Arteria

The situation.

Natasha Wells has run Arteria since 2006. It is a full-service design and marketing studio operating on a sole-trader model with a network of trusted contractors – flexible scale, no permanent overhead.

That model relies on accurate reporting. Without it, the studio cannot tell which clients are most profitable, which service lines deserve investment, or what its actual run-rate is. Natasha had Xero. She had WorkflowMax. She knew her way around both. What she did not have was time to use them properly.

For two years, she knew she needed help with the books. She did not act on it. The result was a measurable thing: the business plateaued.

A plateau on a creative studio caused by deferred bookkeeping is not a creative problem. It is a visibility problem. The business was operating in the dark.

What we changed.

Admin Army took over the bookkeeping function:

• Weekly Xero bank reconciliation
• Job costing in WorkflowMax
• Supporting digital admin tasks tied into the same operational rhythm

The structural change was not that Arteria got a bookkeeper. It was that the founder of a creative studio stopped operating without financial visibility.

The outcome.

In Natasha’s words.

"Without accurate reporting, I didn't know where I could improve, what clients to target, or what areas of the business were most lucrative. We couldn't grow because I didn't know what position the business was in."

"It is a critical and fundamental part of a small business that this area of the business is done cost-effectively, super efficiently, and with someone adaptable to operate the way you work, rather than force the way they work."