customer success

Picture North does payroll four times faster with Wrapbook.

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Overview

From their founding in 2008, Picture North—a boundary-pushing production company based in Chicago—has never stopped evolving. Their human-centric approach to filmmaking—anchored by impactful projects that feature real people and real stories—has earned them a high-profile group of clients, including Conde Nast, Gillette, State Farm, Nissan, and more.


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But just because they work with brand-name, blue-chip clients doesn’t mean they’re satisfied with doing things the way they’ve always been done. The company is always looking for ways to push the envelope—both creatively, and operationally.

As Picture North’s Head of Production, Matt Bobbitt works closely with the company’s producers and clients to align their creative visions and create production budgets that can bring those creative visions to life. Under Bobbitt’s careful guidance, Picture North delivers authentic and compelling commercials and campaigns with cinematic production value.

Perhaps nowhere is Picture North’s commitment to constant evolution more apparent than in the company’s approach to the Covid-19 pandemic. Faced with a once-in-a-generation emergency that threatened to shut down production, the company found opportunity in adversity, dramatically expanding their business by embracing new and more efficient ways of working. Yet as the company evolved, one facet of their business remained frustratingly stuck in the past: payroll.‍

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The Problem

Picture North’s old payroll service was slow and unreliable. On smaller projects, producers spent days hand-writing checks to pay independent contractors. On large projects, their payroll service took days to respond to questions and provide payroll updates. For a company committed to delivering compelling, cinematic content to their clients on time and under budget, these kinds of delays were disastrous. Not only that, consistent payroll delays also carried the risk of opening Picture North up to liability.

Worst of all, Picture North’s professionally processed and reviewed payroll came back peppered with errors. Bobbitt recalls spending hours—valuable time he would rather have been spending with clients and creatives—reviewing everything line by line in order to correct mistakes and ensure every payroll was accurate and compliant.

“We had production teams spending a day or two hand-writing checks, and when it came to jobs where we had payroll, our old payroll service wouldn't respond for 48 hours. When they did, they had miscalculations.” — Bobbitt

Why Wrapbook?

Wrapbook makes Picture North’s payroll accessible and intuitive by putting everything—onboarding, payroll, and reporting—into one seamless, secure platform. The all-in-one software saves Bobbitt and Picture North’s producers and crews hours every time they do payroll. With Wrapbook, Bobbitt knows every calculation will be correct and crews will get paid quickly and transparently.

“It's easy, it's online, it's fast, so we've reduced the amount of time and effort it takes our crew.” — Bobbitt

The Solution

When one of Picture North’s producers introduced Bobbitt to Wrapbook, he saw an opportunity to modernize the company’s payroll and seized upon it.

Wrapbook seamlessly connects Picture North’s employees and contractors. Crews can easily complete and upload startwork documents online, and production managers can process payroll themselves, any time they want. Gone are the days of tedious back-and-forths with a hard-to-reach paymaster. Now Bobbitt and his team can be sure that everyone gets paid on-time and compliantly right from their Wrapbook dashboard.

Wrapbook also syncs with QuickBooks Online, so Picture North's accounting team can reconcile and track production costs without rekeying data or chasing down production coordinators.

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

Seamless Integration With Budgeting and Accounting Tools

Picture North outgrew and outpaced their old payroll service and needed a payroll solution that worked well with the other tools in their tech stack. With easy budget exporting to HotBudget and real-time integration with QuickBooks Online, Wrapbook saves Picture North hours of manual data entry on each project.

An Easy-To-Use Interface That Makes Training a Breeze

Getting production managers and coordinators up to speed is painless thanks to Wrapbook’s intuitive interface. Even seasoned Production Managers that have been in the industry for decades find it easy to make the switch to Wrapbook. Picture North’s whole team was up and running after just one tutorial, confidently managing whole projects in Wrapbook.

Business Impact

Wrapbook saves Picture North days on every project, freeing their teams to focus on delivering impactful stories that captivate audiences and wow their clients.

The digital-first solution also makes paperwork a thing of the past, which Bobbitt loves, both for its simplicity and its impact on the environment. Picture North no longer has to store stacks of binders filled with production payroll—their onboarding documents, payroll, and reporting are accessible from anywhere, stored securely, and backed up by the cloud.

“We have reduced our production team's need for work by about 75% when it comes to payroll.” — Bobbitt

The Future

Over the last few years, Picture North has built upon their already impressive track record, acquiring a powerful new array of tools that will allow them to further expand their reach while still delivering high-quality, impactful work.

Wrapbook, their all-in-one digital payroll solution, makes onboarding, payroll, and reporting more seamless, secure, and efficient, allowing Picture North to keep evolving and reaching new heights.

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