Eliminate Financial Errors by Building a Smarter Budget Ecosystem

Client

JOAN Studios: an independent content studio working for JOAN Creative and direct to their own clients.

Results Summary

✓ Saved producers 60+ minutes per project through automated calculations

✓ Reduced costly calculation errors affecting project profitability

✓ Transformed days-long financial reporting into instant dashboard access

✓ Created scalable financial system that grew with the company

Challenge

JOAN Studios faced a critical financial visibility challenge with their Google Sheets budget system. Their project budgets and staff planning templates functioned as isolated information islands rather than an integrated ecosystem, undermining their financial decision-making.

The spreadsheets were confusing—featuring inconsistent formatting and non-intuitive layouts. Critical data was scattered across multiple disconnected tabs, forcing producers to manually transfer figures, recalculate totals, and double-check formulas. These manual processes created significant opportunities for human error.

For a creative production company with thin margins, these budget miscalculations could transform profitable projects into resource drains. Each manual calculation increased the risk of costly mistakes impacting downstream business decisions.

The challenge extended beyond individual projects. The managing director lacked any automated way to aggregate financial data across projects. When leadership needed financial overviews for strategic planning, they embarked on a time-consuming process of individually contacting producers for updates and manually entering data into yet another disconnected spreadsheet—consuming hours weekly that should have been dedicated to strategic thinking.

Solution

I developed a multi-phase solution leveraging Google Apps Script to create an interconnected financial ecosystem:

First, I redesigned their budget template, creating a seamless system where information entered in one location automatically populated relevant fields throughout. Formulas were standardized, simplified, and protected against accidental changes. Summary pages pulled key metrics from detailed worksheets, providing at-a-glance insights.

Next, I transformed their staff planning template with drop-down menus for selecting project roles with pre-programmed rates that automatically adjusted according to client master service agreements, eliminating manual contract checks.

Finally, I built a comprehensive financial dashboard that served as a centralized hub pulling summarized information from all project budgets and staff plans. This created a single source of truth with filtering capabilities allowing leadership to instantly view projects by campaign, client, or year.

Results

The impact was immediate across all levels:

Producers reported substantially improved engagement with the financial process. The intuitive interfaces reduced resistance to budget management while automated calculations minimized errors. Most notably, they saved an hour or more per project—time redirected toward creative problem-solving.

Leadership gained instant access to real-time financial visibility across all projects, enabling more accurate forecasting and informed decision-making. The dashboard's filtering capabilities allowed pattern identification, client profitability analysis, and data-driven resource allocation.

Most importantly, the system scaled effortlessly as the studio grew, keeping the financial picture clear and immediately accessible regardless of project volume.

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Client: JOAN Creative - independent advertising, design, production, and media agency

• Reduced weekly cross-departmental meetings

• Provided real-time visibility into project profitability 

• Enabled data-driven client conversations about scope changes

• Transformed reactive resource management into proactive planning