How Payroll Problems Become Production Nightmares featuring Kerry LaiFatt

Welcome back to On Production brought to you by Wrapbook. Today I'm joined by Kerry LaiFatt, Wrapbook's VP of Sales for Film and Television and someone who has spent her career at the intersection of creative production and financial infrastructure. Kerry began her career in front of the camera on Canadian television before moving into non-fiction media and actually

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unscripted industry conferences as well. These are experiences that gave her a ground level view of how productions actually function. She later spent nearly a decade working with studios, producers, and accountants inside of one of the industry's larger payroll and accounting platforms. Today, she's helping shape the next generation of production finance tools and how they work here at Wrapbook.

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In this conversation, we'll talk about what's breaking in production finance right now, how staffing shifts have changed the experience curve on set, and what self-serve really means for producers, and why modern systems are increasingly expected to do more than process payroll. They're expected to reduce cognitive load. Kerry, great to have you here.

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Kerry LaiFatt (01:54.754)

Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the warm welcome. I'm excited to just dive right in with you.

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Cameron Woodward (02:00.406)

So let's start from where you began in your career in front of the camera. When you were on set, what parts of production felt invisible but powerful?

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Kerry LaiFatt (02:12.088)

I will never forget my very first time, my first impression I had of being on a TV series set. Like in the past, I had done commercials and music videos and I even hosted an extreme sports show from the side of a glacier to working on cruise ships and managing my own TV station. But there was just something about being on a television set and it was almost as if it were happening in slow motion where Tia Carrere.

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on the set of Relic Hunter came up to me and gave me the most warm welcome. I swear her hair was just blowing in slow motion in the wind or something. But in that moment, I think that's when I realized, you know, like, I want to be a part of this world. It's just so exciting. But, you know, being in front of the camera, I think I was very, very unaware of how intricate all the moving parts were in the production office. And it wasn't until I stepped behind the scenes working in entertainment payroll

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that I see those invisible roles like production accountants and UPMs and line producers. And then when I worked at ReelScreen in unscripted conferences, I would watch producers pitch, which is undeniably incredible to watch that hustle, right? And they're the ones getting all the recognition and rightfully so, but there are people like production accountants dealing with the day to day that they really don't get any of the shiny credit.

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And I underestimated how much payroll and accounting shape what actually is happening on set. You they're not just cutting the checks in the background. They're influencing the day-to-day rhythm of production. So take scheduling, for example. You've got overtime rules, turnaround penalties, and those directly impact how an AD builds their week.

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So if accounting is flagging that you're trending really having on six days, suddenly your weekends are getting reconsidered, right? Your schedules are going to tighten. It's basically felt operationally. Hiring, hiring is another big one. How someone's classified. So are they alone now versus an individual, union versus non-union, resident versus non-resident. And that's not just paperwork. That affects your tax credits, your budget, and sometimes even ultimately who gets the job over someone else.

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Kerry LaiFatt (04:24.756)

And as you know, because you've been in production, nothing will kill a vibe or completely destabilize a set faster than payroll issues. So if people are paid late or not getting paid at all, that trust is gone. And then finally, at a higher level, I want to mention cost reports because that will shape the behavior of the whole production. So.

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Accounting isn't just recording what happened. They are influencing what's going to happen. And they are that invisible infrastructure holding the whole thing steady. So when they work well, no one notices, right? But when they don't, everyone feels it.

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Cameron Woodward (05:00.682)

Was there some time in your career when you were in front of camera that you sort of realized these systems were working? You mentioned a little bit, but like, I'm curious, like, when did you first realize that payroll and accounting were not just back office functions, but actually like structural to how a production runs?

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Kerry LaiFatt (05:18.702)

I don't think I really noticed until I worked at a payroll company because that's when I would get the phone calls from production accountants or producers panicking with issues. And I was like, my goodness, that's really what structuring the day to day and deciding where production will go.

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Cameron Woodward (05:38.516)

So you've worked in this role of being a liaison to these productions across hundreds of productions. Where do payroll and accounting workflows most often break down from your experience in seeing this, even on experienced teams?

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Kerry LaiFatt (05:56.736)

Well, I always like to say that I'm like your free therapist. People don't usually call me at a payroll company until they finally hit a breaking point. Because I think the thought of changing production accounting systems and considering all of the downstream effects, it often outweighs the possibility of change for them.

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And that's also why I like to tell people, you know, when you're ready to leave your abusive relationship, AKA the archaic legacy systems that they curse daily, but they've grown accustomed to using, give me a call. Because we all know nothing ever goes smoothly in production. But the most common points of failure in production, payroll and accounting workflows, it sometimes even starts at the very beginning. The onboarding process is clunky.

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bottlenecks happen when paperwork isn't submitted or it's not complete and having to chase your crews to get this done I think happens on every set. Last minute hires when you're having to have them onboarded after the fact after everything's been set up.

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that adds time to your schedule. And then on the accounting side, the manual labor of keying in invoices, which can take days if you've done it, it means delayed payments to vendors, which we obviously don't want. And then finally, I want to say if you have to make changes to a time card in a batch in some system, that will hold up the entire batch. So these are some bottlenecks that a lot of people are experiencing. And what we've done here at Wrapbook is

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we've taken a look at all of the above and built a solution to minimize these things. doing things like building simple wizards for crew to fill out instead of looking at that I9 form, which is really overwhelming for a lot of people. And with all their info in our system, you essentially have a crew database. And then when they're invited to a new project,

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Kerry LaiFatt (07:52.928)

everything auto-populates, which is great. So all they need to do is just review it, confirm that it's correct, instead of having to fill it out over and over again. And then as for the time cards, you can even remove some from a batch and still move forward without holding up a batch. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is working with a partner and a system that gives you the autonomy to set up your own project and make changes on the fly, it's a game changer.

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having on-demand control of things is, it's really something new to this industry. And that's what I'm really excited about here. Wrapbook is bringing that to the table.

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Cameron Woodward (08:32.064)

That's awesome. You know, we're obviously so glad to have you, especially with all of the experience that you bring helping productions, you know, solve these critical problems. If you had to though, Kerry, identify like the top two drivers from your clients that make payroll feel hard, what are they?

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Kerry LaiFatt (08:51.444)

all of the above everything, you know, volume compliance, union rules, approvals. it's, it's so many things.

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Nothing is easy in this business and the unions certainly don't make anything easier for you. But if I had to pick, you know, two or three drivers of why production finance can feel so hard. Number one, without question, is union rules and compliance, because there are so many unions, so many contracts, different rate structures, overtime rules, meal penalties, fringes, turnaround rules. And then on top of that, they all vary by geography and project type.

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And I think, I think this is the only business in the entire world that makes payroll so complicated. And so the second thing I wanna say is planning. And I can't stress this enough, especially if you are a producer, new to the world of production finance, please, please, please hire a strong line producer and a production accountant. My heart absolutely breaks.

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when I received that panic call from a producer saying,

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Kerry, we ran out of money. And most of the time it traces back to just improper budgeting or cash flow management from the very beginning. And one of the most common questions I get from newer producers specifically building out a budget on their own is, are union fringes included in payroll fringes? And the answer is no. Union fringes are in addition to payroll fringes. And that misunderstanding alone can blow up your budget.

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Kerry LaiFatt (10:31.49)

And the last thing I want to give like an honorable mention to, think would be volume. Because managing the sheer number of time cards and invoices is just something very unique to our world. But you know, now that we've got automations and OCR, which is optical character recognition within our system, to save your team's time, know, volume doesn't have to be an issue. But if you're using a legacy system,

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Just imagine a world where your system can actually handle the volume, has union rules built in, enforces compliance automatically, and then puts guardrails around your approvals. That's really where things are evolving because production finance, it shouldn't feel impossible, but without the right people and the right systems in place, it absolutely can.

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Cameron Woodward (11:23.968)

That's awesome. I want to shift a little bit because it's like you were on screen and then you were at Reelscreen, the industry conference, which is amazing. If you're listening to this and you're in Unscripted, you probably know about it, but we have lots of listeners at OnProduction. Some are not in Unscripted, but Reelscreen is like this fantastic conference. I think it's based in Canada, but like it's usually in Miami or New Orleans or it goes all over the place. And you were, you worked there for quite a while. When did you start?

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Kerry LaiFatt (11:53.518)

I was there for about 10 years when I started, oh my gosh, 17, that was like 17 or 18 years ago is when I got started at RealScreen. And I think it gave me a really unique perspective into the industry because, I mean, my job was in sales there. I was selling ad space for the magazine, but I was also selling sponsorships to...

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Cameron Woodward (12:00.509)

Okay.

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Kerry LaiFatt (12:15.212)

you know, a lot of different vendors. So I was working closely with a lot of unscripted networks. I was also working with, you know, other companies in the payroll space. And that's really where I got my opportunity to make that shift from unscripted conferences. And like I said earlier, like I'd watch producers pitch. So I think I learned a lot along the way. So that also helped me stepping into this role on the payroll side of things, because I'm often, you know, just talking to producers and

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They ask unique questions and ask for advice. And it's kind of cool when I can say, hey, by the way, when you're pitching this, here are a few tips along the way.

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Cameron Woodward (12:53.224)

Right, I guess the thing that I was curious about is like, because you've been embedded in like the unscripted space, first at real screen and then in payroll, you were also there like when there was this massive talent shift where, you know, the industry saw massive staffing and experience reset, like after 2020, you know, senior people leaving, junior people stepping up fast. And I'm curious, like from...

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Your vantage point, like what changed in what producers and accountants now need from their payroll partner?

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Kerry LaiFatt (13:28.192)

I think that major shift really happened during COVID. That was actually after I had stepped away from the world of Unscripted because COVID was this insane chaotic time for production. scripted projects were still moving forward, but they had to now absorb these massive new costs like COVID testing, hoteling your cast and crew so that they stay in pods, hiring COVID compliance officers. And I remember indie films having a tack on

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on at least an extra million dollars or more just to cover those new protocols. And then at the same time, Unscripted kept moving forward, which created this really strange split screen version of the industry. And at that time, unfortunately, a lot of talented people just, they couldn't survive the shutdown. And a lot of people left the business entirely.

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And then on top of that, there was a consolidation and a restructuring happening across a lot of the studios.

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But then when production roared back, it roared back hard and it felt like it was all happening at once. So suddenly everyone was greenlit at the same time, both scripted and unscripted. And that created a huge talent shortage. And I want to say, especially in accounting. And it wasn't just that, you know, people had left the business. It was that the demand had exploded overnight. So even casting was a challenge because the actors were double and triple booked. And then on the accounting side.

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you had clerks stepping into first assistant roles and then seconds becoming key accountants. People were having to move up quickly because they just simply had to. And I think that also really changed what producers and accountants needed from a payroll partner in a really big way. So pre-2020 payroll was more transactional. You were expected to be accurate, timely, have union expertise, and that was just table stakes. But post-2020,

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Kerry LaiFatt (15:30.754)

the expectation became more hands-on for the payroll companies specifically. So when you have people in roles that they're still growing into, that's when mistakes were happening. And it wasn't because they weren't capable. It's just simply because they hadn't built the expertise yet, right? And payroll companies...

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suddenly found themselves doing a lot more guidance, sometimes walking teams through processes step by step, sometimes catching issues that, you know, a seasoned accountant would have spotted immediately. And in some cases, paymasters were acting as an extension for the accounting department. And, know, from where I sit, from where I sit, most payroll errors

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They're not coming from a place of bad intent. It just comes from not fully understanding how to use a system. And then during that period, people weren't just learning new jobs. They were learning new tools, new compliance rules, and in many cases, transitioning to a fully paperless workflow all at the same time. So that was another major shift. And there was now this immediate need for digital start work, digital time cards, fully remote approvals.

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What I'm saying is like truly paperless solutions. So production needed to operate without stacks of physical paperwork moving across a desk. And, know, like while a lot of the legacy systems offer digital components, they weren't truly built for 100 % paperless production. would, you know, start off looking paperless. And then you hit this point where you suddenly have to scan some paper. So support today for.

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Cameron Woodward (16:57.322)

you

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Kerry LaiFatt (17:12.27)

lot of productions specifically, want to say, especially in unscripted, looks very different. It's not just processing the payroll. It's onboarding the teams, quickly training them on your digital workflows, which is new to them, proactively flagging risks and, you know, helping less experienced crews feel confident in high pressure environments. And I think in a lot of ways, this disruption forced a really long overdue modernization.

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And production, gosh, it's an incredibly wasteful industry when it comes to paper. And the pandemic just accelerated the move to digital. And honestly, I think that shift was necessary. Now, the bar is higher. Producers expect technology that works seamlessly and partners who can step in, not just administratively, but truly be a partner to them, not just a vendor.

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Cameron Woodward (18:08.48)

That's great. Along those lines, Kerry, I'm actually curious. Like you mentioned earlier that sometimes your clients or producers think of you as their therapist to solve some of these problems. What does like payroll support mean today that it didn't maybe mean five years ago?

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Kerry LaiFatt (18:26.903)

my gosh.

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The world of Unscripted has unique challenges that are very, very different from scripted. Hang on. have a, I want to just like refer back to my notes because I had something here. We can edit this, right? Because we're kind of like jumping around. had

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Cameron Woodward (18:45.77)

Yeah, of course.

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Yeah.

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Kerry LaiFatt (18:53.038)

Okay, can you repeat the question?

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Cameron Woodward (18:54.772)

Yeah. So, know, Kerry, you had mentioned just a little while ago that like some of your clients or producers think of you as their like therapist, but I was curious, like along those lines, what does like support from a payroll company mean today that it didn't maybe mean five years ago?

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Kerry LaiFatt (19:13.07)

I feel like there's just a lot more whole hand holding that's needed nowadays. I think with the way the industry is changing with a lot more short form happening and people moving from say commercials and, podcasts or, YouTube channels.

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those needs like they need things that are very nuanced like production payroll, but They never really had those tools available to them before right? and then in unscripted with the challenges of Constantly shooting, know internationally or in multiple locations that creates a lot of new challenges Because I'm like, gosh, I've had I've had two clients in the past

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call me to say, my goodness, we were shooting in, I believe it was in Mexico both times, that all of their equipment was stolen and held for ransom. So now you have that new challenge of how am I coming up with that cash on the spot? So these are really unique challenges to the world of unscripted or like I was saying earlier when they say, Kerry, I ran out of money. So now as a payroll provider, we're not just.

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supporting you on the payroll side, we're sometimes also connecting you with people on the periphery. Perhaps we're connecting you with somebody in finance to help you raise additional funds because you've run out of money. Or now, you know, maybe you need help on the tax incentive side. So we do have a lot of relationships with others within the industry that can help you that are that go beyond just payroll processing.

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Cameron Woodward (21:02.198)

That's great. just a moment ago, you were talking about sort of all of these different processes and systems that changed post COVID. Like that was something that you saw a lot of change from your perspective on the payroll side. And I think from my side, obviously being in payroll as well, that I see this like growing demand for self-serve workflows as well, especially in unscripted and non-union productions. I'm curious from your view operationally, what...

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What's different about those productions and what do they need most?

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Kerry LaiFatt (21:33.784)

Well, first of all, I don't even think there are any self-serve options in film and television other than Wrapbook. I mean, all the other solutions still require you to pick up that phone or email somebody, and then you have to wait for a change to be made or wait for office hours. And specifically in Unscripted, if you're in another time zone, nobody has time for that, right? So the reality of working in reality television or working in Unscripted is

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you're having to accomplish so much more with less. And over the years, I've watched producers struggle with budgets, but the networks still expect you to produce the same quality shows. And unscripted teams, look, they're smaller. Their budgets don't always allow for hiring a production accountant. And that means that the producer is now sometimes wearing all of the hats.

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So I have a soft spot for Unscripted because of the challenges that they face. Like I said earlier with the cartel or having all of your equipment stolen, having to figure it out on the spot. It's just, they're just having a moment. So in the world of documentaries, you're not just worrying about the safety of your crew, but also your equipment, apparently. So payroll is an...

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exactly top of mind or having to know all the nuances that you need to know with any union rules or what if I'm doing this or that. So I think this is also where having the right system matters because if payroll isn't your area of expertise, that's okay because Wrapbook will guide you through compliance. There are

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know, built in reminders and smart automations and guardrails that keep you on track. So you're not guessing. And even though, you know, scripted is often non-union, we do have union contracts built into the system. So you don't need to memorize rates. You just plug in the location, their role, and then that system will, or sorry, our system will populate scale, handle your overtime, and then it basically just makes sure that people are paid correctly.

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Kerry LaiFatt (23:43.446)

It's just literally as simple as checking a box. And because unscripted productions are almost always mobile, having a web-based solution is huge. So you can run your payroll from anywhere in real time. It auto saves. So if your internet drops because you're working up in the mountains or you close a window by accident, you're not having to start over.

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But the one thing I've been bringing up in a lot of my phone calls recently is having autonomy and freedom to make changes yourself. You can create projects, add people, adjust permissions, handle updates on the fly. So you're not having to wait for somebody in a different, you're not, you know, you don't have to wait for somebody like in a different time zone to open their office to help you. So having a self-serve model is...

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is really helpful, particularly on unscripted, because people are always rolling on and off projects. It needs to be flexible. I know it happens in inscripted as well, but I don't know why it seems to happen more often in unscripted where people are like on and off. So know what, adding and removing people are just, you can do it in a snap and wrap book. So at the end of the day, unscripted producers have enough drama to manage. you're

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Your payroll doesn't need to be dramatic too. Just having a self-serve system will save you a ton of time.

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Cameron Woodward (25:12.064)

That's great. Have you seen where maybe fragmentation between payroll and accounting systems quietly cost productions a ton of time or money?

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Kerry LaiFatt (25:24.586)

Yes, just a moment. Throwing me for a loop.

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Kerry LaiFatt (25:39.31)

Where did it go? I had the whole thing about email and like I was like comparing, you know, everything being compared to like the life before email happened. That was...

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Kerry LaiFatt (26:00.494)

Good times. So glad this is editable.

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Cameron Woodward (26:03.989)

Yeah, it's all editable.

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Kerry LaiFatt (26:08.536)

Are we still going to be talking? here we go. Are we still going to be talking about? We'll get to that when we get to that. OK. You remember life before email when you had to write a letter, drive to the post office by stamp, mail it, and then wait. All just. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (26:25.184)

Let me re-ask the question.

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Cameron Woodward (26:29.924)

Kerry, that's, that's super interesting. I'm curious. mean, you, you're mentioning a lot about the payroll side, but I'm curious. Does fragmentation between payroll and accounting systems quietly cost productions, time or money?

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Kerry LaiFatt (26:44.788)

Absolutely. Okay, you remember the time before email when you had to write a letter and then direct to the post office, a stamp, and then you waited, and that was all just to get a message to someone. That is what fragmented legacy systems feel like to me. There are like so many extra steps for the same end result. And in real production terms, that fragmentation...

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costs you time and money in very practical ways. Having to sign into multiple platforms just to complete one task. You're entering payroll data in one system, then manually updating accounting in another system. You make a change on one side and then have to remember to update the other side. That is where double entry happens. That's where reporting gets mismatched. That's where approvals stall because the data isn't flowing cleanly.

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And the scary part is those little disconnects turn into real dollars, incorrect cost reports, missed fringes, delayed payments, audit headaches. Now, what becomes possible when payroll and accounting live in one system? Well, first you get visibility, real-time cost reporting that's actually going to reflect what's happening with payroll as it processes, not weeks later after reconciliation.

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The second is control. Producers can now make faster decisions because they trust the numbers. Your line producers, can see the burn rates clearly, and your accounting teams are spending less time reconciling and managing risk instead. So when everything lives in one place, happening in real time and in one ecosystem, you're not just

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saving steps, you're saving time and you're turning finance from a reactive function into a strategic one. And I think that's where the real shift is happening.

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Cameron Woodward (28:47.978)

That's awesome. want to pivot a little bit. here internally, you've said that AI in production accounting and payroll should reduce cognitive load and not just answer questions. What does that look like in real production terms?

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Kerry LaiFatt (29:02.498)

You know, I think when people hear AI in production, I've had these conversations very recently as well. They fear that it's going to run payroll or replace accountants, which I think is a huge misconception because that's not where it shines. Where AI genuinely helps is in

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hundreds of small repeatable questions that slow a production down every day. So think about what your crews are actually asking. You know, when does sixth day overtime kick in? Why did my net pay drop this week? Is my per diem taxable? Or what do I need if I'm getting paid through my loan out? Right? These aren't strategic questions. They are rule based.

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They're policy driven, but they create bottlenecks because your payroll and accounting team has to answer them over and over again. And AI is incredibly good at that layer. It can instantly explain overtime rules, meal penalties, fringe breakdowns, onboarding requirements, and it can basically translate payroll language into plain English for you. And most importantly, it can explain the why, not just give you the answer. And I think...

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That's where AI becomes powerful because it's not just reducing emails. It actually raises the baseline knowledge across the crew. And, you know, there are areas where I don't think we should rely on AI and

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I would say that's anywhere where you need human judgment, anything gray, things like final union interpretations or edge case payroll calculations or tax credit eligibility. That's a tongue twister, tax credit eligibility. AI shouldn't be making judgment calls that carry financial risk or any legal risk.

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Kerry LaiFatt (30:59.626)

The right role for AI is as a compliance co-pilot. It can handle those repetitive, structured, and the educational. It can even act as a pre-submission check. Things like, have you verified residency docs? Is this coded correctly? And you can ask those questions before something becomes a costly mistake. And I think something interesting

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happens over time, because the team is constantly seeing these answers before them and not having to ask those questions all the time, they do become more self-sufficient. So instead of constantly escalating basic questions, they do start to understand the system. And in production, those knowledge gaps are what causes delays. And AI isn't replacing expertise. It's scaling it for you.

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That's where the real opportunity is for AI.

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Cameron Woodward (31:57.291)

That's awesome. You spent, as you mentioned, nearly a decade inside another entertainment payroll and accounting system. What convinced you that it was time to build something different at Wrap Up?

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Kerry LaiFatt (32:11.554)

I always found it a challenge and kind of broke my heart every single time I had to turn business away. So when there was that boom post COVID and then that shift towards shorter form content, I recognized that there wasn't a solution to service them. And seeing the innovation here at Wrapbook is really what piqued my interest.

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because I'm learning, I still am learning, because I'm still relatively new here, I'm learning that we're not just building a system for the way things currently are happening today. We're constantly in conversations with studios and producers and accountants to find out what they truly need, and we're building to that. But we're not just building what they're asking for, we're saying,

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what can we do to make it better? How can we maybe move away from the traditional way of doing things? And I will say that the company I came from, they were at the time the disruptors in the industry. And I found that very fun to be a very fun place to be. And coming to Radbook, I think this is the next level of innovation that's about to come. I think we're going to see like a big jump in what people decide to adopt because I think, you know, at the time,

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Digital solutions already existed for many years and people were not adopting it. It took a worldwide pandemic to essentially force people into trying something new. So I think seeing the new ways we're things, I find extremely exciting. And just, I don't know, can I talk about new features that are coming?

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A question I would always get is, can you pay your vendors directly through your system? Because that is just not something that exists anywhere. So I think that's one of the new features that's about to be rolled out very soon that is coming that really excites me. Because it's the idea of saying, OK, well, you don't have to do things that traditional way, the way you've always done them with all these steps x, y, and z. We can maybe skip steps x, y, and just jump straight to z with Wrapbook. And I love that.

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Cameron Woodward (34:31.818)

That's awesome. Was there something that felt unfinished or maybe something that was possible that pulled you towards Rackbook?

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Kerry LaiFatt (34:45.07)

I enjoy the build. I enjoy being a part of something that's new and I see that we are on the verge of something really big. And I think the industry is at this turning point now where they're looking at their budgets, which are

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unfortunately tighter across the board and both scripted and unscripted and they're there. I think people are really truly assessing.

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how to move forward in production, how can we still make those quality shows but with tighter budgets? Something's gotta give eventually because union rates aren't really changing, everything seems to be getting more expensive. So we are offering a solution that gives you a lot more flexibility. And again, kind of going back to the idea of doing things very differently. Having a self-serve system, I think is groundbreaking. It's something that...

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I don't think is possible for the other legacy systems out there because because of the way rap book was built from the ground up in a very smart way it gives us the freedom to build features that we want in a very thoughtful way whereas the legacy systems it's like they have a system here and then a frankenstein thing happened where they would just sort of

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build these integrations, but instead of us just building integrations with other companies and acquiring other companies, we are literally building it from the ground up and sort of like untangling that web that is the world of production accounting today.

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Cameron Woodward (36:25.132)

So Kerry, if we zoom out like three to five years, what does production finance look like if it's done right from your view?

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Kerry LaiFatt (36:34.804)

Over the next few years, like I said, I think we're going to see another really big leap. First, it was the adoption of digital offerings, like digital start work and time cards. And I think the next step is the adoption of AI in production payroll, once people really truly understand what that means to them and how it can help them, because it's finally available in a way that's usable.

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The idea that it can just significantly save your team time with automations and removing a lot of that manual entry, that translates to money saved. And we all know, like, look, at the end of the day, it always comes down to the bottom line, whether you want to admit it or not. And to have a user interface that is clean and simple and

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It just, it looks more like what we use in our everyday apps outside of the production world. It's finally here. I mean, why does production payroll software look like it's from the nineties? Right. So the one big shift I've seen in entertainment around, you know, short form content, which is growing exponentially.

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Like I said earlier, there's been that gap in the services for their needs. They're lean. They don't have accounting departments. They're managing high volumes with very small crews and they need something that's faster, smarter and designed for the way that they actually operate. And I called this out a while back.

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You know, there hasn't been a good payroll solution for that short form content. Like when I was working for one of the competitors, it broke my heart to turn business away and they were truly practically begging for solutions. So if you're doing like a YouTube series or a digital series or a podcast.

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Kerry LaiFatt (38:24.974)

they still require the nuances of entertainment payroll that traditional payroll providers, they're just not built for that. Because the truth is, is with other payroll companies, whether you're setting up a $5,000 show or a $500 million show, it still requires the same amount of work on the backend for them. But it's not like that here at Wrapbook. We can really handle

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projects at scale. So now our technology is making it very available to everyone. So whether you're doing, you know, a commercial, a music video, a digital series, or maybe you're now shifting and moving into film and television, you can now stay on the same platform. You don't have to, you know, reinvent your workflow every single time you level up. And

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When you do move into new territory, like union contracts, you know, you're not on your own. The expertise is here and a system that has guardrails built in, you know, to guide you along the way. I think it's going to take.

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It's going to take time. It's going to take time because like I said, it took a global pandemic to get everyone to just even go digital and go paperless. But I think once people experience a system that gives you on-demand control, it's going to be really hard to turn back from that because once you realize that not only do you have on-demand control and it still comes with full service support, I think that's when adoption will really follow.

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Because, mean, isn't on-demand control what we all want, right? We want something that's smarter and faster and more accessible. And faster basically just means fewer manual steps, less double entry, real-time visibility into your spend, so there are no surprises. Smarter means you've got your union rules built in, your compliance guardrails, and you have a system that

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Kerry LaiFatt (40:24.03)

flags issues before they turn into expensive mistakes. And finally, more accessible means, you know, you don't need a massive back office to operate like a product, like a

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like a professional production. A lean team can now have enterprise level controls. I've seen a lot of producers over the years, I started working with them when maybe they were just working on a small $1 million indie film or maybe they started in commercials or short form and now they're moving into larger projects or episodic. And that transition can be jarring for some of them.

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because the complexity, it just jumps dramatically, especially with all the union rules. having a system that scales with you, that can grow from a commercial to a feature without having to reinvent your entire workflow, that is huge.

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And ultimately, the future of AI and production finance, it's not. And I have to stress this once again. I know I said it earlier, but the future of production AI, it's not about replacing accountants. It's about removing that friction so that they can focus on strategy instead of cleanup. Because I don't think anybody got into this business dreaming about reconciling spreadsheets at 2 AM.

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Cameron Woodward (41:47.948)

That's awesome. Kerry, thank you so much for your time sharing with me a bit about your past and your career and all of the things that have led you to now. It's been super awesome and inspiring to see how deeply you've learned about the technology that we've built and are building at Wrapbook and then bringing that and pairing it with, you know, all of these challenges that you help your friends and clients solve when it comes to that invisible back end of

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production payroll and accounting and all of that, you know on this show and on production we talk about all kinds of things from producers projects and incentives and all these different things and it's fun to sometimes take a minute and think about the really cool critical Workflow pieces that we get to solve every day in our careers here at rapbook And so thanks for sharing super wonderful if people want to connect with you or learn more about you or chat with you How do they get in touch?

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Kerry LaiFatt (42:40.071)

well, they can find me here at Wrapbook or you can also find me on LinkedIn.

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Cameron Woodward (42:45.067)

That's awesome. Thanks so much for joining me and sharing so much, Bye.