Back to Customer Stories

Mar 12, 2025

The Artist // How Dolly Card Transformed Expense Management for a $5.7M Production.

Todd Baxley IMDb

Production Accountant

Introduction

In the fast-paced world of production, managing finances efficiently is crucial. A recent $5.7M production needed a seamless, modern solution to track expenses, eliminate petty cash issues, and improve financial transparency. Traditional methods—cash advances, manual receipts, and complex reconciliations—were slowing them down. Incumbents—Cashflo—were not meeting their needs: the production did not have time for a long process to onboard, they were frustrated with the non-intuitive interface, and did not have the cashflow to provide required deposits. That's when they turned to Dolly Card.

The Challenge

Managing a production of this scale requires precision. Particularly when applying for tax incentives. On previous productions, the accounting team faced:

Manual receipt entry. This means departments would be forced to wait around to start their shopping. While it might seem trivial, it actually allows for expenses to be more spread out over the duration of the show, meaning your cashflow could be more accurate.
Longer audit processesdue having to ensure that the cardholder was entering the right accounts and proper information.
Having to constantly remind cardholders to upload receipts.
Limited transparency,making it hard to track spending in real time.
Tenuous “envelope” building processes
Lack of collaboration,which increased manual load on coordinators and accounting team.

The Solution: Implementing Dolly Card

Dolly Card offered the production team a smart, digital-first payment solution:

Virtual cards for crew members,issued instantly and added to Apple/Google Wallet.
Automated receipt capture,ensuring every transaction had a digital record.
Real-time expense tracking,giving producers instant visibility.
Integrated account coding,reducing accounting errors and simplifying tax compliance.

With Dolly Card, producers had full control over spending while eliminating the administrative burden of manual expense tracking and coding. Dolly helps accountants split the burden of coding and receipt management with their crew – crew are able to upload receipts and code their transactions directly from a chatbot on the go. Accountants are encouraged to audit those values, but this saves significant time – validating instead of entering data themselves.

Results & Impact

The impact of Dolly Card was immediate and significant:

50% faster reconciliation,reducing time spent on financial closeout.
100% expense visibility,eliminating lost receipts and unaccounted costs.
Savings of over 200 labor hoursThe production was able to complete the project with a 2 person accounting department due to the streamlining of processes.
Better financial oversight,allowing the production to stay on budget with live spending insights.

"To put it simply, Dolly Card helped take a project that had the potential to be a cost and expense tracking nightmare, and made our lives so much easier in every regard, whether it was with the software or customer service. We even had crew members sharing with us about the ease of use."

— Todd Baxley, Production Accountant

Conclusion: A Game-Changer for Production Accounting

For this $5.7M production, Dolly Card wasn’t just a tool—it was a member of the production accounting team. By eliminating outdated processes, the team worked more efficiently, reduced errors, and gained unprecedented financial clarity.