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SINE is a specialist media consultancy for the cultural and entertainment sectors, built to deliver smart, audience-first campaigns across digital and traditional channels. Founded in 2017 and now a 70-strong team with offices in London and New York, SINE is set up to manage complex, multi-channel strategies with precision and scale.
Co-founder and CFO Felix Matthews has been a significant contributor to SINE’s overall growth story, much in part due to his work building the company’s finance function. While the team has grown 4x since day one, the philosophy guiding their work has remained the same. As Matthews states,
"My focus has always been on processes and efficiencies versus human power," explains Matthews. "We've always looked at keeping focus on the tech stack within the finance function and making sure we're automating as much as possible for not only efficiency but control and continued scalability."
So, when SINE’s close processes started to bend under pressure, Matthews decided that investing in new tech, not more people, was the best way to solve this issue.
As SINE expanded, the complexity of its operations also increased. Between international expansion, capital investment, and a growing chart of accounts, their spreadsheet-based system couldn't keep pace with the business. In turn, their month-end close process began to show strain.
"When you have so many spreadsheet tabs that you actually have to scroll across to see them all, that's always a good sign that you are maybe not using the best technique for managing the close," Matthews recalls.
Task management became especially challenging as the team grew — with more stakeholders involved in month-end, the need for better coordination became obvious:
"When it was just me and someone else, it was pretty easy to do things on the fly, say on Slack, 'okay, you do this, I'll do that today.' It was when we increased to a team of 4 that I realized we needed a proper task management solution, but I was reticent to use a traditional tool like Monday or Asana, where beyond ticking off tasks, the actual work would be happening outside of it."
After spotting a case study of Numeric in a newsletter, Matthews scheduled a demo to see the product. During his conversation with co-founder and CPO Anthony Alvernaz, the value proposition became immediately clear: Numeric functioned like project management software designed specifically for finance teams, with task allocation and preparer/reviewer workflows at its core.
"The initial hook was that [Numeric] genuinely looked like project management software. It's all about managing users, allocating tasks, and incorporating preparers and reviewers," Matthews explains. "Then the live Xero integration sealed the deal – here's our live general ledger, here are the balances and here's how we can integrate our existing Google sheet schedules – that was next-level."
Unlike other solutions that required migrating to new ERP systems or signing expensive, multi-year contracts, Numeric offered a direct integration with SINE's existing tools at a price point that didn't require board approval.
SINE implemented Numeric in August 2023, and the team was able to adapt to Numeric within just one close cycle, quickly establishing it as the heart of their month-end process and core component of their finance tech stack.
Since onboarding Numeric, SINE's finance team feels that the partnership has been a perfect fit. For Matthews, the most significant impact has been his ability to maintain oversight on the close while stepping back from the day to day work. .
"It's enabled me to delegate with guardrails. I can monitor progress, spot issues and see how we're tracking against our due date targets."
This shift has allowed Matthews to focus on more strategic work while maintaining confidence in the close process. The impact extends beyond just his role:
Matthews particularly appreciates specific features that have streamlined their processes:
Perhaps most valuable is how Matthews views Numeric as SINE's month-end knowledge base – a central repository for the team’s most important information.
"[Numeric] also becomes your knowledge base," explains Matthews. "You can keep files contextually in the right place rather than just in a Google Drive with an often confusing folder structure. Supporting documents are attached directly to the relevant account code. Perfect."
Every task in Numeric can have descriptions, comments, notes, and pinned attachments. This ensures that critical financial knowledge isn't stuck in one person’s head – a crucial consideration for a growing global business.
"A CFO should make sure that important company knowledge isn't siloed," Matthews adds. "A great way of making sure that isn't the case with any month-end tasks or processes is to get it clearly documented and shared in a tool like Numeric."
This knowledge base aspect has proven particularly valuable when team members take leave or when new employees join, as all the context they need is readily available.
With their first annual audit on the horizon and continued expansion in North America, SINE now has a month-end system ready to scale with it. Matthews is confident that Numeric will support their growth trajectory, feeling the tool is capable of handling more growth and complexity without requiring significant changes to their approach.
"I feel comfortable [Numeric] will scale with a business like ours until we’re much bigger," Matthews notes. "It could easily manage teams in double figures and with double the number of accounts."
For Matthews, Numeric represents the control, scalability, and structured approach to financial management needed for future-state businesses. He values these aspects more than simply closing the books quickly – quality and robustness are paramount to his finance philosophy.
By focusing on building a solid month-end system with Numeric, SINE has established a finance function that can continue supporting its global ambitions for years to come.
AI-assisted. Operationally efficient. Audit ready.
