What is a box rental?

A daily fee for the equipment a crew member brings to the job, charged on top of the labor rate. Kit fee and box kit are the same thing under different names; which one you see depends on the payroll provider.

Is the kit fee taxed like the rate?

It is treated differently, and the specifics are for the production's payroll provider and the crew member's accountant. What matters upstream is that the two amounts reach payroll as separate figures so they can be treated separately.

What if my payroll provider has no kit fee column?

Two of the four named layouts here carry no mileage column, though all five carry a kit fee. If yours is missing a field entirely, the generic layout holds every payroll-adjacent value the app has, and your provider or accountant can map from it.

Should the kit fee go up with overtime?

It is a daily amount, so it does not move with hours. That is one of the reasons it sits in its own column rather than inside the rate.

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Kit fees and box rentals: the part of a rate that is not the rate

19 August 20265 minute read

A crew member who owns their own gear is usually paid twice for a day: once for the work and once for the equipment. The second amount is the kit fee, or the box rental, or the box kit, depending on whose payroll layout you are looking at. It is a separate number for a reason, and folding it into the day rate causes problems on both sides.

One field, three names

Every payroll layout Breadshift exports carries this field, and no two of the named providers agree on what to call it:

Provider	Column name	Mileage column
Wrapbook	Kit Fee	none
Cast & Crew Start+ / Hours+	Box Rental	none
Entertainment Partners SmartTime	Box Kit	Mileage
GreenSlate	Box Rental	Mileage
Generic	Kit fee daily	Mileage miles

Box rental is the older term and comes from the physical box a crew member turned up with. Kit fee is the same thing said plainly. If someone asks for a box rental and someone else asks for a kit fee, they are asking for the same line.

Why it is separate from the rate

Three reasons, and they compound:

It is equipment, not labor. A production budgets gear and crew on different lines, so a rate quietly inclusive of kit lands the equipment cost in the wrong place.
It does not scale with hours. A twelve-hour day does not rent the box for longer than a ten-hour one, and overtime on the labor rate should not drag the equipment amount along with it.
It is treated differently for tax. Exactly how is between the production's payroll provider and the crew member's accountant, which is precisely why the two amounts have to arrive at payroll separately rather than added together.

This is the practical case for quoting the two figures separately from the start. A rate that silently includes kit is a rate that looks high next to the person who split theirs out, and it makes the equipment cost invisible to the department building the budget.

Daily, hourly, and what EP calls a guarantee

A crew rate is a number plus a basis, and the number alone is ambiguous. Daily and hourly cover most crew; a production can override to weekly for a longer engagement.

The basis is not a formatting detail. Every payroll layout asks for it, under a different heading each time: rate type, rate basis, and in Entertainment Partners' case guarantee type, which is the same field wearing the vocabulary of the day-rate guarantee it usually implies.

The kit fee is quoted daily in all of them, regardless of whether the labor rate is hourly or daily. That is worth knowing when you are converting a quote: an hourly crew member with a kit still charges the box once per day.

Mileage, which only some layouts carry

Mileage is the field that most often has nowhere to go. Entertainment Partners and GreenSlate carry a column for it. Wrapbook and Cast & Crew do not, in the layouts here, so a production reimbursing mileage through those two is handling it outside the timecard import.

That is not a problem until someone assumes the export carried it. Worth confirming with whoever runs your payroll before the first week rather than after it.

What to record on set

The labor rate and its basis, daily or hourly, agreed before the first day.
The kit fee as a daily amount, separately, even when it is zero.
Whether mileage is being reimbursed, and through what, since two of the four named layouts cannot carry it.

All three belong to the booking rather than to the day. Recorded once against the crew member on the production, they ride out on every timecard for that production without anyone retyping them, which is also how they stop drifting between weeks.

Questions

What is a box rental?: A daily fee for the equipment a crew member brings to the job, charged on top of the labor rate. Kit fee and box kit are the same thing under different names; which one you see depends on the payroll provider.
Is the kit fee taxed like the rate?: It is treated differently, and the specifics are for the production's payroll provider and the crew member's accountant. What matters upstream is that the two amounts reach payroll as separate figures so they can be treated separately.
What if my payroll provider has no kit fee column?: Two of the four named layouts here carry no mileage column, though all five carry a kit fee. If yours is missing a field entirely, the generic layout holds every payroll-adjacent value the app has, and your provider or accountant can map from it.
Should the kit fee go up with overtime?: It is a daily amount, so it does not move with hours. That is one of the reasons it sits in its own column rather than inside the rate.