Superprime supercharged their payroll with Wrapbook
Overview
In the realm of luxury brand advertising, few names ring out as clearly or consistently as Superprime. Founded in 2015, the LA-based production company has quickly risen to become an absolute juggernaut in commercials, music videos, branded content, and short films, and their growing stable of directors includes icons like Yorgos Lanthimos, Chloé Zhao, and Martin Scorsese.
Superprime’s award-winning work, defined by arresting visuals and captivating stories, has transformed the brand from eager upstart into industry powerhouse in just a few short years.
But while Superprime’s meteoric growth propelled the company to new heights, it also revealed deeper problems with their payroll and accounting processes—problems that threatened to slow Superprime down and leave them vulnerable to costly errors.
For CFO Mikael (MK) Karlson, Head of Production Matt Sanders, and Lead Production Accountant Connor Powley, these payroll inefficiencies necessitated a major change. They knew Superprime needed a payroll and accounting solution that could bring their financial operations into the 21st century.
They needed Wrapbook.
The Problem
Managing a full slate of commercials, music videos, and other short-form content is a challenge for any production company. Layer in the inefficiencies created by Superprime’s old-school payroll company—physical paperwork, manual data entry, and long turnaround times for simple tasks—and the usual challenges could quickly turn into a massive headache. “Previously,” says Connor, “you’d be submitting a batch of payroll, manually scanning a bunch of stuff, sending it in, having someone review it, and then coming back four or five days later.”
Not only that, the team also struggled with a lack of visibility into their costs. Without real-time cost data, there was no way to get a clear picture of where money was being spent until well after wrap. This meant that the team was constantly engaging in guesswork when trying to ascertain whether a given project was over- or under-budget.
“I’ve always kind of felt like I’ve been in a dark hole with payroll—not being able to get the information that I need or generate the reports I want.” - Matt
Plus, the accounting data that was available had to be manually re-keyed into a corporate accounting solution, because any attempt to integrate their payroll platform with their accounting platform relied on buggy middleware software that often created more problems than solutions. “We didn’t really have a workspace that we could go into and get the information that we really needed,” says Matt, “It was kind of just a dark void.”
But above all, Superprime’s biggest problem was reliability. Slow turnaround times for payroll and error-prone manual calculations left Superprime frustrated with their previous payroll provider.
“I’d say the final straw was our previous provider dropping the ball for the umpteenth time on some basic thing. That’s never been a problem with Wrapbook.” - Connor
Why Wrapbook?
Superprime needed an all-in-one payroll and accounting solution that would give them real-time visibility into all their costs. Not only that, they wanted something that would connect seamlessly with their corporate accounting software, so that their accounting team would always be in the loop.
They found it all—in a simple, easy-to-use package—when they discovered Wrapbook.
The Solution
From the very start, it was obvious to Superprime that Wrapbook had the potential to transform the way their productions operated. It started with onboarding. Wrapbook’s profile-based onboarding system meant that workers didn’t need to be re-onboarded for every single project—their valid W4s and banking information were already right there in the system, so all it took was a few clicks to add them to a project.
Then there was Wrapbook’s on-demand payroll process. Automated timecard calculations—built by veteran paymasters to be union compliant—greatly reduced the need for Superprime to wait on a paymaster each time they needed to run payroll. Superprime could just click, pay, and move on.
“Seeing what Wrapbook is capable of doing…it shortened the timeline of every process within payroll. It’s just mind-blowing.” - Connor
For Matt, having access to live data was game-changing. He and his team can now generate on-demand reports—so they’re always aware of what’s happening on set in real time. “I can log in…check on things, generate reports…and we don’t necessarily have to go through a paymaster to do that,” he says.
Even better, Superprime’s accounting data isn’t trapped in the Wrapbook platform. With seamless integrations with the leading ERPs, Superprime never has to waste time manually re-keying cost data.
“The integrations that Wrapbook has are seamless and—again—instantaneous. There’s no waiting for an invoice to post or waiting to receive a bill. It’s just there.” - Connor
Mikael puts it more bluntly: “Has the integration changed the lives of our team? Yeah. Game changer. Absolutely. Absolutely.”
Business Impact
Making the switch to Wrapbook simplified Superprime’s payroll and accounting processes, and sped up their business. Now, their team wastes less time on menial tasks, so they can focus their energy where it matters: on the final product.
“[Our team] can now focus on higher level tasks—review, compliance assessments, making sure everything is done right—instead of having to do keystrokes.” - MK
This not only saves time, it also enables Superprime to be more self-sufficient. It allows them to make data-driven decisions during production, rather than after the fact.
Wrapbook also keeps Superprime’s crew happy, by getting workers paid on time with minimal hassle. And as anyone who works in the commercial production industry knows—when you’re trying to retain top talent job after job, a happy crew is everything.
“Any time we tell a crew that we’re using Wrapbook, they’re so excited.” - Connor
The Future
Looking towards the future, Superprime is excited to get into some of Wrapbook’s newer features, including its real-time purchase order tracking and budget actualization module. “We’re using [the module] on our first job right now,” says Connor, “and I can already see the potential for it to be a game-changer.”
And on the horizon, Superprime is poised for even greater growth. But one thing they know is that Wrapbook is going to keep growing right along with them.
“Wrapbook is not stopping anytime soon. You can tell that they’re not complacent in their product. They know everything can be done better and differently. They’re not stopping.” - MK
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