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Shaudi is a Seattle-based musician, theatre artist, writer and social media marketing specialist. She holds degrees from Berklee College of Music and the University of Washington School of Drama.
At Wrapbook, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding free resources to producers and their crews, but this post is for informational purposes only as of the date above. The content on our website is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for legal, accounting, or tax advice. You should consult with your own legal, accounting, or tax advisors to determine how this general information may apply to your specific circumstances.
If you’re a producer, you’re likely familiar with an Employer of Record—commonly referred to as an EOR. You may have wondered if your production company needs one, or whether they’re worth the upfront cost.
An EOR service works in partnership with your production company to administer payroll and employee benefits, as well as to help ensure union and tax compliance. Essentially, an EOR is the statutory employer, while a production company is the common law employer.
Let’s look a little closer at why your production company could benefit from partnering with an EOR.
We recently brought together Wrapbook Co-founder Cameron Woodward and Labor Relations Manager Patrick Delaney for a deep-dive conversation into EOR services such as Wrapbook.
Check out their chat, moderated by Wrapbook’s Event Coordinator Lauryn Harper.
As a former executive producer and co-owner of a production company that shot for brands such as IBM, Levi’s, and T-Mobile, Cameron understands firsthand the pain points producers experience when it comes to finances.
Cameron’s belief that there must be a better way to handle payroll and accounting for film led him to become a Wrapbook Co-founder in 2019.
Patrick is an important member of Wrapbook’s Labor Relations team. He spent a decade as a union representative for the International Cinematographers Guild. He has also worked in labor relations as a consultant.
Patrick has been bringing this depth of union and labor knowledge to Wrapbook’s clients since 2022.
Producers are used to figuring things out. They’re experts at navigating complex tasks, often under pressure. So why not just handle all of the production finances and payroll yourself? Why do you need an EOR?
As Cameron points out, the complexity around paying people correctly is enormous, and it’s a particularly high-stakes brand of complexity. Unless you have specific content knowledge and experience, it can take a lot of time to not only figure out what to do, but also to know the right questions to ask.
Working with an EOR can provide the education you need on how to pay your team compliantly and legally.
Ultimately, investing in an EOR is likely to save you both time and money in the long run, by reducing your risk for penalties and legal issues down the line.
Figuring out tax compliance, particularly on a production, can get convoluted quickly. There are local, state, and federal tax laws to be aware of. These vary from state to state, and there are additional complexities if you’re working in multiple states.
Some of those states, such as California, have labor codes specific to motion pictures. That means you’ll need to follow a different set of rules than if you were working in the state in another industry. You may be working with production partners and have multiple Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) to track. And your production can get hit with hefty penalties if you don’t get all of your tax compliance right.
Fortunately, EOR teams know the ins and outs of all these regulations. They support tax processing and bring regulatory expertise to your production. They also administer worker’s comp policies and support unemployment insurance for your workforce.
So if a cast or crew member gets injured on set and needs to file a worker’s comp claim, your EOR can help facilitate their claims process.
Another component of tax compliance that EORs really come in handy for? Audits. Having all your information organized in a system like Wrapbook’s gives you access to your data really quickly for an audit.
As Cameron notes, your EOR works in partnership with your production, so there are still tax compliance components for which your production company will remain primarily responsible.
Verifying employee tax forms such as the I-9, managing employees on the ground, and worker classification insights are areas of focus for you as the production company. A strong EOR, however, will make these tasks easier with expert-backed advice and feedback.
Closely related to tax compliance is payroll compliance.
Because your production company is on the ground with your employees, you’re best positioned to focus on payroll compliance areas like timecard accuracy, payroll submission processes, and wage and hour compliance.
However, your EOR will typically provide payroll facilitation, including wage calculations, deductions, and help ensuring payments are made accurately and on time.
An EOR should also have a strong awareness of common wage and hour and payroll compliance mistakes. Therefore, it can help you avoid serious penalties by advising you on those errors before they happen.
Patrick gives the example of late payments. If you’re not keeping on top of your established payroll periods and paying your employees on time, you could be subject to some substantial fees. Patrick cites California’s penalties, which can have you owing each employee a day’s wage for every day their payment is late for up to 30 days. That can add up fast.
With the breadth of expert knowledge and tools available to you with an EOR like Wrapbook, however, you decrease your compliance risk significantly and keep your workforce paid accurately and on time.
As Patrick highlights in the on-demand video, navigating union contracts is anything but straightforward.
For most productions, you’ll be working with multiple union agreements, such as those for DGA, IATSE, and SAG-AFTRA. Union agreements can also change based on the type of project you’re working on. So, an episodic SAG-AFTRA agreement might look different from a low-budget feature SAG-AFTRA agreement. That’s already a ton of info to keep track of, and even more so when you remember that these agreements are generally updated every three years.
There are also health and pension funds to contribute to for each union employee. The amount to contribute can vary depending on the hiring location, work location, employee rate group and their own elections. This is particularly important because audits of health and pension funds can come up even years after production has wrapped, potentially leading to serious penalties.
Other common union-related pain points for productions include rest period violations, meal penalties, and navigating wage scales.
When you take all this into consideration, it's no wonder producers often feel intimidated by the complexity of unions. EORs are essential for providing help and guardrails for productions to work through this complexity.
Wrapbook is the next standard for production finance and accounting teams, and Cameron explains exactly how we simplify payroll for our clients:
“Technology can actually make you smarter, faster, and better… At Wrapbook we think of this as a force multiplier for productions. You need an EOR anyway…but a force multiplier is next-gen modern technology met with the concierge service model where you have access to guys like Patrick to understand and get through the nuance, and then have the force of a modern engineering organization who’s rapidly innovating to add value to productions.”
In other words, Wrapbook is an EOR, but we’re also more than that. We are a force multiplier that can help your production accounting and payroll team achieve success faster and easier.
Big thanks to Cameron and Patrick for taking the time to get us all up to speed on what EORs can do for production companies.
If you haven’t seen Wrapbook in action yet, feel free to book a demo or connect with our team—we’d love to talk through any questions you have.
And if you liked this virtual event, check out our other free on-demand videos. You can learn from the experts on topics like film financing, production incentives, and beyond!
