Sage Core Financials software offers a host of benefits to help keep finances on-track. From accounts payable and receivable to general ledger, purchasing and cash management, Sage Core has what you need to empower finance functions across your organization. The benefits are substantial: Businesses report accelerated finance team productivity of 40 percent or more, while close times are slashed in half.

But it doesn’t stop there. There’s more to Core than meets the eye; here’s a look at three hidden features of Sage Intacct that can help streamline operations and provide ongoing financial insight for organizations.

Hidden Feature #1: Modelling

If you don’t know what you have, you can’t make informed decisions. Financial modelling tools in Sage Intacct make it possible to create a complete summary of your company’s expenses and earnings to help model the impact of future decisions or events.

Take the example of a company considering the purchase and takeover of another business. Beyond the initial cost of the purchase, the company must also examine the impact on both spending and earnings over time. For example, onboarding new staff can be time-consuming and costly but pay off down the line. In-depth modelling helps businesses understand both the initial impact and potential consequences of business decisions.

Modelling can also help prepare your company for unexpected events such as disasters or system failures. By understanding how finances are tied to operations, businesses can pinpoint the cost of downtime and its impact on both expenses and earnings.

Hidden Feature #2: Budget Planning

Historically, budget planning relied on inflexible and insecure spreadsheets that made it hard for companies to change their budgeting approach in light of new circumstances or conditions. Budget planning from Sage Intacct lets you team create a real-time, single source of financial truth to help drive confident decision-making.

Consider a company budgeting for the shipping and logistics costs. Given the rapidly-changing nature of supply chains and shipping frameworks, data obtained last month — or even last week — may no longer be accurate. Using this data leads to budgets that don’t match up with reality. For example, if existing data predicts a set shipping cost but recent changes have increased shipping prices by 50%, budgets won’t be enough to cover the expense, requiring companies to spend more than anticipated.

Budget planning with Sage Intacct allows organizations to quickly and accurately integrate multiple data sources into their budget plans using intuitive cloud planning solutions. Instead of collecting data and hoping for the best, companies are equipped confidently make decisions that are connected to a single source of truth.

Hidden Feature #3: Forecasting

Modelling helps you understand what you have, and budget planning makes it possible to more accurately predict spending needs based on the most up-to-date information.

Forecasting takes this process a step further. With forecasting tools from Sage Intacct, your business can leverage collected data to predict future trends and anticipate what comes next. For example, by collecting both structured and unstructured data about customer purchasing behavior and current marketing spend, your team can develop a data-driven prediction that helps inform where spending more may lead to revenue increases and where greater investment may have minimal impact.

For one world-leading logistics firm, the use of Sage Intacct made it possible to boost budgeting and forecasting efficiency by 60 percent, in turn reducing the amount of time and effort required by staff to predict outcome and take effective action.

Armed with in-depth forecasting tools, it’s possible for your business to understand how existing data sets interact to produce a more reliable picture of future events.

Making the Most of Sage Core and Sage Intacct

Sage Core Financials is a powerful platform that lets companies take control of disparate financial processes. Sage Intacct in the cloud, meanwhile, increases the scope of this solution with hidden features such as modelling, budget planning and forecasting to help give your company the edge when it comes to understanding what’s happing in your organization right now, what budget changes can help address near-time challenges, and what’s likely to happen down the line. Ready to get started with Sage Intacct? Connect with IWI Consulting Group.