Billing and plans
Each production has its own plan, sized by the storage it uses. Only the owner pays — team members never do, and there is no limit on how many people you add.
SceneMatch charges for storage, per production, and for nothing else. Not per seat, not per feature, not per scene. Understanding that one decision explains everything else about how billing behaves.
Only the owner pays
The production owner is billed. Team members never pay anything, however many you invite and whatever role they have — see inviting your team.
This is deliberate: a production that charges per seat ends up with departments sharing logins, which destroys the record of who did what. Making members free means everyone can have their own access, which is what makes the continuity trail worth having.
A plan per production
Each production carries its own plan, sized by that production's storage and billed separately. A feature in post and a season in prep are two plans, and finishing one does not affect the other.
The plan is a base storage allowance with a per-gigabyte rate above it. The current figures are on the Plan page in the app — they are not repeated here, so that what you read is never out of date.
It grows on its own
You do not have to watch your usage.
Storage is measured regularly, and when a production outgrows its plan the plan is raised to fit — rounded up to the next increment, with an email to the owner telling you it happened. There is nothing to approve and nothing to configure, and a production never stops working because it ran out of room overnight.
Two things worth knowing about that:
- It only ever goes up. Deleting photographs does not automatically reduce your plan. If a production has shrunk substantially — after a delivery, say — change the plan yourself on the Plan page.
- Productions on a managed subscription behave differently. Where a subscription covers the production, its size is what the subscriber chose rather than something raised automatically. Usage is still tracked; the plan is not changed for you.
What uses storage
Photographs, overwhelmingly. Continuity photos, look references, warehouse item images and set stills are what a production's storage is made of — the text of the breakdown is negligible by comparison.
That gives you one useful lever: if storage matters to you, the size at which photographs are uploaded matters much more than how many records you keep.
The billing page
A production billed through SceneMatch shows its payment history, each entry with its receipt to download. That is the record for your production accountant, available without asking anyone.
A production covered by a managed subscription does not show a history here — the billing lives with the subscription instead, which is why the page can look empty on a production someone else is paying for.
If a payment does not go through
A production whose plan lapses is suspended, and suspension closes the production.
You can still open it, but every section — scenes, characters, looks, the warehouse, the schedule, documents, and backups — returns you to the dashboard. The only page that still works is Billing, so that you can settle the plan and get back in.
You are emailed before it happens and again if it does. Suspension is entirely reversible: nothing is deleted, and bringing the plan up to date restores access to everything exactly as it was.
The thing that is not obvious
Take your backup before you let a production lapse, not after.
Nothing is deleted when a production is suspended — the work is intact and waiting. But the Backup page is closed along with everything else, so a suspended production cannot produce an archive. The moment to export is while the production is still active.
If a production is winding down and you are not sure whether the plan will be renewed, generate and download the backup first. It takes minutes, and it is the difference between having your material and having to reactivate a plan to reach it.