How Sage Intacct helped Bristol Old Vic achieve 50% faster reporting and real-time budgeting
As the UK’s longest-running theatre, Bristol Old Vic manages a complex blend of income streams: ticket sales, bars and events, public funding, and donations.
These run alongside inter-company activity across productions and subsidiaries.
Before Sage Intacct, finance processes were largely manual and spreadsheet-driven, leading the organisation’s finance manager to say: “Before Sage Intacct, everything was processed manually. We spent more time inputting than analysing.”
The result: reporting delays, higher risk of errors, and less time for strategic analysis.
How Sage Intacct changed everything
The transformation with Sage Intacct began by consolidating financial data into a single cloud platform and configuring multientity workflows to fit the theatre’s operating model.
Budget holders gained live dashboards tailored to their departments, while inter-company transactions moved from laborious reconciliations to one-click processing—a decisive shift that removed friction from day-to-day finance operations.
“Budget holders can now see exactly where they stand at any moment, rather than relying on monthly reports,” explains Lisa Ronson, head of finance at Bristol Old Vic. “That level of transparency has made a huge difference.”
Crucially, Sage Intacct’s embedded automation and continuous insight changed the cadence of work. Instead of waiting for month-end, the finance team could track progress continuously, identify variances early, and address exceptions within the workflow.
With trusted data and shared visibility, the organisation moved from retrospective reporting toward proactive performance management—giving budget owners immediate clarity on spend versus plan across productions.
Ronson adds: “If Sage Intacct disappeared tomorrow, it would be chaos. We depend on it for efficiency and accuracy.”
Measurable outcomes: What to expect from Sage Intacct
Measurable outcomes followed quickly:
- Month-end accounts completed 50% faster, cutting administrative effort and freeing time for analysis.
- Audit time halved—from four months to two—thanks to cleaner data and streamlined reconciliations.
- Real-time budget visibility for every department, enabling better cost control and faster decisions.
For a creative institution balancing artistic mission with commercial reality, these improvements matter.
Faster reporting restores capacity to plan seasons, price shows, and manage cash more confidently. Realtime budgeting empowers producers and department leads to react to performance trends inflight. And the audit gains reduce disruption and cost, strengthening governance without adding overhead.
The Bristol Old Vic story illustrates a broader principle for CFOs: when finance-trained automation and analytics are embedded in the system of record, the payoff is exponential. You don’t just speed up tasks, you raise the game of the entire function, moving from manual consolidation to continuous assurance and insight.
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