Blog Roundup of Commercial Clients' Case Studies

Wrapbook is a one-stop solution for entertainment payroll and production management. We provide digital tools that can help your teams work faster and smarter with more confidence and fewer problems. 

But why take our word for it when you can see proof for yourself?

In this post, we’re rounding up a collection of case studies from our commercial clients. We’ll talk about how Wrapbook saves commercial production companies real time, real money, and all-too-real stress.

London Alley cut onboarding and payroll time in half

London Alley has long been one of the most sought-after production houses for high-profile music videos. Their aesthetics have supported hits by artists like SZA, Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, and more.

As London Alley began producing commercials for major brands, however, they hit a snag with their old payroll system. It simply could not keep pace with the company’s rapid growth. In need of a scalable payroll alternative, London Alley turned to Wrapbook. 

London Alley’s previous payroll service was inefficient and time-consuming. Every task was performed manually, which slowed producers down and increased the potential for errors. The experience was always tedious and often frustrating.

With Wrapbook, London Alley was able to take control of their entire production management pipeline. They can now manage onboarding, production insurance, and payroll within a single, easy-to-use platform. 

Streamlined reporting features put all the information needed to wrap projects right at London Alley’s fingertips. This access to real-time data eliminates the need for piles of paperwork and the cooperation of third-party paymasters. London Alley can view the payroll history for all of their projects from Wrapbook’s dashboard. 

Since switching to Wrapbook, London Alley has cut time spent on onboarding and payroll by half. According to Adriane Maxwell, Financial Controller at London Alley:

“I’ve worked in production for 10 years now and I’ve worked with every other payroll company there is. Every other system is difficult to navigate, you have no visibility into the project, you’re having to upload additional information in order to obtain payroll reports… so when one of our crew members kept singing Wrapbook’s praises we decided ‘why not’ and took a demo. We’ve never looked back.”

Read the full story here. 

SMUGGLER streamlined their production payroll 

SMUGGLER has fostered a diverse roster of award-winning film, TV, commercial, and music video directors for over twenty years. Today, every SMUGGLER shoot is different, each its own cocktail of opportunities and challenges. Previously, however, there was one challenge that always seemed to be the same: payroll.

SMUGGLER’s traditional payroll was complicated, inefficient, and time-consuming. Manual processes made work slow, and physical paperwork made it complicated.  

For instance, because SMUGGLER often hires the same crew multiple times per year, manual onboarding forced production teams to perform redundant labor. SMUGGLER had to fully re-onboard the exact same people over and over. This process was not only inefficient but also made it more difficult to manage payroll compliance. 

In Wrapbook, SMUGGLER found tools that could accommodate the realities of production. From onboarding through wrap, Wrapbook’s digital platform creates a seamless workflow for payroll and production management. Digital startwork cuts physical clutter and reduces the risk of manual errors. Crew member profiles empower SMUGGLER to re-hire crew with a few clicks.

Wrapbook helps SMUGGLER wrap faster, too. With all their data stored in the same place, SMUGGLER’s wrap process focuses less on data entry and more on data review. Because Wrapbook integrates with accounting software, SMUGGLER’s accounting team is able to get instant access to comprehensive payroll data on-demand.

Here’s what SMUGGLER Head of Production, Alex Hughes, has to say about wrapping with Wrapbook:

“Wrapbook has saved at least one day on every wrap process that would have otherwise been spent dedicated to wrapping payroll."

Read the full story here.

Voyager saves days per project on payroll

Voyager is dedicated to bringing human-centered narrative to commissioned storytelling. For Meliz Yilmaz, Producer and Project Manager at Voyager, serving the company’s mission means keeping its operations in top shape. 

When she noticed that Voyager’s payroll system wasn’t delivering results, she realized it was time to find a more efficient alternative.

Voyager’s pre payroll system was frustratingly slow and opaque. Crew members found it difficult to track payments and find information, while production teams struggled against the system’s confusing documentation.

At the same time, in-house production teams at Voyager spent hours chasing down incomplete forms and checking in with paymasters. When they had questions, it often took days to get an adequate response. 

Voyager turned to Wrapbook for a payroll solution that offers more efficiency and more clarity. Wrapbook’s software allows both freelancers and in-house teams to organize and manage their entire payroll on a single, easy-to-use, secure platform. 

Voyager’s crews can now get paid on time, without problems caused by a third-party paymaster. They can easily find documents through their profile, and production teams can easily track payroll. Wrapbook’s emphasis on transparency makes the payment process faster, easier, and less stressful. 

Since the jump to Wrapbook, Voyager has cut days off off of work per project from their payroll workflow. As Yilmaz reflects:

“I can’t imagine having gone through the growth that we’ve had this year with an older payroll service.”

Read the full story here.

Dress Code NY Inc. trims hours from each payroll batch

Dress Code NY Inc. produces playful work with a quirky sense of humor, characteristics that appeal to major brands like Stella Artois, Porsche, and Nike. In recent years, the production company has experienced enormous growth. However, more projects required more payroll, and Dress Code’s existing system had a hard time keeping up.

Completing payroll on a single Dress Code production required manual input from multiple people, many of whom were often spread across multiple time zones. As Dress Code’s Head of Finance and Administration, Cameron Daniels notes:

“It was causing a lot of difficulty for myself and for the production crew. Whether it be producers spending a ton of time trying to process their shoot payroll, or me reaching out to their staff on their behalf to get questions answered – it was a BIG headache.”

Dress Code was searching for a payroll solution that would scale with their business. That’s why they found Wrapbook.

Now, payroll happens faster. Crew members submit digital timecards quickly and easily from anywhere and with fewer errors. Production teams can review them in a matter of minutes and clicks. 

Wrapbook also enables Dress Code to select the specific payables to include in each payroll batch, making the process more flexible and easier to control. 

Dress Code now saves at least an hour per payroll batch, per reviewer. With multiple payroll batches and multiple reviewers on each project, the time saved across an entire slate of projects adds up fast. 

Here’s how Cameron Daniels puts it:

“Our producers and production crew are 100% thankful we now have Wrapbook. It’s so easy to enter and process time sheets and it is a huge time saver. Win! Win! All around.” 

Read the full story here. 

Picture North finishes payroll four times faster

The human-centric approach of Picture North has earned Picture North a high-profile group of clients, including Conde Nast, Gillette, State Farm, Nissan, and more.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Picture North chose to innovate, expanding their business by seeking new and more efficient ways of working. As the company explored the future, however, their payroll remained stubbornly stuck in the past.

Picture North’s previous payroll system required hand-written checks on smaller projects and sluggish communication with paymasters on larger projects. On both ends of the scale, the process was slow, inefficient, and more unpredictable than it should be.

When Picture North discovered Wrapbook, the company saw an opportunity to modernize its payroll system. Now, Picture North’s payroll is accessible and intuitive. Everything – onboarding, payroll, and reporting – can be managed within a single secure platform.

Wrapbook connects Picture North’s employees and contractors within one system. Crews can fill out and turn in startwork forms online, and production teams can process payroll at will, without a paymaster. The Wrapbook dashboard helps ensure that everyone gets paid on-time and in compliance with no hassle. 

Picture North now saves days on every project, freeing up their teams to focus on their work they’re passionate about. 

We’ll let Matt Bobbitt, Picture North’s Head of Production, sum up the experience:

“If you want to keep your accountants happy and your producers happy, switch to Wrapbook.”

Read the full story here.

GhostRobot eliminated inefficient paperwork 

GhostRobot has been turning out a wide range of evocative and innovative content for over twenty years. From feature films to commercials to comic books and beyond, the team at GhostRobot can do - and has done - it all.

That’s why they’re all too familiar with the headaches of traditional payroll.

Before connecting with Wrapbook, GhostRobot had been trying to move away from physical paperwork on their own. From both an operational and ecological perspective, it became obvious that physical paperwork was more burden than boon. GhostRobot needed a digital alternative to the traditional payroll system, and Wrapbook stood out from the crowd. 

Wrapbook’s digital workflow ditched paper redundancies and streamlined GhostRobot’s digital payroll pipeline. GhostRobot can now assess the payroll status of multiple projects in real time, a remarkable upgrade from guesstimating in-progress payroll based on literal stacks of timecards on a desk. 

Critically, Wrapbook also moved beyond the ineffective half-measures deployed by other digital payroll services. Here’s how Founding Producer Zach Mortensen describes other offerings on the market:

“With the digital ‘solutions’ I was seeing with other payroll partners, it seemed to me like we were doing twice the work.”

Compare that to how Mortensen reviews Wrapbook:

“Wrapbook became a great payroll solution that decentralized the need for physical paperwork.”

Read the full story here.

Wrapping Up

Wrapbook’s mission is to put powerful tools directly into the hands of filmmakers. Our payroll solutions exist to support our clients’ creative success. As the production companies above confirm, Wrapbook has the power to upgrade your payroll process and help you optimize your organization in the process. 

To find out how, check out the demo or drop us a line.