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13 MarAccounting/Financials

Sage Intacct: 8 Automation to boost Financial Management

Sage Intacct is financial software developed to assist your organization boost sales and, as a consequence, increase business success. But the path to increased consumer purchasing isn’t always straightforward. 

This is especially true as data volume and variety ramp up — businesses now have access to a massive amount of information about customer engagement, purchasing, and satisfaction. This leads to increased complexity of both front-end and back-end processes. 

On the front end, tools designed to help capture and manage customer data aren’t hard to find, and they’re easy for C-suites to support since they offer a clear link to sales success. On the back end, however, teams tasked with streamlining financial management processes may find themselves struggling to manage the ebb and flow of information.  

Automated financial management from Sage Intacct can help. Here’s how. 

The Problem(s) with Manual Processes 

Manual financial management processes remain commonplace, largely because they’re well-established in business processes, familiar to users, and challenging to change.  According to recent survey data, for example, 43% of accounts payable (AP) processes are still manual or paper-based. 

While the oft-heard mantra “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” may seem to apply in this case, these manual processes often come with underlying problems that make them challenging to manage at scale. Some of the biggest challenges with manual processes include: 

Data Entry Errors 

Higher volumes of more complex data naturally lead to human input errors, and even small inconsistencies in financial reporting can create sales challenges for companies. Consider a business that relies on e-Commerce sales to drive ROI. If mistakes are made when staff enter sales data manually, any inferences drawn from this data — such as purchasing trends that inform inventory levels — may be wildly inaccurate. 

Redundant Processes 

Because manual processes exist outside digital environments, it’s easy for staff members to unknowingly complete the same task twice, three times, or more. These redundant processes not only increase the risk of errors but also waste time. On average, finance teams using manual methods spend 53% of their time per week on these processes. 

Increased Costs 

Manual operations can also lead to increased costs. For example, if redundant data entry leads to errors, companies have to spend time and money tracking down the origin of the error and addressing the source. 

Streamlining Financial Processes — and Driving More Sales — with Sage Intacct  

The Sage Intacct financial management platform makes it possible for companies to handle multi-fund consolidation across hundreds of entities in real-time and empowers easy growth with simple, powerful reporting tools and dashboards that don’t require additional IT support. 

When it comes to sales, meanwhile, implementing Sage Intacct offers multiple benefits. 

Increased Visibility 

The more companies know about what’s happening across their financial environment, the better. Manual processes are naturally obtuse since information must be actively shared by teams or sought out by individuals. In a cloud-based financial framework, meanwhile, data is visible to all authorized users, allowing companies to create more cohesive sales strategies. 

Enhanced Predictability 

Better access to more reliable data can help inform sales predictability. For example, if historical data shows strong sales for a specific item but seasonal information demonstrates a sharp drop-off, it may suggest a shift in consumer sentiment. This additional information adds context to existing data, in turn helping companies better predict new trends. 

Improved Decision-Making 

Solid sales strategies depend on making the right decisions. From choosing to spend more on marketing a specific product line to sales campaigns that target a specific audience or focus on a certain season, more information about spend, cash flow, and available budgets help C-suites create high-level strategies and let teams make the case for best-fit budgets 

From Manual to Manageable: The Case for Automation 

Manual financial processes pose a serious problem for organizations. While on the surface they may seem relatively innocuous given their substantive integration with existing services, they create challenges over time as companies look to adopt new technologies and improve ROI. 

By leveraging platforms such as Sage Intacct, companies can boost process efficiencies by 10x (or more) to help reduce errors, eliminate redundancies, and streamline operations, in turn setting the stage for more effective sales data collection, forecasting, and customer conversions. 

Make your move to cloud financial management with Sage Intacct. Ready to get started? See how IWI Group can help. Let’s talk. 

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09 JanAccounting/Financials

Accounting Software: 5 essential questions you need to ask before changing

Sage Software Accounting Software

Sage software offers several solutions to enhance productivity and business data accuracy.

Now, Sage Intacct is part of the financial product family. Before buying accounting software, it’s important to do your homework and research all packages, including those offered by Sage software, thoroughly.

We’ve put together a special buying guide for your business and how Sage Intact can provide your business and employees with better solutions and increase cost-effectiveness.

Accounting Software: What Does Your Business Need?

Accounting is more than the proverbial “bean counting.” Good accounting data can be used to develop strategies and plans to take your business to the next level.

But to have trustworthy accounting data, you need to be sure that your accounting software delivers what it promises. Financial software systems that aren’t right for your business can hinder rather than help productivity.

As you explore software options, consider the answers to the following questions. These questions are intended to help you think about your software needs.

5 Accounting Software: Questions to Ask Before Buying one

1. Do we need to accelerate business processes—but without adding headcount?

Your business may be on the cusp of growth and you need a robust accounting platform to support growth without adding another person to the team.

2. Do we need to work remotely?

Cloud-based business and accounting software can easily accommodate working remotely. If you have telecommuting employees, frequent business trips, or other situations that require team members to work remotely, consider cloud-based accounting software.

3. Will we need to integrate the accounting software with other software currently in use?

Sage software, and other product integrations may be an important requirement for your new accounting software. Consider the various systems you may need to integrate with your accounting package and make sure that integration is both possible and easy without the need for costly custom programming.

4. Do managers need frequent access to KPIs?

Self-service access to KPIs may be important for manufacturers. Real-time visibility enhances the usefulness of accounting software and provide vital information to managers as they make decisions during the course of their business day.

5. Do we need to improve operational efficiency?

Cloud-based systems avoid the problem of desktop siloes, where software and files are kept with one person who can only share the data via email. They also eliminate the inefficiencies of spreadsheet-based reporting.

These are just a handful of questions to begin your thought process as you explore software options. IWI Consulting can help you work through the process of selecting the best software for your company. One new package we’d like to introduce you to is Sage Intacct.

Sage Intacct: Cloud-Based Financial Accounting

Sage Intacct is the only AICPA-endorsed solution on the market. It offers cloud-based financial accounting with general ledger functions built right into the platforms for scalability and flexibility. With this software, you can:

  • Set the right price and timing for each order with the purchasing function
  • Handle high order volumes and complex purchasing requirements
  • Manage accounts payable and receivable easily and with greater speed
  • Collaborate on tasks
  • Obtain a complete picture of working capital and cash on hand

The cloud-based system lets you share real-time data for better visibility into all aspects of your company’s financial picture. Your accounting team will love Sage Intacct, but so will operations, warehouse management, procurement, sales and customer service.

Like other Sage software products, Sage Intacct integrates easily with other platforms and products. It’s made for end-users so there is a shorter learning curve enabling you to get up to speed quickly as you adopt Sage Intacct throughout your company. It’s a flexible, scalable and powerful accounting solution for businesses looking for the best options for growth.

To learn more about how Sage Intacct can help your business raise, download the Intacct buyer’s guide.

If you would like to explore Sage Intacct for your business, contact IWI Consulting today. We can walk you through this and other fine Sage software products to explore the best fit for your business needs. Please visit IWI Consulting Group or call 1-866-916-3851 Ext: 1.

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09 NovAccounting/Financials

No Need to Close Subledgers at Once — Sage Intacct Supports Multi-Ledger Architecture

Streamlining financial processes remains a top challenge for organizations. As noted by research firm Deloitte, many companies still struggle with error-prone manual operations, struggle to manage increasing purchase order volume, and lack the ability to prevent late, under, or over-payments.

Making these financial functions even more complex is the tendency for accounting software to support single-ledger architecture. With the Sage Intacct General Ledger (GL), meanwhile, multi-ledger operations are standard operating procedure.

In this piece, we’ll break down the benefits of multi-ledger architecture for business finance operations.

Sage Accounting
sage Accounting ERP

More Ledgers, More Problems?

Multiple ledgers are necessary to effectively manage company finances. Also known as subsidiary ledgers, these records fall under the larger umbrella of general ledgers. They are used by businesses to help organize finance obligations and assets and reduce the risk of accounting mistakes.

Common types of subledgers include:

  • Accounts receivable (AR)

This subledger is a record of all credit transactions and payments received from customers and business partners.

  • Accounts payable (AP)

This subledger records all credit purchases and payments to suppliers and other providers.

  • Fixed assets

Fixed asset ledgers include transactions related to buildings, furniture, and fixtures.

  • Inventory

Inventory ledgers list details about current stock, stock movement, and transactions for raw materials or components.

  • Cash

This ledger records all cash transactions including sales, purchases, or expenses.

  • Sales

Sales ledgers record both cash and credit sales.

  • Purchase

Purchase ledgers include both paid and to-be-paid purchases.

The challenge? While most accounting software supports the creation of multiple subledgers, many of these tools require companies to close all ledgers simultaneously. This means that if 3 of your 7 subledgers are complete but 4 are still processing transactions, you can’t close out the completed ledgers until all subledger transactions are finished.

The result is a more chaotic and complex close period since you must reconcile all 7 ledgers simultaneously. Not only does this increase the amount of time and resources required, but also introduces the risk of manual errors as teams look to process large volumes of information.

Single-ledger architecture can also put companies at risk of late or missed payments. For example, if it’s not possible to close out AP ledgers without closing all ledgers, teams need to wait until all other transactions are finished and then rush to make sure payments are both accurate and on time. If invoices are missed or incorrectly processed, the results could range from problems with suppliers extending credit to reduced cash flow as partners asked to be paid up-front to avoid potential mistakes next month.

How Multi Ledger Architecture from Sage Intacct can Help

With multi-ledger architecture from Sage Intacct Core Financials, every subledger in your business can be closed independently, even while you’re still working on other ledgers. This makes it possible to achieve a more efficient period end.

Consider a company that’s completed its cash and fixed assets ledgers for the month but still has outstanding AP, AR, sales, inventory, and purchase transactions to finish. Under a typical GL framework, finance teams can’t close these completed books until all other subledgers are complete. The result is time spent waiting for general ledgers to finish, followed by significant amounts of work all at once as teams look to handle multiple subledger closures simultaneously.

With Sage Intacct, meanwhile, each ledger can be closed when completed, allowing teams to focus exclusively on the accurate reconciliation of ledger details. This allows finance departments to create a step-by-step plan for ledger completion that maximizes resource use and minimizes the risk of errors.

Other benefits of the Sage Intacct General Ledger include:

  • Multi-dimensional general ledger visibility 24/7
  • Multiple entry and multiple currency consolidation
  • Robust multi-book functionality

Put simply? Sage Intacct’s powerful and innovative GL platform provides the visibility, scalability, and flexibility you need to thrive without limitations, and deliver on the potential of smarter financial management.

Making the Most of Multi-Ledger Architecture

Single-ledger software creates more work for finance teams and increases the potential for inaccurate data reconciliation, late payments, or missing transactions.

Multi-ledger architecture, meanwhile, makes it possible for teams to close ledgers as needed to streamline the close-of-period process and improve overall efficiency.

Enhance multi-ledger management with Sage Intacct Core Financial. Ready to get started? See how IWI Group can help. Let’s talk.

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26 OctAccounting/Financials

Sage Intacct: AP and AR Automation

For businesses to succeed, cash management is critical.

Companies can’t get by on estimates and guesswork. They need to know how much they owe to vendors and partners, and how much they’re owed by partners and purchasers to both manage day-to-day operations and create long-term plans.

In practice, this requires improved control and oversight of two key processes: Accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR). Here’s a look at the role of each process, how they work together, and how companies can make the most of AP/AR with automation from Sage Intacct.

What is Accounts Payable?

AP refers to the money owed by companies to their vendors or suppliers. In many cases, vendors allow companies to purchase goods or services on credit with payment due after goods and services have been received. In some cases, vendors request payment in full while in others they may offer installment plans. Payments are considered liabilities for accounting purposes.

Effective AP management is critical for companies to ensure they understand how much they owe, who they owe it to, and when the amount is due. As noted by recent research from Deloitte, however, 35% of companies report that high AP processing costs are one of their biggest challenges, and 30% say that despite increased spending, payments are often late.

What is Accounts Receivable?

AR, meanwhile, refers to the list of all monies owed to a company for the products or services they sell. These outstanding invoices appear as asset accounts on the company balance sheet because customers have a legal obligation to pay their debts. As a result, they’re considered part of a company’s working capital and can be used to secure loans or as collateral for other purchases.

According to data from IDC, top challenges in AR include manual collection processes and Excel-based reporting. Manual processes can increase the time between invoice and payment by up to 67%, while spreadsheets introduce the risk of mistakes — research found that 88% of spreadsheets contain errors.  

How do They Work Together?

AP and AR are two halves of the same coin.

Consider a company that extends credit to a business partner for the purchase of product components. For the supplier partner, this credit counts as AR — there’s a legal obligation for the business partner to pay the balance per the terms stated on the invoice.

For the purchaser, meanwhile, the credit counts as AP. It’s entered in their balance sheet as a liability that must be paid within a specific timeframe. If payments aren’t made, companies could face late penalties or interest charges or find that business partners are no longer willing to extend credit.

How Sage Intacct AP and AR Can Help

Automation can help streamline both of these processes to reduce processing time, eliminate errors, and ensure that companies have the data they need to make strategic decisions about purchasing and sales.

To achieve AP and AR automation, companies need the right foundation. This means leveraging accounts payable software and accounts receivable solutions that make it possible to stay on top of both AR and AP processes anytime, anywhere.

For example, Sage Intacct AP software can help cut AP processing times by up to 65% or more thanks to seamless integration with Sage Intacct Cash Management, Inventory, and Purchasing along with real-time access to AP transactions and data. Sage Intacct AR software, meanwhile, puts companies in control with real-time visibility into customer histories and aging balances with configurable dashboards and reports. The result? More efficient collection processes that can reduce days sales outstanding (DSO) by 25-50%.

Integrating Automation

Sage Intacct AP and AR solutions can also help companies improve payment and collection processes with integrated automation. Key benefits include:

  • Reduced errors

Reduce errors by eliminating error-prone processes such as manual data capture and entry. Not only does this help reduce time to payment but means your teams can focus on business growth rather than invoice and payment corrections.

  • Shorter invoice and payment cycles

Implementing AP and AR automation can help you achieve healthier cash flows by shortening invoice and payment cycles.

  • Automatic collection notices

Create and deliver automatic collection notices to remind payers of their obligation to resolve outstanding invoices, in turn reducing your DSO.

  • Complete data access

With real-time access to all accounts payable and accounts receivable transactions and data, your teams are better equipped to make both short- and long-term decisions that benefit your business. Enhance your AP and AR processes with Sage Intacct software and automation. Ready to get started? Contact IWI Group today. Let’s talk.

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14 SepAccounting/Financials

Sage Intacct: Accelerating Productivity with Automation and Multi-Entity Consolidation

Multi-entity organizations are becoming mainstream as companies look for ways to diversify supply chains and ensure they establish a solid presence in disparate operating locations.

The challenge? More locations mean more complexity, especially when it comes to reconciling financial and accounting data. Here’s how Sage Intacct can help accelerate productivity with robust automation and accurate multi entity consolidation.

The Benefits of Going Multi-Entity

As noted by Investment Monitor, the world’s leading businesses have created more than 370,000 subsidiaries worldwide. And this doesn’t account for other multi-entry options such as franchise locations and satellite offices that help companies generate revenue or ensure they have access to relevant local data.

Look at the growing impact of legislation such as the EU’s GDPR. Any company that does business in the EU or collects data from EU citizens is responsible for both the secure storage of this data and for notifying individuals about how and why their personal information is being used. Failure to do so can result in significant fines or operational sanctions.

As a result, it’s often easier to have a satellite entity in an EU country to help streamline the compliance process and ensure consumer data is effectively handled.

Multi-entity options can also help companies increase revenue while providing a separate presence in multiple locations. Consider a franchise operation with businesses in 10 states. Each of these franchises represents potential ROI but depending on the state and city of their operation, may be subject to different regulations. By opting for multi-entities, companies can ensure that each location aligns with local rules.

multi entity consolidation

Potential Drawbacks of Multi-Entity Management

Operating more than one entity also comes with potential drawbacks, however.

First is complexity. As the number of locations increases, so do the number of regulations that must be met and the documents that must be filed. For example, one state may have additional tax forms or operational permits you need to obtain, which creates more data for your finance and accounting teams to manage. This is especially problematic as companies leverage the cloud to streamline accounting processes — while businesses benefit from the on-demand resources and scalability offered, it’s often challenging to sort through multiple entity records and ensure the right actions are applied to the right location.

The multi-entity approach can also lead to accounting errors, which in turn wastes time and money. This becomes even more challenging if you’re manually creating spreadsheets with relevant entity data — even small errors can cause significant problems down the line.

Sage Intacct supports Multi Entity Consolidation

Sage Intacct offers multi currency and multi entity consolidations globally to help companies coordinate hundreds of entities in minutes, not hours or days.

With Sage Intacct, you can:

  • Bring it all together, quickly and accurately

The Sage Intacct platform automatically consolidates financial consolidation activities including currency conversions, inter-entity transactions, and local tax reporting. This makes it possible for teams to more quickly close the books and bring on business growth.

  • Continuously multiple entity consolidation

Get granular visibility into all your entities with eliminations and currency impacts recorded as journal entries, and easily consolidate multiple ownership types such as minority and partial ownerships to get a clear picture of what’s happening, when, and why.

  • Streamline multi-currency management

From automated currency conversions to multi-currency conversions, Sage Intacct has you covered. Using up-to-date exchange rates, you can create cumulative currency adjustments (CTAs) and product reports in either the entity’s local currency or the currency used by your head office.

  • Unify multi-entry architecture

Easily handle domestic and global locations, single and multiple base currencies, and multiple ownership types with our unified architecture. Then, leverage shared definitions to collaborate on vendor, customer, and item lists.

  • Easily set up multi-entry consolidation

Get up and running ASAP with Sage Intacct. Instantly set up new entities with configurable rules, or have new entities inherent existing rules. Quickly configure each new entity with your own definitions, then choose whatever works best — centralized payables and receivables, or multiple charts of accounts. Whatever works best for you.

The result? Companies can reduce error rates, improve close times and boost productivity by more than 50%.

Opting for a multi-entity approach can help companies expand business operations and ensure they have a local presence where it matters most. But multi-entity operations come with increased complexity and the risk of accounting errors — take control of your multi-entity enterprise with Sage Intacct. Effectively manage your multi-entity business with Sage Intacct. Contact IWI Consulting Group today. Let’s talk.

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24 AugAccounting/FinancialsUncategorized

Sage Intacct Dimensions: An Intelligent Solution for Hidden Problems

You can’t fix what you can’t see. This is the challenge for many small and midsize businesses when it comes to accounting and financial reporting processes. Critical data is often obscured thanks to increasingly complex processes, and many companies struggle to keep pace with the speed of reporting necessary for digital transactions.

The result? Hidden problems which can lead to significant and far-reaching impacts on your finances. Sage Intacct Dimensions offers an intelligent, automated solution to help fix financial frustrations. Here’s how it works.

Big Challenges for Small Businesses

As both B2C and B2B sales have shifted to a digital-first model, the volume of financial data handled by businesses has increased exponentially. Despite best efforts by companies to keep up, the multi-state nature of data generation and storage — from internal processes to customer websites to mobile applications — creates a situation where businesses are often flying financially blind.

Best case scenario? Some data points are missing or incorrect, leading to minor errors in calculation and reporting. Worst case? Financial errors create compound problems that could put business operations in jeopardy.

According to recent survey data, complexity creates challenges on both sides of the payment paradigm. For businesses making payments, 45% said that manual invoice review was one of their top challenges. It makes sense: If mistakes were made on invoice calculations or data was entered incorrectly, the resulting errors could have negative impacts on the entire business ecosystem. For B2B purchasers, meanwhile, 47% said they faced challenges in anticipating when payments would arrive, in turn making it difficult to predict cash flow and liquidity.

How Sage Intacct Dimensions can Help

Sage Intacct Dimensions offers a flexible foundation for your financial reporting. Instead of relying on legacy tools and manual processes that could introduce data entry errors or duplicate efforts that mean more work for you and your team, Dimensions lets you get the best of both worlds: Complete financial control backed by robust cloud resources.

iwi consulting group sage intacct dimensions blog

iwi consulting group sage intacct dimensions blog

 

Dimensions offers four key benefits to help boost your business impact:

1) Real-time reporting

First up is real-time reporting. Rather than waiting for daily or weekly data roundups, Dimensions makes it possible to produce up-to-the-minute financials that reflect the current state of business operations, rather than an out-of-date picture that could negatively impact decision-making.

2) Simplified account charts

For most companies, a hard-coded chart of accounts structure remains the most common approach to tracking and managing account data. The problem? As the number of account codes increases across locations, departments, and projects, you can end up with an unmanageable set of codes. Consider a company with 3 locations, 5 departments, and 5 projects. Just to manage this small slice of business operations requires 75 codes — while adding a new project or location could add hundreds of new codes. With Sage Intacct Dimensions, you simply set up your primary account code and the software handles the rest.

3) Complete business tracking

Dimensions lets you “tag” both transactions and operations data with specific values, in turn letting you easily add business context. Tagging can be used for general ledgers, receivables, payables, time revenue management, and fixed assets, just to name a few. As your business grows, add more tracking dimensions to help reduce total complexity.

4) Streamlined reports

Featuring full integration with Sage Intacct’s financial report writer, Dimensions makes it easy for your teams to add context and improve reporting accuracy. Simply select from drop-down lists to filter, group, and organize data by dimensions to connect key reports and provide on-demand data access.

In combination, these benefits not only help your business better manage accounts payable (AP), procurement, and supply chain processes but also make it possible to detect and address previously hidden problems.

Consider a financial reporting system that seems to be working as intended. With Sage Intacct Dimensions, your team can take a deep dive into the system itself to see where financial functions are effectively operating and where improvements can be made. Moreover, you may discover areas of potential conflict that were previously hidden. For example, real-time reporting with simplified account codes could help you pinpoint issues such as duplicated invoices or accounts that are costing your business time and money.

Ready to discover what’s happening under the surface and discover new ways to improve financial operations? Start with Sage Intacct Dimensions.

Contact IWI Consulting Group today to get started. Let’s talk.

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02 AugProject Management

How Sage Intacct helps Non Profits make the best decisions through generating automated financial reports.

Non-profits now face unprecedented demand – how do they effectively manage both donor retention and donation allocation to reduce the risk of errors and ensure mission goals are met?

The non-profit sector in Canada now employs more than 2.5 million people and represents almost 13 percent of all jobs in Canada. Two-thirds of non-profit staff work with non-profit organizations (NPOs) serving the government, and the sector is rapidly diversifying with the addition of immigrant and indigenous staff members.

But even as sector employment rises, new challenges emerge. More NPOs mean more choice for Canadians when it comes to their donation options, which makes both donor retention and effective donation management critical for organizations to ensure continued operations.

Sage Intacct for Non-Profits can help streamline current processes and drive sustained growth. Here’s how.

The Changing Landscape of Canadian Non-Profits

According to recent survey data, 26 percent of Canadians already use or expect to use charitable services in 2022, even as NPOs expect a decrease in the total volume of donations. What’s more, NPOs are worried about both the increasing prices of goods and services and their ability to find, train, and retain great staff.

IWI Consulting Group Non-Profit Sage Intacct blog image

The result is a two-fold challenge for non-profits: Even as demand surges, their ability to effectively manage donors and donations is stretched thin. Lacking the tools and technologies to manage multiple facets of their operations simultaneously, many NPOs find themselves dedicating more staff to manual operations, in turn limiting their overall efficacy.

Key Elements for Non-Profit Success

So what does non-profit success look like? What elements are critical for NPOs to make the most of donation volumes, keep staff happy, and ensure they’re ready to handle future challenges?

First is the ability to effectively track where donations are coming from, how much is being donated, and what purpose these donations serve. Next is ensuring that all donations are accurately accounted for across their lifecycle. This includes how much is being spent where, why, and ensuring that records are ready for potential audits by government agencies as required.

Finally, organizations need the ability to leverage this data and drive actionable insights that help inform future decision-making. For example, if donor profiles have shifted such that large donations are less frequent but more beneficial over the long term, NPOs may want to consider changing their campaign and marketing approaches to match.

In many cases, however, the disconnect between what non-profits have and what they need is substantial. Many are still leveraging legacy tools and hardware that were capable of handling donations and donor data in a pre-cloud and mobile era but now struggle to keep pace in a giving environment driven by the need for on-demand information about how money is collected, spent, and used over time.

How Sage Intacct Can Help

Sage Intacct for Non-Profits can help Canadian organizations excel in four key areas:

  • Speed

Sage Intacct makes it possible for companies to “know and show” what’s happening across their organization on-demand. Rather than waiting days or weeks for relevant donor and investment data, non-profits can maximize the impact of donor information ASAP.

  • Accuracy

Accurate data is critical for NPO success. If donation or spending information is incorrectly reported, the results can range from small mistakes that require remediation by staff to larger-scale issues that could lead to audits of current practices. Sage Intacct delivers accuracy at all stages of NPO reporting.

  • Clarity

The more you know, the better. Sage Intacct helps take insight to a new level with end-to-end visibility and clarity of NPO data, allowing teams to leverage this information for better decision-making.

  • Reporting

Finally, NPOs need in-depth reporting that helps effectively manage multiple donation and revenue streams. With Sage Intacct’s in-depth fund accounting, organizations can easily generate statements of activities, statements of financial position, and statements of cash flow.

NPOs By the Numbers

Three numbers make the impact of Sage Intacct for Non-profits crystal clear. First is time to pay back the investment: On average, it took companies just six months to pay back their entire Intacct investment. NPOs also saw an average 65 percent increase in overall productivity and enjoyed 250 percent ROI when compared with previous financial management tools.

Put simply? Sage Intacct makes it possible for non-profits to maximize their impact while minimizing the complexity that comes with managing donor sources, volumes, and distributions at scale.

IWI Consulting Group has been helping Canadian non-profits manage donations and drive future growth for more than 20 years. See how we can streamline your Sage Intacct deployment. Let’s talk.

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21 JunERP/Business Solution

Sage Intacct for Professional Services: Streamlining Financial Management

In 2021, there were more than 450,000 technical, scientific, and professional services firms in Canada.  And while 87.6 percent of these organizations were profitable, data from Industry Canada found that 99 percent of these firms had less than 99 employees.

The result? As business volumes grow, so too does the complexity of financial management for professional services firms. This creates a challenge: With the vast majority of these organizations employing less than 100 people at locations across the country, it’s easy to get bogged down in tracking multiple project financials across disparate legacy systems, both increasing complexity for staff and reducing the amount of time companies can focus on what they do best: Providing professional services.

Sage Intacct can help. Here’s how.

Best ERP for Professional Services

Sage Intacct For Professional Services

 

Financial Management Challenges in the Professional Services Sector

The primary goal of professional services is to help clients. From law firms to marketing organizations and project management companies, professional services are about translating client needs into actionable results.

For many firms, however, the contract-based nature of their work means they’re handling multiple clients simultaneously, each with different needs, expectations, and timelines. While this creates a steady revenue stream, it also requires adept financial management to ensure that invoices are paid on time, cash flow is sufficient to keep operations up and running, and budgets match expected revenues.

At a small scale many professional services firms can cope, but thanks to the advent of remote and hybrid service offerings, companies are now able to easily scale business operations — but may not have the enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools necessary to manage the sudden influx of new clients. This problem is compounded by the use of legacy solutions that were designed to handle in-house financial functions but may lack the capability to make best use of cloud-based services.

ERP Evolution: What You Need to Succeed

So what does an ERP provider need to have for professional services to succeed? Three components are critical.

  1. Reliable ROI

When it comes to ERP for professional services, your company needs a solution optimized to deliver reliable return on investment. This goes beyond the product itself — look for a provider willing and capable of working with your team to develop a customized project plan that meets your specific needs.

  • Ongoing improvement

It’s also critical to leverage an ERP solution that provides a path for ongoing improvement and expansion. As professional services firms both expand their operations and diversify their offerings, it’s worth deploying a solution that can both keep pace and help you stay ahead of the curve.

  • Industry expertise

Last but not least? Look for a provider with in-depth industry expertise. Professional services come with unique pain points and challenges, making the right partner critical for ongoing success.

 Intacct is Best ERP for Professional Services for its key benefits

Sage Intacct offers multiple benefits for professional services, including:

  • Back-office automation

Easily automate back-office processes to reduce overall complexity and make it possible for your team to focus on what matters: Providing top-tier professional services. And effective automation isn’t just faster — it can help your company save thousands of dollars annually by eliminating costly redundant processes and data-entry errors.

  • Cloud integration

Moving to the cloud-based framework of Sage Intacct gives companies the ability to scale up (or down) on-demand and quickly deploy new solutions or services to improve overall functionality. In addition, the shift away from legacy solutions can help firms reduce their total IT spend.

  • Real-time data use

Access to real-time data analytics allows firms to pinpoint opportunities for increased project profitability. By taking a data-driven approach to decision-making, businesses are better equipped to manage their changing landscape of professional services and take advantage of emerging trends.

  • Speedy consolidation

Sage Intacct makes it possible to consolidate hundreds of entities in just minutes, in turn letting your business focus on building relationships with professional services clients and discovering new market opportunities, rather than wasting time collecting, cataloging, and curating financial data points.

  • AICPA preferred

Sage Intacct is the American Institute of Chartered Public Accountants (AICPA) only preferred provider of cloud financials, meaning both your team and your clients gain peace of mind that financial data is being handled efficiently, effectively, and securely.

The Future of Professional Service Financial Management

Put simply? The professional services sector in Canada is evolving. Companies are taking on more projects, more quickly, and clients expect both prompt and responsive service. As a result, legacy ERP solutions are no longer enough to get the job done — now, businesses need next-generation, cloud-based ERP systems to make the most of their professional potential.

Ready to streamline financial management for your professional services firm? See how Sage Intacct can help — get in touch with an IWI Consulting Group expert today.

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10 MayAccounting/Financials

More to Core: Three Hidden Features of Sage Intacct

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.

Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct | IWI Consulting Inc.

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.

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12 FebAccounting/Financials

Handling Multi-Taxes with Sage Intacct

What are the major concerns in financial management of Multi-taxing in midsize or large Global enterprises? What solutions are expected and needed in the complex multi-entity, multi-currency and multi-taxing environments? How sage Intacct has been successful for the 5th year in a row, in evolving cloud solutions to meet and resolve all the criteria of the digital business organizations?

Overview of Requirements

In the current Digital Global era, thousands of organizations are spanned across multiple domestic states, multiple countries and even multiple continents. Financial management requires a complex chain of integrated calculations, consolidations, audits in each aspect of transactions or workforce. 

Right from inventories of stock, payrolls, invoices, assess revenues and liabilities etc, the major issues are: 

  • transparent, multi-dimensional, error-free visibility in reporting and audits
  • payability across precise conversions to multi-currency for each transaction 
  • most importantly accurate multi-taxing in compliance with the jurisdictions of each location.

Multi-Taxing

Every transaction in a business involves end-to-end tax liability like use tax, sales tax etc. For example transactions with India require compliance with centralized domains of VAT, GST etc. But if we take transactions in or with Canada, the compliance has to be an integration within the multiple jurisdictions of territorial as well as provincial taxes – in short the Form T2203. Compliance with the taxation at each point of sale calls for a complex integration of accountability, calculations, invoicing and deployment. 

Sage Intacct Software

It is a core cloud software for multi-dimensional Financial management which has evolved in different domains since its inception in 1999. Developed by Odysseas Tsatalos and David Chandler Thomas, the software has won many accolades in terms of awards, recognitions and is the only one endorsed by the AICPA.  The software offers tailored business management suites streamlined with each aspect of business accounting and workforce integration. 

What sage Intacct offers

The functionality and provisions of this can be concised with Intacct as an acronym:

In – Inventories (multi-entities), Invoices, Integration (centralized)

T – Tracking Transactions, Taxes, Taxability (compliances)

A – Audits, Accounting (multi-dimensional), Accuracy, Assurance ( all simplified)

C – Calculations, Centralized reports and visibility (across multi-entity, multi-currency)

C – Consolidations, Compliance (end-to-end multi-taxing)

T – Time management, Timelines (multiple)

Tax Compilation

Capital management of multi-taxable proceedings of different entities at both points of each transaction, demands:

  • End-to-end tracking of changing taxation on each entity and deals and 
  • Generating invoices in compliance to each end-user tax liability as per the legislations of the concerned entity, province, nation, continent etc.
  • Ensuring accuracy and precision in all calculations and consolidations
  • Transparent centralized integration of multi-dimensional taxabilities for prompt reports and audits
  • Meeting timelines in different time zones – consuming minimum time for maximum  profitability.

Sage Intacct not only complies with all the above requirements but also customizes the cloud software in terms of the scale of complexity and size of the enterprise. It credits itself with at least 4 feature-rich updates every year.

Cloud Nine Multi-Taxing with sage Intacct

The reason for its endorsement by AICPA and the recognition as the best software for financial management in Global organizations is its automated and flexible usage. The complexities of end-to-end taxability has been packaged into a very flexible platform.

  • The automated tracking the changing laws of taxation allows a hassle free updation and accounting
  • The User-friendly, unified core built-in infrastructure ensures not only a cloud 9 multi-dimensional management but also cloud accuracy and visibility.
  • Visible growth in the rates of auditability and profitability due to its rapid updates and reports adds to the professional credibility of the organizations streamlined through sage Intacct.

In a nutshell, sage Intacct architects the complexity of multi-taxing into a simplified hassle-free Cloud Nine experience with the Impact features scaling new heights each year.

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