Spendthrift Farm is an international thoroughbred horse operation with farms in Lexington, Kentucky and Kerri, Victoria, in Australia. Established in 1936, the company breeds, trains, and races thoroughbreds on two continents.
THE CHALLENGE
While financial reporting for Spendthrift Farm wasn’t easy before their Australian thoroughbred farm acquisition, it became an even bigger challenge after. Using Microsoft Dynamics GP, the finance team had to grapple with more than 18,000 accounts. Separate instances of Dynamics for the Australian and U.S. operations meant exporting data and using spreadsheets to combine reporting.
The Solution
With Sage Intacct’s multi-dimensional approach the general ledger now has only 300 accounts delivering more relevant information, from the global to the local level, than was ever possible.
With the acquisition of the Australian operation, Spendthrift needed to report on operations for each location, but also in aggregate. While Dynamics forced the finance team to create consolidated reports in spreadsheets, Sage Intacct automatically converts currency and consolidates to provide financial results from any prospective owners and managers need. In addition, the Australian operation was struggling with VAT in Dynamics GP. The Sage Intacct VAT solution provides increased efficiency and accuracy to ensure compliance without maintaining cumbersome, error-prone spreadsheets.
“With Great Plains, the reporting process was very cumbersome, cutting and pasting data into spreadsheets to see information as we needed it. With Intacct, it’s the push of a button.”
— CHRISTI CONNOR, CONTROLLER, SPENDTHRIFT FARM
Using Sage Intacct, Spendthrift is able to provide dashboards with the specific information each farm and department manager needs. As there continues to be an increased focus on expenses, revenues, and budgets, managers can use role reporting to make well-informed decisions. Access to real-time dashboards from a tablet or smart-phone provides an advantage in making decisions quickly under pressure because they trust their financial information is accurate.
Results with Sage Intacct
With multiple locations and business units, Spendthrift Farms can now see financial data on the individual parts of the business as well as in aggregate. Sage Intacct tracks ownership, costs, and revenues of individual horses across their lifetime.
Information and automated processes streamline work for finance and managers no matter where they are working. Multi-dimensional reporting gives managers and owners the exact information they need through dashboards designed just for them.
Account structure designed to simplify and automate reporting across multiple locations, currencies, and business entities. Sage Intacct also provides the ability to track and report on mare’s offspring throughout their careers.
“Account numbers are so simple now. When we are coding invoices, Sage Intacct pulls up the dimension, like horse, for a much faster, cleaner process.”
— CHRISTI CONNOR, CONTROLLER, SPENDTHRIFT FARM