Can crew members update their own availability?

Currently, availability is logged by the producer in the dashboard. Crew self-service availability is on the roadmap for a future update.

How does the availability conflict warning work?

When you log an unavailable date for a crew member and then try to add them to a call sheet on that date, FirstSlate shows a conflict badge next to their name. It's a warning — you can still add them if you've already worked it out, but you won't miss the flag.

Are rates used in budgeting?

Yes. Rates from the roster flow into call sheets, and bookings accumulate into per-crew payout totals you can track and mark paid. At year end, the 1099-prep report exports each crew member's totals in one click.

Can I add crew who aren't in my roster to a call sheet?

Yes. You can add one-off crew members directly to a call sheet without adding them to the full roster. The roster is for people you work with regularly — it doesn't limit who you can put on a sheet.

All Features

Crew Management·FEAT / 00:00

Manage Your Crew Without the Group Chat Chaos

FirstSlate's crew roster keeps your team organized, your paperwork collected, and your payouts tracked — from first booking to the 1099 export.

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Most producers manage their crew the same way they manage everything else in the early days — a mix of phone contacts, a spreadsheet that's six months out of date, and a group chat that has too many people in it. It works until the group chat has forty messages from the night before a shoot and nobody's sure who confirmed what.

As your roster grows, the spreadsheet breaks. You're looking up the same DP's rate in three different places. You're not sure which email address is current for the gaffer. You send a call sheet to someone who already told you they're unavailable that week.

FirstSlate's crew management replaces all of that. Your roster lives in one place — contact details, default day rates, half-day rates, availability, and onboarding status. When you build a call sheet, you pull from the roster. When someone has a conflict, FirstSlate shows it before you add them. Bookings accumulate into payout totals you can track and mark paid, and the year-end 1099 numbers are one export. No spreadsheet, no group chat archaeology.

How it works

Scene by scene.

SCENE 00:01

Build your roster

Add crew members with their name, role, contact information, and standard rates — or send them a self-service onboarding link and they fill in their own details, upload a W-9, and sign your agreement.

SCENE 00:02

Log availability

Mark dates when crew members are unavailable. FirstSlate shows a conflict warning when you try to add someone to a call sheet on a date they've flagged.

SCENE 00:03

Pull roster into call sheets

When building a call sheet, select crew from the roster. Contact details and rates carry over automatically — no re-entering information you already have.

SCENE 00:04

Send, track, and confirm

Crew receive personalized notification emails. Confirmations are tracked per person. You see who's locked in without sending a single follow-up.

Why it matters

What you actually get.

One roster for every project

Add someone once. They're available for every call sheet after that. No re-entering contact details, no hunting through old emails.

Availability conflict warnings

FirstSlate shows a conflict badge when a crew member has logged an unavailable date that matches your shoot day. Catch it at the planning stage, not the morning of.

Rates stored per crew member

Default day rate and half-day rate are saved on each crew profile. When building budgets, you have the numbers ready — no back-and-forth to confirm what you agreed.

Connected to call sheets

The roster feeds directly into the call sheet builder — crew details, rates, and contact info are all linked. The two tools work as one.

Replaces the spreadsheet

Everything a crew spreadsheet does, the roster does better — and it's connected to the rest of your project workflow instead of living in a separate file.

Payouts and 1099s, handled

What you owe each crew member accumulates from your call sheets. Track it, mark it paid, and export year-end 1099-prep totals in one click.

Who it's for

Whether you shoot alone or with a team.

Freelancers building their first regular crew

Get organized before you need to be. A clean roster from the start saves you from the spreadsheet-and-group-chat phase entirely.

Production companies with large rosters

The bigger the crew pool, the more the roster pays off. Availability tracking and call sheet integration become critical at scale.

Producers who shoot frequently

If you're running multiple shoots a month, rebuilding the same crew combinations over and over is the kind of admin that adds up. The roster makes it repeatable.

Common questions