ](/kb/article/how-fringes-and-supplements-differ) covers the first two.
Everything except the arithmetic:
- Defined once in Settings, applied to individual accounts. - Sorted into groups, ticked from those groups when applying. - Collected into a **Collect In Budget Account** rather than added invisibly to the wage account — see [how collect-in accounts work](/kb/article/how-collect-in-accounts-work). - Assigned at account level only.
So if you know how fringes work, you already know how extra costs behave; only the calculation is new.
The catalogue holds the standard: a hotel night at 180, a per-diem at 45. What varies is *how many*, and that is set per account with a multiplier when you apply it — see [apply extra costs](/kb/article/apply-extra-costs).
That split is deliberate. One "Hotel" definition serves the whole production; the number of nights belongs to the person.
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