APA day calculator and timesheets

APA day calculator and timesheet app for UK film and TV crew

Your APA day, totalled.

You know your BDR, your grade, what an L1 costs. TimeMachine already knows the rest of the APA terms. Put in your call and wrap; it calculates the day, catches the penalties, and carries the total through to a sent invoice.

TimeMachine is an APA day calculator and timesheet app for UK film and television crew working on commercials. Enter your call, lunch and wrap and it calculates the day automatically under the APA Recommended Terms: overtime, break penalties, weekend and night rates, and the day total. That total carries through to a timesheet and an invoice. Best Boy mode tracks a whole crew's days together and shares them. It is free, needs no account, and works offline. Built by a working best boy in the UK lighting department.

Download for iPhoneOn the App Store Open the web appIn any browser

Free, no login, built for UK commercials.

The shoot, added up

One week, every day totalled.

A row for each day: the times, the penalties caught, and what the day is worth. The week's gross split into what it is actually made of.

Beacon Pictures

Lighting Technician · BDR £457 · week of 10 Aug

Week

£2,291.10

SHOOTMon 10 Aug07:00 → 19:00

OT 1h£510.60

SHOOTTue 11 Aug07:00 → 21:00

L1OT 3h£653.80

SHOOTWed 12 Aug08:00 → 18:00

KIT£494.00

SHOOTThu 13 Aug07:00 → 20:30

L2OT 2h 30m£632.70

Made with TimeMachine APA Sept 2026

Every row is a day. Every chip is a penalty or an extra the app caught. The week's gross is not one number, it is four:

Basic

£1,776.00

Overtime

£432.90

Penalties

£32.20

Extras

£50.00

Week total

£2,291.10

Four basic days, six and a half hours of overtime, a late lunch and a missed break, one day of kit. Sample figures on a Lighting Technician's rate, September 2026 card.

Day to paid

The calculation is the middle, not the end.

Most tools stop at the number. The job is not done until the money lands, so TimeMachine carries a day the whole way.

Call sheet

Read the invoicing details off it.

Track the day

Call, breaks, wrap, kit, mileage.

Calculate

The APA terms, applied to the day.

Timesheet

A clean day-by-day, PDF or text.

Invoice

Totals carried across, numbered.

Sent

Frozen as a record of what you claimed.

Paid

Tracked, and flagged if it runs late.

What it does

Four jobs, one app.

Calculates the day

Call to wrap on the APA terms: overtime grade, break penalties, weekends and nights, all worked out.

Makes the timesheet

A clean day-by-day you can send as a PDF or plain text, your name on top, the maths behind it.

Makes the invoice

Carries the totals across, adds VAT and your bank details, numbers it, and tracks it to paid.

Knows your role

Pick your grade and the right rate card loads, with the parts of the terms that apply to you.

Beyond your own day

Not just your own timesheet.

Three things the app does beyond totalling one person's day. See how it works.

Best Boy mode

Track a whole department from one place. Each crew member carries their own role and rate. The department day is set once and everyone inherits it, and anyone who worked differently gets an override.

Share a shoot by link

On iPhone, send a crew member their days as a link. It opens in their own TimeMachine ready to confirm, and the days travel inside the link rather than through a server. Up to 14 days per link.

Legwork, from Apple Health

On iPhone, with your permission, TimeMachine reads your step count and shows the walking behind a shoot day.

One real day

A day from a real invoice.

Lighting Technician, basic day rate £457, so a basic hourly rate of £45.70. Tuesday 4 August, a shoot day: call 07:00, wrap 21:00, 14 hours. Here is the whole day, and it reconciles.

Costed on the APA September 2026 card. Nothing here is rounded or adjusted.

Basic day10 worked + 1hr lunch · BDR £457

£457.00

Overtime, 18:00 to 21:003h at 1.5 × BHR (£68.55)

£205.65

Late first breaklunch started after 5.5h from call

£10.00

Missed second break30 min owed at BHR (£45.70)

£22.85

Day total

£695.50

Built for actual commercials

Different days, not one timer.

A TVC week is not a stopwatch with overtime bolted on. The days have different shapes, and the pay follows the shape. The app knows which day it is.

SHOOT PRE-LIGHT RECCE PREP TRAVEL DERIG OT L1 L2 CWD TOC NIGHT EARLY CALL MILEAGE PER DIEM

A travel day pays your basic hourly rate, on a minimum, not a flat day rate.

A pre-light day is eight hours plus a lunch hour, not the eleven of a shoot day.

A continuous working day starts overtime after nine, not eleven, and you can land on one without being told.

A night shoot is flat double hourly with a ten hour minimum, no overtime on top.

The call sheet reader

Your invoicing details, straight off the sheet.

The tedious part of a new job is retyping the same billing details. On iPhone, TimeMachine reads them off the call sheet for you. Six steps, and you check the result before anything is saved.

The call sheet lands, as it always does.

Share the PDF from Mail or Files.

TimeMachine

Pick TimeMachine from the share sheet.

Pick the job

New job, or add to an existing one.

Read

On-device, it finds the invoicing fields.

Confirm

Check the six fields, then save.

Confirm — 6 fields read

Job title

Beacon — Spot 2

Production company

Beacon Pictures Ltd

Job reference

BP-0242

Invoicing email

accounts@beaconpictures.co.uk

CC email

prod@beaconpictures.co.uk

Invoicing address

14 Wharf Rd, London N1 7GR

Six fields, and not the rest.

The honest version is the strong one. It takes what helps you get paid and leaves what would only mislead.

It reads the invoicing details. The fields that are the same every day of the job and tedious to retype.
It does not take call times. Calls are often individual and they change, so importing them would import something likely to be wrong. Entering your own call takes a second.
It does not take wrap. Wrap on a call sheet is an estimate. The app assumes a full day with no overtime, and you set wrap when the day actually runs long. Wrapping early costs you nothing.
Nothing else on a call sheet is any use for getting paid.

iPhone only. It needs iOS 26 on an Apple Intelligence capable device, and it runs entirely on your phone: the call sheet is never uploaded. The web app does not have this.

Now, and next

Commercials now. Long form next.

The APA calculation is live and complete. The rest is being built to the same standard, and this page is where we say which is which.

APA · live MMP · in development TV bands 1 to 4 · in development

In development means being built, not calculating yet. When one is ready this page will say live, and not before. The app calculates the APA terms and only the APA terms: there is no long-form mode in it to switch into.

The terms, explained

It does the sum, and shows its working.

TimeMachine does the calculation. These explain it, in plain English, from someone who has had to argue an invoice.

The APA rate table→ How APA overtime actually works→ Breaks and penalties→ How to invoice an APA job→ Late payment: what you can charge→ All guides→

Who built it

By a spark, for the crew.

TimeMachine was built by a working lighting technician who got tired of totalling days on a phone calculator at wrap. Every rule in it is one that has cost someone money on a real job.

It is not a product with a crew theme. It is the tool the person building it needed, so the details are the ones that actually catch you out.

About the person behind it

Your APA day, totalled.

Download for iPhone Open the app

Free. No login. iPhone or web.