Negotiations

Before anyone is booked on a project, producer and crew agree the terms in a negotiation. That's a thread of offers going back and forth until one side accepts. A producer starts one from a position in the crew plan (see Send an offer), and crew answer from their Inbox.

Where to find them

• Crew: everything is in your Inbox. Offers waiting for your answer sit under On me, offers you replied to under Waiting, and offers that ended without a booking under Closed. Confirmed bookings are under Projects.
• Producers: open the project and go to the Negotiations tab, filtered by All, Active, Confirmed or Closed. Offers that need your reply also land in your Inbox.

Who sees an offer

An offer belongs to whoever sent it. On a project you co-produce, the Negotiations tab and your Inbox list only the offers you sent yourself. A co-producer's offers stay in their own list. When the crew member counters, the reply goes back to the person who sent the offer.

What you can negotiate

An offer holds a rate, the working days, any gear you bring, and notes.

Which rate field you get depends on the position's pay model (a department or crew override wins over the project's):

• Day rate on the daily models. The overtime hourly rate isn't negotiated on top: the project's work rules derive it from the day rate.
• Hourly rate under the Hourly pay model. See Hourly pay.
• Monthly fee on a monthly deal. Each calendar month with at least one worked day bills one full monthly fee.
• Project buyout (fixed total) on a buyout: one fee for the whole project, whatever the days and hours.

Working days come from the project plan. The producer picks the planned days the offer covers. Reach out only works once the plan has at least one shooting day. When crew counter, they can untick days they can't make. They can't add days that weren't offered.

Notes take free text for anything the fields don't cover.

Per diem stays out of the offer. The producer sets it per day in the project plan, the same for every rate, and can give a department or one crew member a different amount through an exception on that day. See Per diems & mileage.

Rate requests

A producer doesn't have to name a number. Under the day-rate field the offer sheet says Leave the rate blank to ask the crew to name their price, and doing so sends a rate request.

As crew you then have two buttons: Propose rate and Decline. On a Daily + overtime position the proposal starts from your profile's day rate for that role. Change it if you like and press Send proposal.

As long as the crew member hasn't answered, the producer can still press Set rate on the Negotiations tab. That replaces the request with a normal offer.

Offers and counters

Accept and Counter only appear when it's your turn. A counter replaces the current offer and hands the turn to the other side, and your offer moves to your Inbox's Waiting tab until they answer. In the thread, the offer it replaced is marked Superseded.

Accept first opens a confirmation that repeats the terms you're agreeing to.

Inbox rows for a day-rate offer show an estimated total, such as 8 working days · ≈ € 3.200,00. That's rate times days, a rough figure and not the pay calculation. If an earlier offer between you on the same project was declined or cancelled, the new one opens with a Replaces an earlier offer note quoting the old terms.

A producer can Withdraw offer at any moment until the deal memo is signed, whoever's turn it is. See Ending a negotiation.

Gear

Crew add gear when they counter or propose a rate. Your gear lives as an inventory on your profile. In the offer sheet you tick the pieces this job needs, and if one is missing you add it right there. It's then saved to your inventory for the next job as well.

You price each piece per offer. The day rate in your inventory is only the starting price. Changing it in an offer leaves your profile alone, and a sent offer keeps the price it went out with.

The producer never re-prices single pieces. They drag one Agreed gear total. When you answer an offer that already carries gear, you get that same total control next to your own prices. The discount that follows comes off the gear only, so your rate stays as it is.

Billing follows the position's pay model: per worked day on the daily and hourly models, once for the whole job on a buyout or a monthly fee.

Rate signals

While you compose an offer, small labels can appear under the rate field. They're for information only and never block an offer.

• Meets fair-pay floor or Below fair-pay floor compares the rate with the fairPACCT guideline for freelance starting rates at that job level, converted to a day rate with the project's standard day length. You only see it for crew roles that have a fairPACCT level, so cast and trainee positions don't get it.
• Below the € 38,00/h presumption threshold shows up only when the rate falls under that line. The day rate divided by the standard day length comes out below the proposed hourly amount of art. 7:610aa BW (Wet VBAR, from 31-12-2026), under which an employment relationship is presumed. The amount is still a proposal, because the ministerial regulation hasn't been set. Hours on set can also differ from the standard day. This one also shows for cast. Only trainee positions skip it.

On an hourly rate the fair-pay label multiplies the rate by the standard day length, and the € 38,00/h label compares the hourly rate as it is.

Self-employment signal at booking

As a producer you see a short self-employment signal while you compose an offer and on an open negotiation. It states facts about the person you're about to book, gathered the moment you look. Nothing is stored, and the crew member isn't notified.

It shows:

• Your own production days. Of all the days scheduled on your productions in the last 12 months (shooting, prep, travel and every other day type), how many this person worked. Then the days and hours per calendar year, and the art. 7:610a window: how many of three completed months held 20 hours or more, and how many of thirteen completed weeks held a worked day. Those days come from your own projects, so no consent is needed.
• Earlier projects. Earlier for you: lists the projects they did for you before, with the year.
• A projection over the days you selected. While days are ticked in the calendar, the signal names the date on which the 7:610a window would be crossed if the person worked them. Each proposed day counts at the project's standard day length. The projection also counts the month and week the proposed days fall in, which the completed-period window leaves out on purpose.
• Their other clients, only when shared. If the crew member switched on sharing for you, you also see what share of their worked days and of their earned amount in a year sat with you, and across how many clients. Without that switch those lines are missing and the signal says so. Client names never appear.

An offer to an email address that hasn't signed up yet gets no signal, since there's no record to read. On a co-produced project the signal counts the productions of the project's owner, whoever sends the offer.

What "does not support" means

When the record points to embedding or dependency, the signal shows one sentence: the record does not support self-employment on this engagement. The reasons follow straight after. They can be a junior role (Opdracht Kompas level 1 or a trainee title), a 7:610a window that is met or would be crossed, two or more earlier calendar years with you, or 70% of their days or 50% of their earned amount in a year sitting with you. Below the reasons sits a neutral route: consider booking through a payroll partner.

There is no opposite sentence. With no reasons the signal adds nothing, because "supported" would be a verdict. It never gives a score or a traffic light. The decision stays with you.

Nothing the signal shows gets recorded at this stage. The record of the engagement is the zzp dossier, which starts once a deal memo with self-employment terms is signed.

What the producer shares about the production

Some producers publish an info package with the job. It can hold a logline, a short description of the production, its genre and format, a budget band instead of an exact figure, the city crew are expected to travel from, a content and safety checklist, and the names already attached. It's optional, and you only see it once the producer publishes it.

A summary sits on the negotiation itself, next to the offer. Once you're confirmed on the project, the full version is on the project's Planning tab.

Links point at the producer's own storage, such as a mood board on their Drive, a lookbook or a script. They open outside CrewShift, in a new tab or your phone's browser, so what you can do with a file depends on the producer's sharing settings. Some links are shared while you're still negotiating. Others open only after you've signed the deal memo, and whether there's anything extra after signing is up to the producer.

The content and safety checklist lets you weigh what the work involves (stunts, water, animals, heavy night work, intimacy) against your own limits before you accept.

If the negotiation ends without a booking (declined or cancelled), you lose access to the package.

If you're the producer, building and publishing a package is covered in Project info package.

Following the status

A badge shows where the negotiation stands:

Proposed

An offer is on the table, waiting for a reply

Countered

Someone replied with different terms

Accepted

Both sides agreed the terms

Deal memo sent / Deal memo received

The producer sent the contract to sign (crew see Deal memo received)

Confirmed

Signed by both, so the booking is real

Declined / Cancelled

The negotiation ended without a booking

An offer that was still open when the negotiation was cancelled is marked Cancelled in the thread.

Inviting someone who isn't on CrewShift yet

When you send an offer to an email address, CrewShift creates the negotiation first and then emails an invitation in your app language. Until that person signs in, the negotiation says they haven't signed in yet and shows a Resend invitation button. Use it when the email didn't arrive or went to spam. A resend within 24 hours of the last invitation is held back.

Three things can stop the invitation on its way out, each with its own message:

• The address already got an invitation in the last 24 hours. The offer waits in their Inbox for the moment they sign in, and you don't need to do anything.
• The email could not be sent. The offer is saved, but our mail provider bounced the message. Open the negotiation and press Resend invitation.
• The address belongs to a producer account. Producer accounts can't hold a crew position, so ask the person for another address.

Ending a negotiation

Crew end a negotiation with Decline when it's their turn. A reason is optional and shows in the thread. A producer ends it with Withdraw offer, after which it shows Cancelled. Both ask you to confirm, and both are final.

When you withdraw, you can add a personal message. The crew member gets it in the cancellation email, unless they've switched those emails off. You can always send a new offer afterwards.

Decline ends the whole negotiation. If you only disagree with the terms, send a counter.

Cancelled automatically

Some negotiations end without anyone answering them.

• The position went to another candidate. If you run several candidates for one position, the deal memo decides. As soon as you send it, the other open negotiations for that position are cancelled, and those candidates see that the position went to someone else. If your candidate then doesn't sign, send the others a new offer. The thread shows an Automatically cancelled note with the reason.
• The crew member confirmed another booking. When crew sign a deal memo, their other open negotiations on the same project are cancelled, along with those on other projects that share a working day with the new booking. The producer sees Cancelled automatically because another booking was confirmed for these dates and gets an email. The thread shows an Automatically cancelled note with the reason.
• A schedule change was declined before signing. See Schedule changes.
• The project or account is gone. Cancelling the project or deleting the crew member's account also cancels the open negotiations. A position with an open negotiation can't be removed until that negotiation is withdrawn.