Payroll in live theater is complex, demanding deep industry knowledge. On Cast & Crew’s Master Your Craft, Sarah Galbraith, President of Checks & Balances, and Ryan Lympus, Product Services Manager, explain how their team supports productions from Broadway to national tours.
“A single Broadway show can have 14 different unions on its payroll,” says Sarah. “There’s no payroll clerks,” Ryan adds. “The managers that handle payroll are juggling a ton of other tasks every day.” Checks & Balances doesn’t just process numbers. They speak the language of the theater.
“Everyone in our senior staff comes from a theater background,” Sarah notes, “so we really understand the industry.” As such, their solutions were designed specifically to handle things like union benefits, vacation accrual, and performance-based pay.
Security and flexibility are key. “Manual processing and paper submissions are a thing of the past,” says Sarah. With tools like Studio+, managers can work from anywhere. “Imagine being a tour manager whose payroll processing day is also a day you're traveling 70 people from Omaha to Los Angeles,” Ryan says. “These advances in secure communication offer that flexibility to our clients to be able to prepare and review their payroll on their own schedule.”
“[Today’s managers] expect innovation,” Sarah says. “My goal for Checks & Balances is to position us to be at the forefront of those changes, offering effective, convenient digital solutions and maintaining our focus on customer service.”
For both, the mission is personal. Reflecting on founding the company, Sarah says, “I believed that the theater business I love and the incredible people who work so hard in it deserved better.” Ryan, an early client, agrees: “[Checks & Balances] made a difference then, and you can see how it's going to continue to make a difference as we move forward as well.”
Watch the full conversation above or listen to the podcast below to learn how this team is helping live entertainment run more smoothly and securely, with theater at its core. And if you're managing payroll in live theater and want to see how Checks & Balances can support your production, reach out here to start the conversation.
