Newcastle Theatre Royal

Established in 1788, Newcastle Theatre Royal is an award-winning theatre in the North of England, which hosts over 410 performances per year. This customer story explores the Tessitura and Xledger integration, built and maintained by Xledger, that supports Newcastle Theatre Royal’s and their ticketing management.

Alex Grieves, Head of Business Optimisation and Projects at Newcastle Theatre Royal, joined Xledger’s arts & culture Business Development Manager, Robb Webb, to discuss how the integration between Tessitura and Xledger has streamlined their financial management.

The interview

How was the process of piloting the integration and working with our integration team?

AG: We worked with Florian, and he’s been very responsive. We met at a Tessitura Learning Community Conference 2024, with a plan to sort out our ticket management. It really helps that Florian has knowledge of financial processes, as well as his knowledge of Xledger and integration pathways, as he’s helped iron out a few technical issues on our side.

What were you hoping to achieve with the integration?

AG: When we went out for tender, we wanted something that integrated with Tessitura because we wanted to streamline our sales information, which comes all the way through our ticketing system. After all, that was where a lot of the manual processes were happening. Before that, we didn’t do projects or job costing.

Now, we’ve got a seamless operation where data moves in the following way:

Project codes > diary management system > ticketing system > Xledger

How has the integration cut down your manual workflow and provided better insights?

AG: In terms of the project code example we spoke about previously, we started doing them on our old system, and there was a lot of manual entry, which allowed for errors and duplication. But the automation between our Tessitura and Xledger integration has completely stopped all of that. It’s built in a way that if there is a duplication, it flags the errors and sends them to the finance team, so they’re immediately aware of those situations.

As a result, we’re much further ahead in spotting when financial income is recognised in the deferred box office in a completely different area to where it should be, as the system immediately flags it.

The box office journal was previously completed by exporting, then using three lookup tables to manually record the data in our finance system, and manually matching it against the bank.

Now, these are all different processes within Xledger, and the bank reconciliation functionality automatically imports the journals, so finance can see where the revenue is coming in.

How has the integration changed the way you reconcile information in Xledger?

AG: Before the Tessitura and Xledger integration, the finance team would manually import a CSV file containing the manipulated spreadsheet data. Now, the integration automatically creates a draft journal entry. If the draft balances, the team can approve the entries, meaning we can instantly recognise income against shows. As a result, we can instantly see how much money has been generated or saved, for example, on that specific show.

It’s the same for project costing. Previously, we may have taken revenue for a show in two years and simply placed the money on the balance sheet. Then, we would have manually reconciled it against the show when it happened based on a ticket sales report.

Because of the automated project costing, we can now see that there’s X amount of money sitting on the balance sheet waiting for that specific project code, and we know to release that when that show comes out of the deferred box office. So, there are a lot more streamlined processes and easier money allocation.

How much time does the integration save your team on a weekly basis?

AG: We see the most time saving on tasks that are performed on a daily basis – the integration is saving us at least 1 to 2 hours every day!

How has the integration increased your confidence in the accuracy of data across business platforms?

AG: It has certainly boosted our confidence in the accuracy of data within Xledger – knowing we can query within the system get access to real-time reporting is a massive benefit. So long as the time is put into building the integration to meet your specific business needs, the end goal is very rewarding and timesaving.

How has the integration helped non-finance teams?

AG: It’s definitely helped non-finance users access financial data quicker and easier and also helped with accountability across the business. For example, our marketing and events programming teams can see the real-time income against each project.

Our development team can see live revenue against our membership scheme, which comes through the box office journal, too, and other team members can also allocate correct transactions against the correct project codes to see their instant spend.

Finally, our education team runs Project A, an acting qualification that aims to bring young audiences into the theatre and prepare them for acting school. This year, we used Tessitura to charge for that course, using payment plans for the students. Now, we can see the money coming in through Xledger as it is recognised against the course straight away. Before this, the finance team would have to chase invoices.