Customer Case Studies

Spendthrift Farm

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© 2018 Sage Intacct, Inc. All rights reserved. www.sageintacct.com 877-437-7765 Company Overview Spendthri Farm is an international thoroughbred horse operation that breeds, trains, and races in the U.S. and Australia. Nine Kentucky Derby winners and two of the last four Triple Crown winners have lived at Spendthri Farm. Executive Summary Previous So ware: • Microso Dynamics GP (Great Plains) Results with Sage Intacct: • Improved accounting and financial coordination between farms in the U.S. and Australia through cloud accessibility and real-time data. • Reduced the time required to complete consolidated monthly financial reports by 50%. • Transformed a disjointed chart of accounts containing 20,000+ account numbers into a well- architected, responsive, and table-driven COA. Challenges Racing into the Future with Cloud Financial Management Established in 1937, Spendthri Farm is an international thoroughbred horse operation with farms in Lexington, Kentucky, in the United States and Kerrie, Victoria, in Australia. The company breeds, trains, and races thoroughbreds on two continents. Throughout the farm's history, Spendthri Farm has represented an impressive roster of champion stallions, including Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown winners. Spendthri Farm's previous accounting system, Microso Dynamics GP (Great Plains), wasn't han- dling the challenges of being an international organization well. As an on-premises, server-based so ware, it was installed on farm servers in the U.S. and Australia. Lexington-based CFO, Christi Conner, explained that, "to access my accountant's information in Australia I had to log in to his computer and remote server. That was difficult, given the time differences, and it proved quite cumbersome to pull his data together with ours." The architecture of the Great Plains chart of accounts was unwieldy, and the farm's finance team had to deal with more than 20,000 account numbers. There were levels of tracking Spendthri Farms wanted to pursue, but chose to forego, rather than adding to their "disjointed" and "cumber- some" chart of accounts. Consolidating the financial reporting from both farms entailed a painful and time-consuming process. Conner had to manually pull data from Great Plains into Excel spreadsheets and work with pivot tables in order to create presentable information for management. "It was a ridiculously awful process, and it took more time than I want to think about," said Conner, adding that she spent at least 10 hours each month creating consolidated financial reports. Great Plains reports looked backward over the prior month and never contained real-time finan- cial data. The farm manager complained that month-old reports were not meaningful for making current decisions. Meanwhile, Conner had li le time le over for more strategic aspects of her role as Controller, such as budgeting and forecasting. Solutions Flexible, Accessible Solution for Consolidated Financial Reporting Spendthri Farm has partnered for many years with the Dean Dorton, a premier CPA firm special- izing in the equine industry. The firm brought them the idea of switching to Sage Intacct in order to take advantage of the anytime, anywhere accessibility of the cloud. According to Conner, "The team at Dean Dorton has been excellent at helping us improve our business." Racing into the Future with Cloud Financial Management Spendthri Farm C A S E S T U D Y

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