Legends of Learning Saves Time Paying Out Game Developers With Tipalti Mass Payments

The Challenge

Time-Sucking Manual and Error-Prone Payments Process

Game-based learning company Legends of Learning is on a mission to make learning fun, accessible, and effective. The company’s 2,000 curriculum-aligned science and math games engage students and empower teachers in both the classroom and at home.

Contracted with 500+ different game studios, Legends of Learning made quarterly batch payouts to its network of developers. Brian Dallesasse, Legends of Learning’s Director of Content Marketplace and Data Analytics, manually managed all payee data, and its CEO manually processed the payments. Everything was Google Sheets-based, and each quarter, Dallesasse copied and pasted payment preferences. If anything changed, Dallesasse would have to personally record the new data in Google Sheets. With around 250 payments each quarter, pulling every game studio’s payment information manually from Google Sheets took Dallesasse about a minute per studio, which was “a non-negligible amount of time.”

Legends of Learning provided developers with four different payment options, including PayPal, wire transfer, and written checks. With a global economy of game studios, Dallesasse and the CEO were processing payouts to developers in upwards of 75 different countries. But its manual processes were negatively affecting operations.

Each quarter, up to 10% of payments failed, and it took a full day running payments and another full day to reconcile everything. Plus, Dallesasse would get around 10 emails each quarter from developers who were frustrated with the payout process. Legends of Learning needed an automated solution to “get game payments out of the way,” he said.

The Solution

Automated Payouts and Easy Payee Onboarding With Tipalti

As a “bootstrap company,” according to Dallesasse, Legends of Learning was small, and people on the team had a lot of different responsibilities. Processing payouts was manual and frustrating, and it took a long time. Dallesasse wanted an easy solution that would satisfy its global developer network while connecting everything into QuickBooks for the accounting team. It needed to be technology that worked for everyone. Enter: Tipalti.

With a few hundred contractors to pay each quarter, Legends of Learning was initially worried about efficiently onboarding its payees, but with Tipalti, it wasn’t a hard process. Developers were excited for Legends of Learning to “come out of the dark ages,” Dallesasse said, with a more efficient, affordable, and secure payment workflow.

Directly syncing Tipalti with QuickBooks was also a win for the accounting team. Having a payment system that seamlessly integrated with its accounting software saved the team a significant amount of time on reconciliation. And the white glove Tipalti implementation experience made it a much smoother process for the entire team. For Legends of Learning, Tipalti was a “green check mark,” said Dallesasse.

The Result

Faster Processes, Fewer Errors, and Greater Developer Confidence

For Legends of Learning, team morale is higher, especially for the CEO. Before Tipalti, payouts required two fully dedicated people. Today, only one person manages the process. Now, all payee data is managed directly in Tipalti, and payments take just a click of a button to approve. The process is down to 30 minutes—a fraction of what it used to be. With Tipalti, quarterly payment failures have also decreased by up to 9%.

For Dallesasse and the team, automating their global payouts with Tipalti has been much easier. Plus, its developers trust them more. They appreciate that the company is investing time in providing a more robust payment system. Now, the support emails Dallesasse receives from payees are zero—they’ve gone from frustration to universal satisfaction.

Today, neither Legends of Learning nor its developers have to worry about payments coming late or issues with transactions. Because of Tipalti’s smooth implementation process, the technology runs seamlessly in the background. For Legends of Learning, there’s no limit to scaling its operations to double the number of games and new studios. With Tipalti handling payouts, it won’t be any more work to support the company’s growth.