Soho Theatre Level-Up Their Sage Intacct Integration with AP Automation
With half a century under its belt, Soho Theatre is one of the most vibrant producers of theatre, comedy and cabaret in the London's West End. As a multi-faceted operation, housing 3 venues and 4 sub-entities, the business handles large amounts of invoices with various products.
The implementation of an Accounts Payable Automation Software for Sage Intacct meant the theatre “saved half a day, every day,” and gave the finance team reliable data to support budget holders more effectively.
The Challenge: Drawing Back the Curtains on AP Challenges
Festival venue, Soho Theatre, has been a popular hotspot with entertainment enthusiasts for over 50 years. Sporting 3 venues in London’s West End, the theatre offers a variety of shows every day, with some evenings having up to 8 shows.
The business has recently expanded, opening a new venue in Walthamstow. This will mean more purchasing, more paperwork and more document management.
Gemma Beagley joined the finance team over 3 years ago as Head of Finance, and has helped manage the day to day operations of a fast-moving organisation. Trained in accountancy, Gemma oversees the Finance Officer who manages all things Accounts Payable.
“I inherited two different finance systems,” explains Gemma. "I wanted to invest a bit and get everything onto one platform. We struggled to get UK bank feeds into MYOB as an Australian product. Everything was manually keyed in. It was a lot of work for us."
The team used Microsoft Outlook to manage financial documents and received invoices from various departments and suppliers. This same inbox would ensure that someone authorises invoices and requests financial coding against each document.
“It was horrible,” emphasises Gemma. “Now the inbox is barely used. We would receive a few things now and again but in general it’s empty.”
Without Lightyear, we'd likely need another half-person to handle our current document volume
The Solution: Cost & Time Savings Taking Centre Stage
Gemma says the team handles hundreds of payable documents each month. They spend at least 4 hours every day manually entering data into Sage Intacct.
“We invested a lot of money into switching over to Sage Intacct, so I needed to find a more sustainable way of managing invoices. I had to get the return. We weren’t able to add any value to the business because so much time was being spent on data entry.”
After speaking with their Account Manager, Gemma was recommended to look at Lightyear as a plugin to Sage Intacct AP automation, helping to streamline their processes.
“We’re a not-for-profit organisation, so the money we make or save all goes back into the theatre. That’s how we operate. The more we are able to save, the more money reinvested to improving the services we provide.”
Month end is not held up anymore. We are able to identify where invoices are stuck and send reminders out to those who need to action them.
The Results: Setting the Stage for Success
Gemma has saved her finance team over 20 hours every single week. This has allowed her more time to support budget holders by cutting costs and giving the money back to those other areas of the business.
A more streamlined process for suppliers also exists. “We would still get some suppliers emailing to our Outlook inbox, but for the most part, it is empty.” This helps improve cash flow for Soho Theatre and build stronger relationships with suppliers.
When asked what advice Gemma would give to anyone thinking of automating their AP processes with Sage Intacct, she emphasised:
"Do not hesitate. Just do it. The technology is fantastic and usable to anyone who can use a mouse and a drop down list. Invest in the onboarding and and have someone leading the implementation."
We now save half a day, every day. Half a week of work saved for us is amazing. I mean, that's a half a head at £24,000 every year.
Behind the Scenes of Lightyear's Features
The impact that AP automation has had on Soho Theatre is evident. Saving almost 20 hours each week in manual data entry has meant the team are able to provide more support to budget holders, with real-time and accurate data.
“We do most of our reporting in Sage Intacct” highlights Gemma. By automating the extraction of line-item information on invoicing and setting workflows to assign financial coding, pushes accurately categorised data into Sage Intacct, making reporting easier for the team.
Audit trials are key for Gemma who shares, “We are going through an audit at the minute and I have give the auditors access to our Sage Intacct system. If they want to ask any questions about an invoice, I can easily send screenshots of the full audit trail from Lightyear.”
From the moment a document enters Lightyear, every interaction is logged against it, meaning there is a clear trail of where it has been and what has happened with it.
Soho Theatre staff are also big fans of the Archive feature. “If we can't quite find what we’re looking for on Sage Intacct it’s very easy for users to self-service via the Lightyear Archive module.” In a few clicks users are able to create their own reports or search for invoices and statements in an online Archive which stores documents for up to 7 years.
Synchronising the Financial Performance
After joining, Gemma quickly discovered the need to integrate an AP solution to cut down the level of manual work being carried out by her team. Lightyear offered an API integration, meaning data could flow easily between the two solutions with minimal human intervention. Gemma described the integration as “seamless”.
“It’s so easy to train people on. The usability is just lovely. You can clearly see what’s outstanding and where it’s stuck. We’re going to be putting staff through Expenses shortly and I’m really confident that it’s going to be so simple. The team were such a joy to deal with.”
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