The Sports Consultancy improved financial efficiency with Synergist

The problem

Manual, time-consuming reporting and obsolete data

The finance team were spending hours on manual project reporting which was quickly out of date. 

Alex joined TSC as a Management Accountant in October 2022, just before Synergist was implemented.

“Previously, we used Excel for estimating and Toggl for time tracking. We’d take the time from Toggl across to Microsoft Access and Microsoft Access into Sage and download it from Sage to Excel each month. From there, we’d create an Excel sheet for each project to compare the quoted and invoiced charge-out rate to the actual time used and calculate the recovery rate.”

“It was incredibly laborious for the finance team to report on projects each month. Some of our projects are also quite complicated, with a lot of phases.”

“Basically, by the time we reported to the business at the end of each month, projects had already gone too far. If we wanted to make any changes, it was too late.”

The solution

Instant reporting, real-time data and a centralised system

“Synergist meant we could bring in a system so project managers could see their projects in real time. Instead of going through several stages, timesheets are now posted straight to the projects and time tracked against estimates, quotes and invoices in real time.”

As well as studying the historic data to identify trends and improvements, the finance team also assess the real-time data to make sure the team isn’t overservicing. This means they can be more proactive and reactive: “Catching things before they're a problem and asking why.”

Having everything in one place has also been transformational. Having shared files means we can upload new supplier forms and contracts to the job, so everyone working on the project gets access and has sight of billing dates and the terms of the agreement. We do all our POs and supplier invoices through Synergist too, so everything is in one place.”

“We now send a weekly utilisation dashboard to the senior management team. This gives them an overview of how much overtime is being booked, chargeable time versus targets, and making sure no one is reaching burnout or not being given enough to do.”

TSC have a multi-entity business structure, with some projects across both businesses. The Synergist multi-company set up means they can easily report on where people’s time has been used and cross-charge between the businesses.

They also use Synergist for some of their finance reporting, including invoicing, billing plans versus actuals and revenue recognition. 

“Although it's a management tool for our project managers, it’s also proving to be a useful finance tool.” 

“Synergist has changed the way we manage expenses. Again, it used to be all about Excel spreadsheets and receipts saved in SharePoint, with the thankless task of going through and trying to match them all up. It’s so much easier in Synergist. Some will be direct overheads and others will go onto the project as recoverable expenses – we can invoice the client for these.”

“We use Sage as our accounting software, so we can use the middleware to post into Sage and run our management accounting and reports from there.

Alexander also says the whole onboarding process for Synergist was invaluable.

“It's really useful having a team of experts from Agency Works on hand. And I don't think we'd be getting the best out of Synergist if we didn't have them. We’re in the process of upgrading to the Enterprise version as we’re opening two new offices, one in Saudi Arabia and one in the UAE, so we’re going back to Kate at Agency Works for support.”

The return

Project profitability and ownership

“A massive plus is that we’re now giving ownership to those involved in each project. They’re not relying on other people to tell them the information. They can be much more commercial with our projects and I’ve definitely seen much better project profit margins on them.”

“Although we didn’t bring the system in purely to save the finance team time, it has definitely had this bonus effect, and we can see real figures at any time. When I started, there was lots of manual data processing in our finance team. Now we use Synergist for that, and the finance team use the data to run meetings.”

“Rather than spending half a day creating Excel spreadsheets, we get a custom-made report within Synergist with the same data on a PDF.”

“I think it pays for itself in the long run. We don’t use other tools now, so that’s a cost saving, and we’ve seen an improvement in the profitability of our projects.”