Document management and compliance tracking for film and media production

Contracts, permits, insurance, and compliance documents are the backbone of any production. Here is why managing them in shared drives creates risk, and what the alternative looks like.

Every film production generates a significant volume of documents. Crew contracts, location permits, insurance certificates, equipment rental agreements, safety plans, release forms, tax incentive applications, and compliance filings. These documents are not administrative overhead. They are the legal and operational foundation that allows a production to happen.

Despite this, most production companies manage documents in shared drives with manual folder structures, naming conventions that nobody follows consistently, and version control that relies on file names like "FINAL_v2_REVIEWED.pdf."

It works until someone needs to find the current version of a specific document under time pressure. Then it stops working.

The shared drive problem

Shared drives (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) are excellent general-purpose file storage tools. They are not document management systems, and the difference matters in production.

Version confusion

When a contract is revised, the new version gets uploaded alongside the old one. Sometimes the old version gets renamed. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes someone downloads the old version before the new one is uploaded and works from the outdated copy for days.

In production, where contracts and permits are time-sensitive legal documents, version confusion is not an inconvenience. It is a liability.

No expiry tracking

Insurance certificates expire. Permits have validity windows. Equipment rental agreements have return dates. Shared drives store files, but they do not know or track these dates. When a permit expires mid-production, nobody finds out until someone manually checks, and manual checks only happen when someone remembers to do them.

No compliance view

Production companies working across jurisdictions face different regulatory requirements in each location. Labour regulations, safety standards, environmental permits, and tax incentive conditions all vary. In a shared drive, these compliance documents are scattered across production-specific folders with no way to see the overall compliance picture at a glance.

Access is all-or-nothing

Shared drives typically offer folder-level permissions, but production document access needs are more nuanced. The production accountant needs to see contracts and invoices but not safety incident reports. The location manager needs permits and location agreements but not crew contracts. In practice, most teams give everyone access to everything because the alternative is too much overhead to maintain.

What production-specific document management looks like

A document management system designed for production treats documents as structured data, not just files in folders.

Metadata over folder structure

Instead of relying on folder paths to organize documents, each document carries metadata: document type, associated production, associated crew member, jurisdiction, validity dates, status, and version number. This means a single insurance certificate can be found by searching for the crew member's name, the production name, the document type, or the expiry date. You do not need to know which folder someone decided to put it in.

Automatic version tracking

When a document is updated, the system retains the previous version and clearly identifies the current one. There is no ambiguity about which version is active. The full history is available for audit purposes.

Expiry and renewal alerts

Documents with validity dates are tracked automatically. When a permit or insurance certificate is approaching expiry, the system surfaces it before it becomes a problem. This shifts compliance from reactive (discovering gaps during a crisis) to proactive (addressing gaps before they matter).

Role-based access

Different roles see different documents based on what they need. The production coordinator sees everything for their production. Department heads see documents relevant to their department. Crew members see their own contracts and the documents that affect their work. Permissions are managed by role, not by manually adjusting folder sharing settings.

Compliance tracking as a first-class feature

For production companies operating across multiple jurisdictions, compliance tracking is where scattered document management becomes genuinely risky.

Jurisdiction-specific requirements

Labour regulations vary by province, state, and country. A production shooting in Ontario and British Columbia faces different requirements for overtime calculations, rest periods, and safety certifications. For a detailed breakdown of Canadian compliance requirements, see our dedicated guide. Tracking which requirements apply to which production, and whether the relevant documentation is in place, requires more than a folder structure.

Audit readiness

When a compliance audit happens (and they do happen), the production company needs to demonstrate that the right documents were in place at the right time. If documents are scattered across shared drives with unreliable version histories, assembling the audit trail is a manual, time-consuming, and stressful process.

A centralized system with proper version tracking and metadata makes audit preparation straightforward: filter by production, jurisdiction, and date range, and the relevant documents surface with their full history.

Insurance gap detection

Production insurance is complex. Different crew roles, different activities, and different locations may require different coverage. When insurance certificates are managed as files in folders, gaps between what is covered and what is required can go undetected until a claim is filed. For Quebec productions, Bill 96 language requirements mean that these documents must also be maintained in French.

A system that tracks insurance documents alongside the crew and activities they cover can flag gaps proactively: "This stunt coordinator's additional coverage expires before the scheduled stunt shoot dates."

The cost of not having a system

Document management problems in production rarely cause visible failures on their own. They cause invisible ones: the compliance gap that was present during the entire shoot but only discovered afterward, the expired permit that could have been renewed if someone had noticed two weeks earlier, the contract dispute where both parties are working from different versions.

These invisible failures carry real costs: production delays, legal exposure, insurance complications, and the kind of reputational damage that comes from being the company that ran an uncovered shoot.

The companies that invest in proper document management and compliance tracking are not doing it because they enjoy process. They are doing it because they have calculated the cost of not doing it, and it is higher.

Getting started

If your production company is still running on shared drives and you are starting to feel the limitations, the first step is understanding what documents you manage, how they flow through your productions, and where the gaps are.

Learn more about how Siasola Production Management approaches document management and compliance for Canadian productions.

Contact us through our contact form at siasola.com/contact to discuss your document management and compliance needs. We will scope a system around your specific workflows and regulatory requirements.