Managing multiple agency offices in Synergist

Overseeing the operations of an agency with divisions in different locations can be painful. Lack of integration, along with manual reporting processes, leads to limited visibility across the agency.

Synergist can be your best friend here. With the option to set up multiple companies, you can manage all your separate entities under one centralised agency management system. Bringing better project and resource management to each division and giving you instant access to live forecasting, performance and management information across the group.

However, this doesn’t mean that everyone has to see everything. Each company can have its own clients, jobs, suppliers, forecasts, billing, reporting, accounts system integration, and base currency. But users can have access what they need and the management team can run consolidated multi-company reporting.

This is included in your subscription plan, too – you pay per user, irrespective of the number of trading companies.* For example, a Director could access to multiple company systems for one user fee.

Multi-currency settings

You can estimate, quote, invoice and manage purchase orders and expenses in any currency, using the multicurrency function on Synergist.

Set a base currency for your group, with individual currencies for each sub-company. You can even set a base currency for each client, or change currency for individual jobs.

When it’s time to invoice, either use your pre-set exchange rate or use the latest exchange rate. You can also add the tax codes in for a range of countries and states.

And you can purchase in different currencies, too. For example, if a purchase is $1000 you’ll buy in that currency, with the system converting back to your base currency for reporting purposes.

Managing your agency resources across multiple companies

Here, you can choose from a few options:

Keep your resources separate. For example, resources in the UK focus on UK clients, while those in the US serve US clients.

Cross-sell your resources. Using this method, you can essentially treat each other as clients and suppliers. For example, if your US branch has won work, the job is created on their system, raising a PO for the UK arm. The UK team would then create a job on Synergist as normal, recording time and invoicing their US counterparts. This would be treated as any other third-party cost. Special cross-charge rate cards can also be set up. So, for example, you could charge £90ph to clients, but only £60ph for cross-company work.

Share your resource pool. Show all your staff on one combined scheduling calendar in Synergist and see the capacity across your business – as simple as if you’re working in one agency. Creatives can access all the job’s info, documents, checklists and comms in one central place, add comments and feedback and log their time and expenses. Time is posted each job, so you can track utilisation and combine it into a single report for a global view – for example, looking at how much time is spent on jobs in the US versus the UK. Plus, you can set targets for individual team members in each country. Colour-coded bookings help you see what bookings belong where.

Agency group-level reporting

See data at an individual agency level or pull in multiple companies for all the standard Synergist reports, as well as building custom reports in the Data Viewer. Report on the exact data you want with sophisticated data filters, formulas, custom columns and cross-tabs - it's like having your own integrated PivotTable tool.

The Data Viewer converts values into the country it’s being run from, using your pre-set exchange rates. For example, if you're running it from the UK, invoice values would be converted to pounds.

Reports can automatically emailed to each Director's inbox with department or company-wide data. Plus, you can set up custom dashboards showing live company-wide information for better and quicker decision making. 

The use of job templates can also help consolidate your approach and provide better consistency with agency reporting.

Navigating all of your agency groups doesn’t need to be difficult. Synergist is set up to help you with all the different permutations of reporting, resourcing and financing internationally, enabling you to see data at individual agency and group level. Giving you all the benefits of a global group without the associated headache...

*Note: each additional company is £100 per month on our lower tiers. But you get unlimited trading companies included on the Enterprise tier.