The term “production accountant” gets tossed around as a general description, but like with any other role people take on, there’s a heck of a lot more to it depending on the company you work for, whether you’re full time or freelance, and the types of productions that you’re working on. 

Take the title of “editor” as an example. Somebody can be an editor, but they specialize down into nice topics like politics, entertainment, science, video games… you name it. 

We wanted to get more into the weeds of the different types of production accountant niches and explore the experience and expertise of accountants in those segments.

We recently spoke with a production accountant with six years of experience in animation, and today we’re diving into the experience of somebody who’s spent over a decade doing production accounting in the unscripted space. 

Meet Nicki Moore, a Production Accountant at All3Media America. Before joining the world of entertainment, she worked in economic consulting, where she learned a lot of database skills and developed a love for Excel. (Yes, it happens.)

She began her production accounting career in scripted, working on shows like True Blood (HBO), but shifted to unscripted when she joined All3Media America (formerly Studio Lambert USA) in 2010. 

Nicki has worked on a wide variety of unscripted projects during her 14 years at All3Media, ranging from cooking competitions to divers searching for diamonds.

She tells us that Undercover Boss is her most recognized show and that it was the company’s main series when she started with at All3Media. Her most recent show to air is Barbecue Showdown (Netflix), which launched its third season on July 4th.

Nicki says she’s currently going through the Georgia audit for Barbecue Showdown, and adds with a smirk that, “It’s fun times.”

Indeed.

Finding her groove with unscripted

Nicki has taken on many projects while at All3Media and says they generally don’t have freelance production accountants. “Everyone is in-house unless things get way too crazy, and we all work on multiple projects at a time.”

Nicki was initially hired for corporate finance, but with the company being small at the time she says, “It was pretty much just everyone does everything because there was one person in corporate finance and two production accountants.” 

Because she started out learning not only corporate finance but also production accounting, she was able to double dip. “I took over their development, handling small projects, and then worked my way up into being a full production accountant.” 

On differences between doing production accounting for unscripted vs scripted

A significant difference is the size of the projects. At All3Media, Nicki works on four to five active unscripted shows at any given time, and it’s generally only her, and sometimes a payroll accountant during filming if the crew is large.

“There are just so many more levels” in scripted productions, says Nicki. The scripted projects she worked on - a TV show and a film - had “a controller, an accountant, payroll, a payroll assistant, and then a first, two seconds, and a clerk, and that was just for one show.”

She explains that working in scripted involves many departments and that, “We had specialized roles dedicated to specific tasks because the scope of the projects was so vast. For unscripted, it's much more hands-on and centralized. I manage everything for multiple shows simultaneously. The autonomy allows faster decision-making and fewer communication layers.”

The difference in daily spending highlights how unscripted projects operate on a different scale “making for a unique workflow."

That scale is a big numbers game too. This is understandable considering that the amount of people to pay out a week on a scripted show can reach into the high hundreds whereas an unscripted show for Nicki typically only hits in the triple digits during shoot weeks.

With the shows she works on now, the unscripted spend is a fraction of her initial scripted projects. “I'm in charge of a lot of moving pieces, but they're significantly smaller pieces. We're not spending $5,000 or $7,500 to get two sweaters. So, it's a much smaller scale. I have a lot more autonomy than just being one of many. I personally really enjoy that because I'm very independent and kind of a perfectionist.” 

While Nicki enjoys managing her projects, she is no island. She says she and her fellow in-house production accountants at All3Media chat online daily, helping each other answer questions, troubleshoot situations, and occasionally share corny jokes. 

Nicki says she also learned a lot from being on a team when she was first starting out on the scripted side – being in a large accounting department and seeing all of the different steps and variations.

But now that she has enough experience, she definitely prefers her current setup. “I enjoy not having to constantly coordinate with a whole bunch of other people and make sure everyone's communicating just within the department. If anyone has a question about accounting, they just talk to me, as opposed to trying to recall what someone said yesterday.”

Though, would she say this way of working is for everybody? “I know that some people wouldn't enjoy doing everything from the ground up for every single show, and I can see how some people wouldn't be interested in that. Am I super excited about sometimes having to do the drudgery of looking through everything? No, but it also gives me a really great idea of exactly what's going on with my show at any given moment so I can answer everybody's questions without having to go through any particular layers."

On remote work viability for unscripted production accountants

Nicki currently works remote from Texas and the rest of her department is still in Los Angeles. “They go into the office one to two days a week, but otherwise, they are also mainly working from home as well."

When looking back at the start of her career, Nicki says that when she was first learning things she thought it was important for her to be around everybody. 

But with unscripted TV, there isn’t necessarily a set location. Nicki recalls that when they were shooting season 10 of Undercover Boss she barely saw the team because they were changing locations every few days, traveling all over the country.

In reality, she could have been working from home at that time too. “The amount of time I saw them [the team] was minimal—they would come back into the office, put stuff on my desk, and then leave. So, I feel like it's not really necessary to be physically present in the office all the time."

True, she says it was occasionally nice to “hang around the water cooler” with them or go to the wrap party, but she says she didn’t actually need to be right next to them because most of the time she was calling, talking, or chatting online with them anyway since they were constantly out in the field.

Like so many others, it was the pandemic that kicked remote work across the goal line for her. “Once everyone moved home and remote, I brought home all of these bankers' boxes of documents. I was actually going through the first season of Barbecue Showdown. After we were done shooting the first season, I had to bring home dozens of boxes because I was doing the Georgia audit. Now I'm doing the Georgia audit [for season 3] from my house, and I can't remember the last time I printed a piece of paper.” 

Choosing the right software for unscripted productions and the impact it can have

For Nicki, GreenSlate has helped play a significant role in making her life and work much easier and more efficient.

"I mean that completely digital, non-paperless approach, not only the approval flows and all of that, has really helped move things through. Digital time cards have been amazing. We have saved so much time and paper by not having to physically move pieces of paper around. Once the pandemic hit and you couldn't just come to my desk and drop something off, it made a big difference.”

With approval flows being set up digitally, paperwork has become a relic of a time long forgotten. 

Having everything digital has been really helpful with the approval flow for Nicki as, “You can see where something is in the process and who needs to complete their part.”

She also highlights her line producers being able to see things in real-time being a big benefit as they have access to the cost report allowing them to see where everything is. 

Nicki says she enjoys chatting with her line producers and has a great relationship with them, but also says, “It’s nice that if they have one small, minor question, they don’t need to call me at 10 o’clock at night Texas time to ask about something.”

She’s cut that snake off at the head by investing the time to train up and explain to those key people she works with how to look things up on their own and see things through an accounting perspective. 

Nicki says it was a process to get there, and that "Accounting is kind of like pulling back the curtain and showing them what it really looks like.” 

It paid off. 

In a recent conversation with one of her line producers, Nicki says her line producer said, “'Why am I bothering doing all this double work with my own tracker? It's already all up here [in GreenSlate], and I can see everything. This is going to save me a lot of time because it's already right here and exactly where it should go.”

To get to this point, Nicki and All3Media’s Director of Production Accounting Grace Sur, “Were given the time to actually understand the [GreenSlate] system, customize it, and create an approval flow.” 

They even set up their own customized roles for their company, which means they don't have to pick and choose all the settings every time and each role is standard across all projects.

They spent the initial time setting everything up and understanding it, starting with a small project involving the most enthusiastic in-house line producer who was willing to give a new system a go.

It was a learning experience for all involved and carried through to training up all the other production accountants and the rest of the company, including any freelancers they worked with.

Nicki tells us that a lot of the freelancer feedback was along the lines of, “I've used this before, but I didn't realize it could do this.”

This investment in initial training time has paid off because now with everybody up to speed and understanding the system, Nicki can't remember the last time she had a training session. 

“Jed Harris [GreenSlate client support] has been doing quarterly reviews with us. He's like, 'Hey, you guys just don't need support that much.' I'm like, 'That's because Grace [Director of Production Accounting] and I are first line.”

On the challenging times for production accountants

Nicki says there's definitely been a lot of people asking her recently “Hey, do you know of anything going on?” 

It’s been tough times for production accountants and Nicki knows people who are considering a career change because they just can't find anything, even though “they're incredibly capable.”

“If it's not there, it's not there. So I feel really fortunate to have been with my company for so long. I'm actually the second longest-tenured member of my entire company on the US side. We've definitely gone through cuts as well, so it's good to still be here."

Advice for production accounting career starters interested in unscripted

Right now? It isn’t easy. 

Nicki says it is so hard right now to get that initial job and that was the barrier to entry for her as well. It took her a long time just to get her very first job. “It can be challenging to get your foot in the door, but once you do, just show up and learn everything that you can. Don't complain about it. It sounds so cliché, but I've seen a lot of people come and go at my company.”

She’s also seen plenty of people rise up the ranks. They’re the ones who are “Constantly anticipating, looking around, talking to everybody, trying to not just build relationships, but also present themselves as a resource to others. They say, 'I can help you with that,' or 'come to me if you have an issue,' and things like that. It's all about being proactive and helpful.”

It can be especially tough these days with the current market conditions post-strike. “There are so many overqualified people applying for lower-level jobs. I would just say keep applying, and once you finally get an opportunity, make the most of it. One of the great things about unscripted is that my company’s structure is not unique. I think a lot of unscripted production companies also do more in-house staffing as opposed to freelance. That's a fantastic opportunity to get your foot in the door, do a great job, and then keep getting put on projects again and again because it provides a lot more security as well.”

We'd like to thank Nicki for taking the time to speak with us. 

✅ If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to check out our conversation with a career animation production accountant.