No more heroics: how Smartgroup brought financial and sustainability reporting into one place with VantagePoint

Goal & Challenge

Smartgroup’s reporting ran on spreadsheets, manual links and an external designer, and it took four months of every year. Once the first draft went to design, the team lost control of the document. Sustainability reporting sat in a separate process, with carbon calculations outsourced and mandatory reporting on the way.

Solution

VantagePoint implemented Workiva in two phases. The first moved financial reporting onto the platform in time for the 2025 annual report. The second brought sustainability and carbon reporting onto the same platform, building Smartgroup’s own capability as it went.

Results

• 2025 annual report produced in Workiva, with the implementation starting the previous November
• No sum or casting errors at the first half-year on the platform
• Auditors noted a smoother sign-off that took less time
• Significantly less overtime for the reporting team
• Reviewers’ comments handled in one live document
• Carbon calculations brought in-house, with emissions linked through to the sustainability report, ESG data book and annual report
• Financial and sustainability reporting on a single platform ahead of mandatory reporting

Four months of every year

Smartgroup is an ASX-listed employee benefits company and Australia’s leading salary packaging and leasing provider. It serves around 3,300 employer clients and more than half a million of their employees, mostly across government, healthcare and the not-for-profit sector. It also manages more than 120,000 vehicles through leasing and fleet management.

“All that transactional complexity translates into reporting complexity for us,” says Fiona Lin, General Manager, Financial Control and Reporting.

Fiona has been through around 20 half-year and full-year cycles at ASX-listed companies, and she kept seeing the same pain points come up in every retrospective. When she arrived at Smartgroup near the end of its 2024 annual report, it was the same story.

“This is an activity we do every six months, and it takes four months out of the year. It doesn’t leave much time for anything else,” she says. “It takes a sheer amount of effort and heroics to produce controlled, auditable reporting.”

Two reports, two separate worlds

Sustainability reporting had its own problems. “When I joined Smartgroup, sustainability reporting and financial reporting were running as two parallel processes, but they weren’t really connected,” says Laurel-Lee Blain, Sustainability Lead.

Data lived in spreadsheets, shared drives and personal desktops. Carbon emissions were calculated by external advisors. With mandatory sustainability reporting coming, that was a risk.

“It wasn’t a process that was ready for external assurance and that higher level of oversight,” she says.

The finance team’s move to Workiva opened a door. “It gave us the opportunity to think about how we could manage sustainability reporting using a single system as the source of truth.”

Choosing VantagePoint

Fiona first came across Workiva at a previous company and remembered it. When she couldn’t attend a Workiva conference at the last minute, she sent her procurement manager and reporting manager instead.

“They were blown away by the Workiva platform and by the quality of the partners Workiva collaborated with,” she says.

VantagePoint went through Smartgroup’s due diligence and stood out from the pitch onwards. The bar for success was simple to describe and hard to hit.

“At the end of the day, we needed to produce the full annual report out of Workiva without issue, the very first time. There was no margin for error,” says Fiona. “Their deck covered every concern we had, and the detail of how they would get us there gave us a lot of comfort.”

Matt Roberts, VantagePoint’s APAC Director, made the difference early. “Matt really listened to our needs and concerns. I knew that because he was asking me probing questions, and those questions made me question a lot of my own assumptions.”

A partner with options

Smartgroup had a new procurement team, new policies and a relatively new CFO, so everyone was finding their way. “Matt walked with us step by step through every turn and review we had to go through,” says Fiona.

When there were limits, VantagePoint found ways to adjust. That sometimes meant Smartgroup’s team took on more of the build where they had capacity. VantagePoint also kept Smartgroup aligned with Workiva and helped shape the business case for the CFO.

“I appreciated that in the negotiation process, there were always options for us,” she says.

That approach carried through the whole project. “The methodology was at no point foisted upon us. They went the extra mile to make sure they weren’t recommending something that was theoretically right on paper, but not right for our particular context.”

From November to a live annual report

The implementation began in November. Smartgroup produced its 2025 annual report on Workiva.

“There were a lot of hard yards, I won’t lie,” says Fiona. “But it was an incredibly satisfying moment.”

The contrast with 2024 shows in the review process. Back then, once the first draft was produced, every change went through the external designer as comments on a PDF.

“In 2024 that resulted in 23 version turns,” says Fiona. “Compare that to the half-year, where there were no sum errors and no casting errors. It was a controlled process. Accountabilities were clear, reviewers were happy, and the auditors mentioned how much smoother it was and how much less time it took to sign off the financial statements.”

Reviewers now see only the version sent to them, while the reporting team works through every comment in one live document. Reviewers can see each other’s comments too, which keeps the debate inside the platform. And the overtime has dropped. “In terms of overtime hours, it was significantly less.”

Bringing sustainability reporting in-house

The second phase brought sustainability and carbon reporting onto the platform, with a different VantagePoint team working alongside Smartgroup and Workiva.

Laurel-Lee wanted two things from the partnership. “A partner that would do the heavy lifting on the build, and one that would help upskill our people, so that we could be self-sufficient at the end and explain our processes to assurance providers.”

She admits the start felt like a lot. “It was a little bit overwhelming, knowing there was so much technical knowledge involved. But VantagePoint took us on that journey.” The team mixed virtual meetings with on-site enablement sessions and workshops on the trickier parts of the build.

“We really felt there weren’t any silly questions as we went along that journey,” she says.

The biggest surprise was how much Smartgroup’s own knowledge grew. “Because we’d relied on external advisors, we probably didn’t quite understand what we knew versus what we didn’t know.”

Workiva Carbon now gives Smartgroup control over when and how it calculates emissions, with full visibility of the data, assumptions and methodology. “It gives us far more ability to explain to auditors and assurance providers how we arrived at those numbers,” says Laurel-Lee. “And the emissions link straight through to our sustainability report, our ESG data book and our annual report, so we know the same numbers appear everywhere.”

What’s next

Smartgroup will use its 2026 sustainability report as a dry run ahead of its first mandatory reporting cycle. Laurel-Lee is also looking at how Workiva’s AI capabilities could help align reporting to the standards.

On the finance side, the 2026 annual report will be the first with less reliance on the external designer. Fiona then wants to bring management reporting onto the platform.

“The same efficiencies we’re seeing every six months, I’d like to replicate in management reporting,” she says. “I want finance to be a place people want to come and work. A large part of that is giving them tools that support the outputs they need to create, at scale, without always resorting to overtime.”

VantagePoint is still working with Smartgroup on sustainability and carbon reporting. For Fiona, the relationship is the point. “They walk in your shoes and they’re as invested in getting the outcomes as you are. That’s critical when it comes to finance.”

Laurel-Lee’s advice to anyone tackling sustainability reporting is to look at the bigger picture. “Think about the benefits of bringing financial and sustainability reporting into a single platform. Having a single source of truth is probably one of the greatest advantages we’ve had.”

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