Benefits

• Nigel saves time turning accounting data into management financials that can be used in models and forecasts
• Nigel simplified a complex reporting process into a few clicks of a button
• Masterworks could scale because Nigel's improved, Cubified work kept them lean

Nigel Glenday, the CFO of Masterworks, was in a routine meeting with his CEO and Founder, studying a few KPIs Nigel had pieced together.

The topic? How to grow Masterworks on a strategic, lean budget.

But as their eyes bounced between spreadsheets, Nigel let out a long sigh. It was going to be a long meeting. 

"There was a huge disconnect between how we wanted to look at those numbers and how our accounting systems reported on them," Nigel said.

Did that mean Masterworks was doomed? Far from it. But this type of dissonance could be fatal for a growing company where every dollar counts.

"This was the number one problem that needed to be solved," Nigel said.

In this story, you'll learn how Nigel used Cube to overcome this budgeting rift, plan Masterworks's future, and eventually lead the company to a unicorn Series A valuation.

Challenge

Nigel's biggest hurdles were:

1. QuickBooks and Excel didn't communicate
2. Reporting needs were complex
3. Converting data from "Accountant speak" to "FP&A speak" was onerous and time-consuming

Let's look at each.

Wrangling canned accounting data was a blocker

"Having QuickBooks and models talk to each other was an immediate pain point," Nigel said, referencing how QuickBooks's standard reporting exports are basic and inflexible.

Instead of looking at multiple GL accounts, Nigel needed to roll them up into profitability and balance sheet categories that made more sense from an FP&A standpoint.

In other words, Nigel needed to translate "accountant speak" to "FP&A speak." Theoretically, he could do this in a spreadsheet, but it would be massively inefficient and more prone to error.

The status quo otherwise prevented him from comparing forecasts with historical performance, making it harder to forecast into the future.

Before re-doing his books across multiple entities, Nigel first needed a simple, flexible solution that let him see the numbers how he wanted to and build models and analyses that would support business decisions.

SEC reporting needed to be more efficient 

Masterworks offers and manages blue-chip artwork as an investment through SEC-qualified offerings. As such, they have to follow SEC rules for ongoing financial reporting. "We've become one of the most active SEC filers within Regulation A," Nigel said.

SEC reporting is notoriously convoluted and, to further complicate this, Masterworks holds each artwork as a separate investment (which requires a separate SEC report).

Likewise, in QuickBooks, each artwork had to be a separate entity.

…Imagine repeating that process for over 100 pieces of art.

The volume of this work demanded efficiency. Otherwise, Nigel could have easily spent most of his time on regulatory reporting alone. 

Nigel needed to become both an operator and an investor

Nigel also had to grow as a CFO to meet the expectations Masterworks had for him.

As an investment banker, Nigel always focused on corporate finance and strategy. He had mastery over the spreadsheet but had spent little time in his career dealing with the data wrangling challenges of building a business.

In other words, Nigel needed to learn to excel at two roles: first as a critic—being on the outside, judging the greater context and vision of a business—and second as an artist—being in the weeds, building, and making the small decisions that would ripple across all levels of Masterworks's trajectory.

Nigel's success was contingent on his mastery of both roles.

Solution

"We clearly needed a tool," Nigel said.

Masterworks was incredibly lean and flat in the early days, so they needed something simple, nimble, and easy to implement.

Nigel was also thinking about the future, of when he would eventually scale his team. "Spreadsheets are a universal and agile business tool. We have a ton of experience in making spreadsheets do what we want. We had to have an FP&A tool that could leverage that skillset."

Overall, Nigel was using Cube within two weeks of signing up.

Cube's single source of truth and API integrations connected Nigel's accounting data with Excel

QuickBooks and Cube have a simple API connection that allows for easy data imports and consolidations within Cube's single source of truth.

After Nigel initially mapped his QuickBooks data to Cube, he could then fetch this data into Excel.

Cube's mapping let Nigel circumvent the rigid canned reports from QuickBooks. Nigel can now pull transaction-level QuickBooks data into Excel and format it how he needs to marry it up with his models.

Cube's templates allow Masterworks to be one of the most active SEC filers (with minimal stress)

The most significant time-saver for Nigel has got to be the automation that Cube brings to his reporting process.

Nigel can create a set of saved reports, templates, and analyses with Cube. In other words, with one click, Nigel can now quickly refresh all of his QuickBooks data across all of his entities. 

Nigel also has everything named and organized to his preference. He doesn't have to export and re-configure the data whenever he wants to produce a report.

Nigel's entire compliance process now takes hours instead of weeks.

Cube lets Nigel translate between accounting data and FP&A data

Cube also lets Nigel roll up his account dimensions into relevant operational data or drill down into more specific accounts.

Nigel can roll up those base accounts from QuickBooks to give a high-level overview of the financials. But he can also drill down in real-time during conversations with leadership and show those component accounts and transactions.

This ability to drill down into his data and reports makes it easy for Nigel to paint the picture of the numbers in the most appropriate way to any audience. He can now talk about the business at multiple levels of dimensionality and always have access to precisely the correct data.

Results

Masterworks is one of Cube's longest-running clients, and both companies have grown.

In October 2021, Masterworks announced a $1B valuation, no doubt thanks in part to Nigel's growth and work.

Here's Nigel's new reality:

Nigel could stay lean and scale his team at the right time

Cube's time savings helped Nigel to run things by himself for nearly two years until the business was ready to scale.

"We brought all the accounting in-house and hired an FP&A analyst," Nigel said. "Everybody uses Cube in some way. It's core on the FP&A side."

Nigel also plans to keep using Cube as Masterworks continues to grow.

"Going forward, Cube will help us scale in two ways," he said. "First, it'll help us consolidate investment vehicle finances in a cogent and simple way. Second, there's classic FP&A work."

Reporting and SEC compliance are quick and hassle-free

Masterworks.io is now one of the most active SEC Regulation A filers. "Cube powers many of the templatized processes behind making that happen," Nigel said.

Cube simplifies all of Nigel's reporting.

He can now produce reports in minutes using a combination of Cube's templates and fetch multiple functionality.

Nigel (and his team) have more time to focus on the core work instead of the meticulous copy/paste reporting rotation they would have had to otherwise employ.

Forecasting is easy as Nigel plans Masterworks's future

Now that Nigel can easily translate between "accounting speak" and "FP&A speak," his forecasts are more accurate and easier to produce. 

Nigel can now combine Masterworks's multiple entities, roll up and consolidate data into meaningful presentations, and use his spreadsheet knowledge and skillset to forecast.

In other words, he's mastered both the language of the artist and the critic.

Another surprising result is that Nigel, like many Cube users, has come around to Google Sheets for its built-in sharing functions and for how easy it makes transparency.

Conclusion

Cube and Masterworks have grown together.

Weeks before Cube spoke to Masterworks about this story, Masterworks announced a $110 million Series A fundraising and a valuation of over $1 billion.

And Nigel is no longer doing everything by himself: he's hired an entire team. 

…But he still finds time to get into Cube, now and again.