When Hollywood went on strike, the business went into free fall — quarterly revenue declined by over 40%. Hundreds of productions halted simultaneously. When the strike ended, they’d all resume at once. The window to capture that demand with a digital payroll product was narrow, and hiring wasn’t an option: the talent pool was already exhausted.

The problem

Entertainment Partners’ manual payroll processes meant our team couldn’t scale to meet the projected surge in demand. The only path was a digital solution — launched before productions came back online.

We needed to minimise the time required to validate and launch a digital payroll service so that we could scale our service to meet highly increased demand and retain or grow our market share.

Three groups had to succeed for payroll to run on time.

What each role needed

Approach

I mapped the jobs-to-be-done and then prioritised the individual user stories to determine the minimum viable scope. We then overlaid the current service design to determine the initial scope, which included the payroll handover process. I created an initial design based on existing understanding and then iterated.

Jobs-to-be-done mapping from 15 remote user interviews

I scheduled 15 remote user interviews with production finance teams, over three weeks, from across a range of productions. Given the tight timeline, I published a deck with the results of each conversation and a change log for the prototype. This kept stakeholders up to date with the changes as we progressed.

We conducted the interviews remotely and recorded them using Microsoft Teams. We captured the video for later and published quotes from the transcripts into our deck and research system.

Findings and a changelog went out in weekly decks to keep stakeholders aligned throughout — 3 weeks of discovery, 7 prototype iterations, ~560 screens and modals, and 15 hours of user testing.

What I designed

01

Make sure everyone is paid

Replaced manual cross-referencing with an advisories dashboard. Contract and right-to-work verification was surfaced directly — no more switching between spreadsheets to find blockers before a run.

For: Production Accountants

Accountants are alerted to any issues that will block payroll

02

One place for payroll

Consolidated multiple spreadsheets into a unified hub with real-time visibility on payment readiness across the whole production. Status visible at a glance — no more chasing individual teams for updates.

For: Production Accountants · Production Management

All pay runs in one view — status, blockers, and readiness at a glance

03

Move backwards and forwards in time

Enabled historical review and advance preparation — accountants could look back at previous pay runs or work ahead on upcoming ones without losing context on the current week.

For: Production Accountants

04

Drill down into detail

Tab-based views grouped payments by department or by worker, so accountants could focus on exactly the slice they needed without scrolling through unrelated entries.

For: Production Accountants

Payments grouped by department or worker — filter to what matters

05

Easy to reconcile

Filter by contract type and bulk-assign invoice numbers in a single action — tasks that previously required manual spreadsheet work and individual entry.

For: Production Accountants

06

Identify problematic payments

Payments with blockers — missing invoices, incomplete timesheets — were flagged per worker so accountants could chase exactly the right people rather than auditing every entry.

For: Production Accountants

07

Track submission status

Real-time monitoring of the payroll team's progress gave production managers and finance leads visibility without needing to ask for updates.

For: Production Management

Outcomes

What changed for each role