We sit down with Ida Lee Henderson, a veteran production accountant whose career spans blockbuster films like Planet of the Apes and acclaimed series like Brothers and Sisters. Beyond her on-set work, Ida Lee is also a respected mentor and educator, having trained countless accountants through her School of Production Accounting.
In this conversation, Ida Lee shares what drew her to the industry, how she’s seen it evolve over the decades, and the key challenges facing producers today—particularly around union compliance, payroll, and budgeting. She discusses the importance of clear communication between accounting and production teams, and how strong relationships can prevent costly financial missteps.
She also dives into the changing role of technology in production accounting, from digital start work to AI-powered invoice tools. She shares why early adoption matters, how tools like Wrapbook’s rate finder can streamline budgeting, and why adaptability is essential in a fast-moving industry.
Whether you're a producer, accountant, or just curious about how productions stay on budget and in compliance, this episode is a must-watch.
About Wrapbook
Wrapbook is a smart, intuitive platform that makes production payroll and accounting easier, faster, and more secure. We provide a unified payroll platform that seamlessly connects your entire team—production, accounting, cast, and crew—all in one place.
Wrapbook empowers production teams to manage projects, pay cast and crew, track expenses, and generate data-driven insights, while enabling workers to manage timecards, track pay, and onboard to new projects from any device. Wrapbook brings clarity and dependability to production payroll, while increasing the productivity of your whole team.
For crew: The Wrapbook app eliminates the headaches of production payroll by providing a fast, transparent, and secure solution for workers to complete startwork, submit timecards, and track pay.
Trusted by companies of all sizes, Wrapbook powers payroll for some of the industry’s top production companies, including SMUGGLER, Tuff, and GhostRobot. Our growing team of 250+ people includes entertainment and technology experts from SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, Teamsters, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and more.
Wrapbook is backed by top-tier investors, including Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, Andreessen Horowitz, and A* Capital.
Get started at https://www.wrapbook.com/