Growing Advertising Agency Improves Profitability by 6% and Reduces Accounts Payable Processing Time by 83% With Sage Intacct

As Red Door Interactive expanded over the past 18 years, tasks like time tracking, revenue recognition based on percent completion, and quarterly headcount budgeting became increasingly complex and cumbersome. Additionally, in the agency world, high turnover rates and new client contracts create constantly fluctuating headcount needs, so visibility into personnel forecasts is crucial. 

Red Door Interactive previously used a mix of Microsoft Dynamics SL, along with several other disjointed applications, causing the finance team to struggle with duplicate data entry and error-prone invoicing. After evaluating several financial management software options, including Oracle NetSuite, Red Door chose Sage Intacct for its flexibility and seamless connectivity.

By upgrading to a modern, cloud-based system, the agency improved profitability by 6%, sped up budgeting and planning by 85%, and saved over 55 hours on monthly workflows and reporting. 

“Visibility is where we’ve recognized the biggest gains from switching to Sage Intacct—its drill-down capabilities are night and day compared with Dynamics, and we love Sage Intacct’s permissions-based dashboards,” said Natalie Bonczek, controller at Red Door Interactive. “I save days of report preparation each month because we’ve created helpful self-service dashboards where our executives, client services team, and department heads can find relevant, timely business insight on demand.”

After implementing Sage Intacct, Red Door Interactive realized significant organizational benefits, including:

• 33% improvement in finance team productivity: Sage Intacctslashed tasks that used to take hours or days down to just minutes—including new project creation, expense report processing, invoicing, revenue recognition, A/P, and reporting. Intuitive workflows, such as improved timesheet entry and multi-level approvals, helped boost overall finance team productivity by 33% while increasing invoice accuracy for clients.

• Reduced A/P processing time by 83%:  Utilizing Sage Intacct’s Marketplace Partner Stampli, the team was able to substantially reduce AP processing time, to include time and effort of non-finance team members responsible for reviewing & approving AP invoices. The seamless two-way communication between the two platforms enables a nearly effortless process.

• Sped budgeting and planning by 85%: Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning allowed the finance team to replace quarterly budget and re-forecasting cycles that previously involved entering data, making adjustments, and re-creating five different master Excel worksheets with tabs for each of the agency’s 20 departments and separate office locations. By automating this, the finance team gained powerful functionality that eased the budgeting workload 85%.

“Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning changed our process from a headache that took at least two days every quarter, to a simple two-hour task every six months,” Bonczek remembers. “Now, my team can better monitor headcount dynamics and easily run complex calculations and models to understand the potential impact of changing salaries or start dates. Since we create forecasts for leadership in half the time, we’re able to run more scenarios, and can distribute final budgets a week before the period starts, rather than after the fact.”

For more information on how Red Door Interactive uses Sage Intacct, view the full case study.