If anyone here has ever managed a large project which required a considerable amount of cash flow, I would like to know if you have any references or system suggestions, or even proccesses of managing those assets from the overhead to the team needs. Pin pointing the financial "gate" situations in which initial money is introuduced to a project (based on a buget), further money is needed (For whatever reason),wages ( Although I''m assuming salaries are handled by financial divisions or outside financial assitance),and any other suggestions or details you can thrown in. Thanx -Sage13

I have managed a low-6-figure budget project. The team consisted of 2 programmers, an artist, a sound engineer/composer, and 2 art sub-contractors. All team members were contract workers as we have no actual employees (just 2 partners).

Since the project had a very tight (and immovable) deadline 4 months in the future, I broke the project down by weeks. All team members were paid each week.

We got our first payment when we signed the contract. That had been preceded by several weeks work on the part of 2 project team members. Payments were made to get those caught up, and then with the rest of the initial payment we paid the team each week until the first milestone was reached. We continued to do it that way until the project was completed.

Paying out weekly, while the simplest approach, did add some overhead and paperwork to my workload each week, so I''m not sure I''d do it that way again. Certainly not for a project that stretched 6 months or more.

Since the work was contract, we didn''t have a lot of overhead per team member. Just the occassional advance so that someone could purchase some piece of equipment or software they needed. But that didn''t happen too much.

I created the budget, and tracked all the payments (payroll, advances, and other expenses) in MS Excel.

Not sure if that''s what you''re looking for. Hope that helps.


DavidRM
Samu Games

Thank you for answering David, I just have a few more specific quesitons.

1.) Did you money come from a Publisher, or where you acting as your own overhead and funding out of pocket of the business banking account.

2.) I know you mentioned that you didn''t have to front money much, but in the few situations that you did, could you explain a little more about the middle men involved in handling the passing of funds. Was there a "Producer", or project lead that Handled or Asked for the finances of the "Team" Or was this again you or your partner as the major overhead?


Thanx

peace

-Sage13

1) The money for this project came entirely from a publisher.

2) The project had a producer assigned by the publisher. He was the one who OK-ed the money sent to us (for milestones, etc.). But how the money was handled once it was in our hands was entirely up to us. So any advances we made to team members were handled out of project funds on hand.


DavidRM
Samu Games

OK great. Thanx for your information.

peace

-Sage13