Post-Production Schedule Planner
Enter a delivery date and stage durations — walks backward through QC, export, buffer and review rounds to the real edit start date.
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The handoff day — QC always ends the day before. It never moves.
All durations are whole days. A zero removes that stage from the walk.
Skip weekends: stages consume Monday–Friday only — stepping back over a weekend lands on the previous Friday.
Delivery Countdown
The job walked backward from delivery — first cut at the far left, the delivery marker at the far right. Block widths are proportional to stage length.
Planning, not project management.
This page does the backward date math — stage windows, T-minus countdowns and the real start date. When a client blows their feedback window, re-baseline: set their actual feedback date as the new anchor, re-run the countdown, and paste the text rundown into the handoff email so the slip — not your estimate — is what moves the deadline.
About Post-Production Schedule Planner
Why you schedule a client job backward
The delivery date is the one immovable object in a client job — the campaign launch, the broadcast slot, the event screen. Forward-scheduling ("we start Monday and see where we land") treats that date as an aspiration; backward scheduling treats it as a fixed wall and walks every stage back from it. Fix the date you cannot move, then subtract: QC, export, buffer, review rounds, edit. Whatever date falls out the other end is the real start date — not the one you hoped for. If that date is yesterday, you find out today, while you can still cut scope, add hands or renegotiate — not the night before delivery.
The hidden time sink: review rounds
Editors under-budget review because they count the edit and forget the loop around it. Every round is two stages, not one: the client's feedback days (the cut sits on their desk, not yours) and your revision days. And rounds compound. Take a typical job — a 5-day first cut, 2 feedback days and 2 revision days per round, 2 rounds, 1 day of export, 1 day of QC and a 2-day buffer. Total lead = 1 (QC) + 1 (export) + 2 (buffer) + 2 × (2 feedback + 2 revisions) + 5 (first cut) = 17 days — and 8 of those 17 are review rounds. Nearly half the calendar is the loop, not the craft.
Worked example: delivery Wed 30 Sep 2026
The same 17-day job, delivered Wednesday 30 September 2026, counting every day. The delivery day is the handoff day, not a work day, so QC always ends the day before delivery. Walking back:
| Stage | Dates | Days | T-minus |
|---|---|---|---|
| First cut (edit) | Sun 13 Sep – Thu 17 Sep | 5 | T-17 |
| Round 1: client feedback | Fri 18 Sep – Sat 19 Sep | 2 | T-12 |
| Round 1: revisions | Sun 20 Sep – Mon 21 Sep | 2 | T-10 |
| Round 2: client feedback | Tue 22 Sep – Wed 23 Sep | 2 | T-8 |
| Round 2: revisions | Thu 24 Sep – Fri 25 Sep | 2 | T-6 |
| Buffer | Sat 26 Sep – Sun 27 Sep | 2 | T-4 |
| Export & conform | Mon 28 Sep | 1 | T-2 |
| QC & fixes | Tue 29 Sep | 1 | T-1 |
| Delivery | Wed 30 Sep | — | T-0 |
The headline: start editing by Sun 13 Sep 2026 — 30 Sep minus 17 days.
The same job, skipping weekends
Flip the tool to "Skip weekends" and stages consume only Monday–Friday; stepping backward over a weekend jumps to Friday. The same 17 work days still end on Tue 29 Sep, but the walk back now crosses three weekends — 26–27 Sep, 19–20 Sep and 12–13 Sep — and each one costs two calendar days. New start date: Mon 7 Sep 2026, six calendar days earlier. That delta is the whole argument for the toggle: on a 17-day job, weekends silently eat a week. Quote a client "three weeks" without deciding which calendar you mean and you have already given away your buffer.
Why the buffer sits between the rounds and export
Slack placed at the start of a schedule gets eaten long before the crunch it was meant to protect. This scheduler puts the buffer after the last review round and before export & QC for one reason: an overrun absorbed there never touches the QC gate. If round 2 feedback arrives two days late, the buffer shrinks from 2 days to 0 and the export, QC and delivery dates don't move. Park the same slack up front and a late round pushes export and QC straight into the delivery date.
Typical stage durations
| Stage | Typical duration | Note |
|---|---|---|
| First cut / rough-cut edit | 3–10 days | Roughly 1–2 edit days per finished minute is a sane rule of thumb |
| Client feedback, per round | 2–3 days | State an SLA in the booking email: "comments within 48 hours" |
| Revisions, per round | 1–2 days | A fix list, not a re-edit — re-edits are a new round |
| Export & conform | 0.5–1 day | Long-form or a heavy conform takes the full day |
| Final QC & fixes | 1 day | Non-negotiable — never the stage you compress |
| Buffer | ~15–20% of total lead | Scale it with the client's responsiveness, not the edit length |
When a client blows their feedback window
Don't silently compress QC — that borrows from the one stage that protects your reputation. Re-baseline instead: the day feedback actually arrives becomes the new anchor, walk the remaining stages forward from it, and send the client the revised delivery date — or the explicit trade: same date, fewer revision days, their call. Re-running this planner with the slipped dates gives you the new start and end dates in seconds, plus a written record that the slip moved the deadline, not your estimate.
How to use the Post-Production Schedule Planner
Set the delivery date — the one date on the job that cannot move.
Enter how many client review rounds you expect and the feedback and revision days each one costs.
Read the start-editing-by date and T-minus strip, then lay out the shoot itself in the Shooting Schedule Builder.
Frequently Asked Questions
Fix the one date that cannot move — the delivery date — then list every stage between now and handoff and subtract their durations from that date, nearest stage first: QC (which always ends the day before delivery), export, buffer, then each review round latest-first, and finally the edit. The date that falls out is the real start date. This planner does that walk for you, draws it as a countdown strip, and lets you flip between calendar days and business days to see both versions of the truth.
Budget each round as two separate stages: 2–3 days of client feedback (state a 48-hour SLA in the booking email so it isn't open-ended) plus 1–2 days of revisions. Two rounds at those rates cost about 8 days — in this tool's default 17-day job, 8 of the 17 lead days are review, not editing. If a project has more stakeholders on the approval chain, add a day of feedback per extra decision-maker.
Two is the industry default for commercial and corporate work: one structural pass (story, selects, pacing) and one polish pass (graphics, captions, color notes). Write the round count into the quote and define what a round is — a consolidated fix list per version — so a re-edit isn't smuggled in as 'a few tweaks'. Only long-standing clients with a trusted shorthand get one round; never quote zero unless the fee assumes it.
Decide explicitly, because the difference is real: this tool's default 17-day job starts Sun 13 Sep 2026 counting every day, but Mon 7 Sep 2026 skipping weekends — six calendar days earlier. Editors often work weekends; clients almost never give feedback on them. The honest approach is to run both modes and quote from the one that matches how you actually work — the countdown bracketed by the two start dates is the range of the truth.
Around 15–20% of the total lead time, scaled with the client's responsiveness rather than the edit length — a slow approver needs more slack than a long timeline does. Placement matters as much as size: this scheduler parks the buffer between the last review round and export, so a late round shrinks the buffer while export, QC and the delivery date stay put. Slack placed before the edit gets spent on day one and protects nothing.
Re-baseline, don't compress. The day the feedback actually arrives becomes the new anchor: walk the remaining stages forward from it and give the client the revised delivery date, or the explicit trade — same date, fewer revision days, their call. What you should never do is silently shrink QC, the one stage that protects your reputation. Re-run this planner with the slipped dates and paste the rundown into the email so the record shows the slip moved the deadline, not your estimate.
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