ERP Development in Atlanta, GA

Film Production / Entertainment

An Atlanta film production services company (providing production management, line producing, and production accounting for film and television — managing 8-12 simultaneous productions annually with combined budgets of $180-240M, 45 full-time staff, $32M annual revenue) was managing production finances through a combination of industry-standard production accounting software (Entertainment Partners), QuickBooks, and extensive spreadsheets. Financial management problems: (1) multi-production visibility gap — each production managed as an isolated financial entity — separate bank accounts, separate accounting software instances, and separate reporting. Company-level financial visibility: requiring manual consolidation across productions. The CEO: unable to see the company's overall financial position without 2-3 days of manual work by the accounting team. Cash flow: managed reactively because the company-wide cash position required aggregating data from 8-12 separate production accounts, (2) vendor payment inefficiency — the company working with 2,800+ unique vendors annually (equipment rental, locations, catering, transportation, specialty services). Vendor setup: duplicated for each production — the same equipment rental house set up as a new vendor on each production it supported. W-9 collection, banking information, and insurance certificates: gathered repeatedly. Payment processing: 2 full-time accounting staff dedicated to vendor payments across productions, processing 1,400+ payments monthly, (3) tax credit tracking fragmentation — Georgia's 30% production tax credit requiring meticulous tracking of qualified spending. Tracking: done production-by-production through spreadsheets that mapped expenditures to tax credit qualification categories. Errors: averaging $340K annually in missed qualified spending (spending that should have qualified for the credit but was not properly categorised or documented). The fragmentation: costing productions real money through under-claimed credits, (4) union payroll complexity — each production employing crew under multiple union agreements with different rate structures. The company: using separate payroll processing for each production. Reconciliation: payroll costs not automatically flowing into production budget tracking — requiring manual journal entries that lagged 1-2 weeks. Budget variance: not visible in real-time because payroll (often the largest cost category) was processed outside the production accounting system, and (5) project setup and teardown overhead — each new production requiring 3-4 weeks of financial system setup: chart of accounts, vendor list, bank accounts, payroll configuration, and reporting templates. Teardown: production wrap requiring 6-8 weeks of financial close-out — final vendor payments, union final reconciliation, tax credit documentation, and audit preparation. The overhead: consuming accounting staff capacity that constrained the number of productions the company could manage simultaneously.

We developed a unified production management ERP over 14 weeks. Multi-production financial platform (weeks 1-6). Unified chart of accounts: standardised production chart of accounts based on entertainment industry coding (AICP/standard production accounting) with company-level consolidation — each production tracking costs in its specific structure while the ERP automatically consolidated into the company-level financial view. The unification: the CEO seeing company-wide cash position, revenue, and profitability in real-time rather than through manual consolidation. Production dashboard: each production displaying real-time financial status — budget versus actual by department and account code, committed costs (purchase orders and contracts not yet invoiced), and projected cost-at-completion. The dashboard: production managers and executive producers seeing financial status without waiting for weekly cost reports. Cash flow management: company-wide cash flow forecasting incorporating all production payment schedules, revenue milestones (production fee installments, deliverable payments), and operating expenses. The forecasting: enabling proactive cash management across the production portfolio rather than reactive account-by-account management. Centralised vendor management (weeks 3-8). Vendor master database: single vendor record used across all productions — vendor setup, W-9 collection, banking information, and insurance certificate tracking done once and available for every production. The database: eliminating the duplicate vendor setup that consumed staff time and created data quality issues. Insurance tracking: vendor insurance certificates tracked with expiration dates and coverage verification — automatic alerts when certificates approached expiration and automatic blocks preventing work allocation to vendors with expired insurance. The tracking: ensuring production liability protection while eliminating the manual certificate chase. Automated payment processing: invoices matched against purchase orders, approved through digital workflow, and processed through centralised AP — vendor payments consolidated across productions (a single vendor receiving one payment covering invoices from multiple productions). The processing: reducing payment volume by 34% through consolidation while improving vendor satisfaction through faster, more reliable payment. Georgia tax credit automation (weeks 5-10). Automated qualification tracking: every expenditure automatically evaluated against Georgia tax credit qualification rules as it was entered — the system categorising spending as qualified or non-qualified based on vendor location, spending category, and production activity. The automation: capturing qualified spending at point of entry rather than relying on after-the-fact spreadsheet analysis. Credit projection: real-time Georgia tax credit projection for each production — qualified spending to date, projected total qualification based on remaining budget, and estimated credit value. The projection: enabling producers to make spending decisions that maximised tax credit qualification. Audit documentation: tax credit documentation assembled automatically — qualified expenditure reports, vendor Georgia residency verification, spending categorisation details, and supporting documentation organised in the format the Georgia Film Office required. The documentation: reducing tax credit application preparation from 3 weeks to 3 days. Union payroll integration (weeks 7-12). Union rate engine: all active union agreements (SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, Teamsters) encoded with rate tables, overtime rules, meal penalty calculations, pension and health contribution rates, and holiday provisions. The engine: calculating crew payments correctly under each agreement's specific rules. Real-time payroll-to-budget integration: payroll costs flowing into production budgets in real-time — when crew timecards were approved, the budget immediately reflected the labour cost. The integration: eliminating the 1-2 week lag that made budget tracking unreliable for productions where labour was 40-60% of total cost. Production lifecycle automation (weeks 10-14). Rapid production setup: new production setup reduced from 3-4 weeks to 2 days — template-based configuration with production-specific customisation. Chart of accounts, department structure, approval workflows, and reporting templates: pre-configured based on production type (feature film, television series, commercial). The automation: enabling the company to onboard new productions without the setup bottleneck. Accelerated wrap: production financial close-out streamlined — final vendor payment, union reconciliation, and tax credit documentation: automated rather than manual. Close-out: reduced from 6-8 weeks to 2-3 weeks, freeing accounting capacity for active productions.

The production management ERP deployed across all active productions within 16 weeks. Financial visibility: company-wide financial consolidation: from 2-3 days manual work to real-time dashboard. Cash flow visibility: company-wide cash position available instantly (previously required aggregating 8-12 separate production accounts). Budget accuracy: real-time budget-versus-actual with payroll integration — variance identified within hours rather than weeks. Financial close: monthly close reduced from 8 days to 2 days. Vendor management: vendor setup time: from 45 minutes per production per vendor to 5 minutes (one-time setup). Duplicate vendor records: eliminated — 2,800 unique vendors managed in a single master database (previously 8,400+ duplicate records across productions). Payment processing: monthly payments reduced 34% through consolidation — same vendors paid once for all productions rather than separately. Payment processing staff: from 2.0 FTE to 0.8 FTE — efficiency enabling redeployment to financial analysis. Tax credit recovery: missed qualified spending: from $340K/year to under $40K/year — automated qualification tracking capturing spending that manual spreadsheets missed. Tax credit improvement: $90K+ annual increase in credits claimed (30% of $300K in recovered qualified spending). Credit application preparation: from 3 weeks to 3 days. Audit findings: zero tax credit audit adjustments in the first year (compared to 2 prior-year adjustments). Union payroll: payroll-to-budget lag: from 1-2 weeks to real-time. Payroll errors: reduced 78% — union rate engine calculating correctly under complex agreement rules. Crew payment disputes: from 14 per month to 2 per month. Production lifecycle: production setup: from 3-4 weeks to 2 days. Production wrap: from 6-8 weeks to 2-3 weeks. Capacity impact: the company able to manage 2 additional simultaneous productions (from 10 to 12) without adding accounting staff — the capacity constraint that had limited growth. Revenue impact: 2 additional productions generating approximately $6.4M in incremental annual revenue. Financial results: incremental revenue (2 additional productions): $6.4M/year. Tax credit recovery: $90K/year. Vendor management efficiency: $180K/year. Payment processing efficiency: $120K/year. Payroll error reduction: $85K/year. Financial close acceleration: $60K/year. Total annual impact: $6.94M/year. ERP development: $420,000. Annual operations: $54,000/year. First-year ROI: 1,552%.