Outsourced Accounting

Article Dean Dorton

This blog is the February Edition of our CFO Minute: A Sage Intacct ERP Series.

THE HILLS HAVE DIMENSIONS— Eek! There’s nothing more haunting than your chart of accounts running three or four miles long. Do you spend hours trying to code all your entities and multiple locations? Struggling to keep up with a whirlwind of your company’s expenses? Are you trying to figure out the payroll for your different levels of employees?

With so many different directions of revenue streams, multiple expenses and various categories to track, your chart of accounts is definitely longer than it should be. Importing and exporting all this data manually, along with managing your daily accounting, is a migraine in the making.

Que the stress relief and take a deep breath! With Sage Intacct’s one-of-a-kind customizable (yes, we said it- fully customizable!) dimension capabilities, organizations have an entirely new way to track and report on financial and operational data.

You can easily:

Simplify Your Chart of Accounts

Most financial solutions use a hard-coded structure for your chart of accounts. For example, to track 3 locations, 5 departments, and 5 projects, you’d need 75 account code combinations—and you’d end up with a complicated, unmanageable set of codes. Adding a new location or department could potentially force you to add hundreds of additional accounts. Sage Intacct lets you keep it simple—you only need to set up your primary account codes. As your business changes, there’s no need to add hard-coded segment combinations.

Track Your Company’s Core Financials

Unlike traditional accounting systems, Sage Intacct enables you to “tag” transactions as well as operational data with dimension values. Tagging with dimensions, instead of assigning transactions to hard-coded individual accounts, enables you to add business context to your data easily. Once you create a dimension, you can use it for any transaction—general ledger, receivables, payables, time, revenue management, fixed assets, and more. As your business changes, add the dimensions you need to easily track what’s important to your business.

Streamline Your Reporting

Streamlining your reporting will help save you a lot of time and boost your team’s productivity. With Sage Intacct Dimensions you’ll improve your reporting, making it easier for you to get fast answers to your business questions. Dimensions are integrated into the user interface of Sage Intacct’s easy-to-use financial report writer. It’s simple to view performance from any new angle you need.

Strengthen Your Business Collaboration and Strategies

With Sage Intacct’s dimensions, you can get requested metrics in minutes, not days. And- with a click of a button- you can see financial data in real time by item and department. This means that you can pull key data right when you want it to see financial impacts and deliver key financial reports to your executive teams.

Overall, custom dimensions allow you and your finance team to see where you get more traction and more profitability, allowing you to strategize your business processes.

For more information on Sage Intacct and how it can help your organization, contact us!

Article Dean Dorton

Repost from our partner, Nexonia

You may be surprised to learn that 49 percent of companies still rely on a manual expense management process. This data point comes from the recently-released 2018 Expense Management Trends Report by Certify, Inc.

Since 2013, the Expense Management Trends Report has helped organizations of all sizes stay informed of industry trends and best practices from their peers across North America. Nexonia is part of the Certify, Inc. Family of Brands—and this year’s report offers valuable insights into the industry.

Manual methods sticking around

Enterprise companies are leading the way in adopting technology according to the report, with 39 percent of companies surveyed using a web-based expense solution, and 32 percent relying on an ERP or accounting package for expense management. These companies are seeing the value in automating timely manual processes—letting their employees focus on other value-added activities.

Surprisingly, 11 percent of enterprise companies surveyed are still using a manual process. (A manual process is defined here as any process that uses Excel spreadsheets, pen and paper, homegrown systems, or any combination thereof.) At a company of this size, the risk and lack of spend visibility would likely make a CFO’s head spin. And without having visibility into expenses, the finance team is left in the dark when strategizing for the years ahead or negotiating better contracts with vendors today.

Biggest pains stay consistent

Expense management pains haven’t evolved much since Certify launched the survey in 2013.  For the 2018 report, Certify collected and analyzed responses from 546 CFOs, controllers, and other finance professionals outside its customer base to offer a snapshot of the industry, and where it may be headed. With technology becoming so ingrained in our lives, some readers may find it shocking that so many moments of struggle persist in the world of finance.

The biggest pain points for finance teams were losing receipts or submitting reports without a receipt, tying employees failing to submit reports on time cited by 50 percent of respondents. It’s easy to see why finance teams would be frustrated with a minor task holding up reimbursements and accurate reporting—yet this pain persists.

Time spent reconciling, reviewing, and approving reports was the second biggest pain, cited by 31 percent of respondents. With the average number of expense reports being 25-50 percent of the full-time employee workforce, manually reviewing and approving expense reports is a business activity that needs a streamlined process.

Another long-standing pressure on finance teams were errors on expense reports, with 30 percent of respondents citing this ongoing issue. Considering that employees should be submitting completed reports on-time and within policy, finance teams certainly want to spend less time “expense policing” and more time on strategy.

Leading pressures and top areas for improvement

Top organizational pressures on finance teams have stayed consistent with previous years. The top pressure driving organizations to improve T&E management was the need to reduce expense reporting costs cited by 27 percent of respondents. Improving the expense management process was cited by 34 percent of respondents as the most critical to improve in 2018.

Poor visibility into travel and expenses was the second biggest pressure (26 percent) driving change with finance teams across North America. Without finance teams having complete visibility into T&E spend, they can’t make informed strategic decisions that will help move the organization towards their goals. With the right integrations, an automated expense solution can provide nearly real-time expense data finance teams can budget against with confidence.

Travel booking was the third biggest area for improvement in 2018. Interestingly, according to the 2018 survey, 90 percent of companies had a travel policy in place, but only two percent of companies used technology to enforce policy—putting the company at a huge risk for overspending with manual policy checks or employee enforcement.

Having business travelers booking itineraries with any number of online services leaves a company at risk for overspending. With a travel book solution that is friendly for employees, travel managers, and everyone in between, you can provide a foundation for self-service bookings that fit within company policy and budget.

If you or someone you know is interested in learning more about Nexonia, contact us today!

Article Dean Dorton

Repost from Avalara

Economic nexus is here. Is your business prepared?

Before the Supreme Court of the United States issued its ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. (June 21. 2018), states could only tax sales by businesses with a physical presence in the state. Wayfair changed that long-standing rule. The court found the respondents’ “economic and virtual contacts” with South Dakota to be a sufficient basis for a tax collection obligation (nexus).

For economic nexus, a business establishes an obligation to collect and remit sales and use tax by its economic activity in a state. Generally, states look at the volume of sales or the number of transactions during a particular time frame, usually (but not always) the current or preceding calendar year. In South Dakota, the threshold is gross sales of $100,000, or 200 or more transactions in the state.

Already enforced in fourteen states, economic nexus will soon be in effect in 27 states, and counting. Businesses making sales into multiple states need to be on their toes, ready to register and commence collection activities as soon as nexus is triggered.

Unfortunately, determining when economic nexus has been established in a state is complicated by the fact that there’s little uniformity between jurisdictions. And once established, the process for getting things rolling (i.e., registering to do business) varies from state to state.

Economic nexus laws vary by state

While the thresholds in the majority of economic nexus states are $100,000 or 200 transactions, that’s not the case in all states: In Georgia, it’s $250,000 or 200 transactions, in Minnesota, it’s 10 or more sales totaling more than $100,000 or 100 retail sales, and so on.

Furthermore, the threshold in some states is based on tangible personal property only, while in others it includes services and in some, it includes electronically transferred property. The threshold is comprised of taxable and exempt sales in some states but only taxable sales in others. To top it off, some states simply haven’t said.

Once nexus has been established, businesses may need to act fast.

Economic nexus can be established overnight

Consider Illinois, where economic nexus went into effect on October 1, 2018. Remote sellers must ascertain at the end of each quarter whether they’ve met one of the state’s economic nexus thresholds during the preceding 12-month period. If they have, they’re required to register and commence tax collection and remittance at the start of the subsequent quarter — which could be the next day.

The Illinois Department of Revenue provides the following example: At the end of March 2019, a remote seller determines it made $200,000 in sales to Illinois purchasers for the preceding 12-month period. As a result, it’s required to register to collect and remit tax on sales to Illinois purchasers from April 1, 2019, through March 31, 2020. On March 31, 2020, the cycle starts again.

A seller with unexpectedly strong sales in Illinois at the end of a quarter could find itself with an unexpected obligation to collect and remit tax in a matter of days.

Learn More

Attend our Economic Nexus webinar to learn more, and download our complimentary whitepaper to learn more: What the South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. Decision May Mean for Your Business: Understanding Economic Nexus.

WEBINAR: Thursday, January 31st @ 2 pm EST

Article Dean Dorton

When the Carolina Hurricanes were looking for ERP solution options, Massey Consulting stepped in to offer expertise. In their switch from Sage Platinum to a better fitting cloud-based solution, the Hurricanes wanted greater options in reporting, and data retrieval with maximum flexibility to provide details about all the unique event situations that often occurred at the PNC Arena.

Massey presented the Hurricanes with Sage Intacct –  a best-in-class cloud accounting solution. Sage Intacct’s dashboards, multi-entity reporting, greater depth of dimensions, real-time data transparency and paperless environment were huge must-haves for the Hurricanes.

With Massey’s help, once the Hurricanes were up and running they never looked back.

From the get-go they could access up-to-date information on all their departments and events quickly and effortlessly. With the transparency of the cloud, they could get in-depth data and analyze key financial performance information from the various revenue streams associated with their individual events.  Their financial teams could sort, label and categorize data with speed and flexibility.

“All the modules have met my expectations…There has not been any disappointments with (Sage) Intacct.” – Shaun Nicholson, Director of Finance, Carolina Hurricanes.

After switching to Sage Intacct, the Hurricanes saved time, and improved data retrieval and reporting.

With Sage Intacct’s dashboards, their key decision makers have budget vs. actual reports at their fingertips. Their paperless environment even allows them to skip report-sharing meetings because everyone already has the information they need, and can drill down as much as they like to access critical data with a click of the mouse.

In addition, the Hurricanes found Sage Intacct’s simple and intuitive User Interface – or UI, a great benefit during implementation, allowing the transition to the new software solution much easier than they ever anticipated. Its intuitive design made training easy for the Hurricanes end users.

Massey, with their expert team of accountants, along with Sage Intacct’s leading cloud solutions, together helped streamline the Carolina Hurricanes growing business complexities. Thanks to Massey’s discovery process and implementation excellence, the Hurricanes analyze their data with deeper dimensions for faster and more accurate decision-making, and more accurate reporting, and have simplified their chart of accounts.

“With (Sage) Intacct, we are always up-to-date on the latest improvements for our ERP solution. I do not have to worry about not receiving the updates or if we are using the most recent best practices – unlike our previous on-premise solution, where we would have to manually complete updates to stay current,” said Nicholson on Sage Intacct’s automatic software updates, thanks to the cloud.

If your business is feeling the squeeze of ill-fitting systems, now is the right time to look into your options. With the cloud, the possibilities are endless to modernize your financial processes, to start getting the critical data you need when you need it, and to discover better-fitting systems for your growing success.
Contact Massey today to find out how easy it can be to boost your financials to land a biscuit in the basket for your company too.

Article Dean Dorton

Are you a finance executive at a for-profit company thinking about making the leap to a nonprofit organization? As the Wall Street Journal reported, some readjustment may be in order.

Reporting requirements are much stricter, and you’ll need to manage the expectations of major donors and your board. But the biggest difference between nonprofits and for-profits may be a lack of resources. Don’t expect the luxury of a large staff. Employees at nonprofits end up wearing many hats and playing numerous roles because there simply aren’t enough people.

Watch the webcast, “Elevate the Role of Finance in Your Nonprofit Organization”

Take BUILD, for example. The nonprofit, which helps high school students in under-resourced communities, found its finance team strapped for staff when its geographic scope, headcount, and budget grew 50% from 2015 to 2016. The organization wanted to minimize the addition of general operations personnel—so it turned to a modern finance solution.

“If we hadn’t implemented Adaptive Planning, we’d need one more FP&A hire just to gather data and write reports,” said Bill Souders, vice president of operations and data management at BUILD. “Our business is growing rapidly, both in size and complexity. Our ability to plan and analyze across the equivalent of 40 budget departments became untenable, and growth was one of the key drivers for putting Adaptive Planning in place. Already there’s light at the end of the tunnel—I’m no longer trying to synchronize and version control 40 spreadsheets without breaking them.”

User-friendly software eases burden of finance team

According to Souders, Adaptive Insights’ intuitive interface takes some of the load off BUILD’s finance team by allowing non-financial users to do many tasks themselves, like inputting data and creating reports, saving time and resources. “With a very small amount of administrative support, we’re already able to let all of our budget managers slice, dice, and drill down into the data,” Souders said.

BUILD is just one of many forward-looking nonprofits that are turning to modern finance tools. At Adaptive Insights, we’ve had the opportunity to work with more than 400 nonprofits, spanning categories from healthcare to children’s services and performing arts.

For instance, United Here Health (UHH), which provides healthcare benefits to union employees in the hospitality, food service, and gaming industries, has been using Adaptive Insights since 2014, when it migrated from its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

“Before Adaptive, everything was coordinated by email,” said Bryan Schmidt, UHH controller. “There was no interface between the ERP and our budgets, so we had to do updates manually. Final budget adjustments took up to four hours to complete. Then it took three weeks to upload them into the ERP system.”

United Here Health eliminates 185+ spreadsheets

In short, it was tedious, time-consuming work for an organization with limited resources. But by automating its financial processes, UHH was able to replace more than 185 spreadsheets and 400 workbooks—and avoid bringing on a new hire. “Now we can produce financial statements within an hour once the financials are closed,” said Schmidt. “It’s almost instantaneous. We have more time to spend on analysis, and thanks to Adaptive, more confidence in the results.”

Another challenge nonprofits face is how to sustain their missions and visions for years into the future. Nonprofit leaders need to be able to evaluate the potential impact of financial decisions on a much more frequent basis than once a year. The Adaptive Suite helps nonprofit finance teams build scenarios to model plans and contingencies, as well as conduct frequent re-forecasting and scenario planning.

“We’re very dependent on philanthropic revenue, and now more than ever we need to make rapid decisions and turn on a dime to implement contingency plans if we need to,” said BUILD’s Souders. “Adaptive Planning lets us drill down into the data, slice and dice it, and perform what-if scenarios.”

Fast reporting to many audiences

As mentioned above, nonprofits also differ from for-profits in that they need to report results to multiple audiences who are investing their money in the mission and vision of the organization. These audiences include boards, donors, and even the government.

“We use Adaptive OfficeConnect every day to create presentations for our board of directors,” Schmidt said. “It’s been a godsend because we don’t have to re-format every report if we change something.”

Adaptive Insights’ reporting functionality helps nonprofits generate balance sheets and annual financial statements and streamline other regulatory filings. With drag-and-drop reporting across multiple dimensions, nonprofit finance teams can track the performance of and get on-demand visibility into funds, projects, programs, departments, employees, and more.

Make smarter decisions, faster

“We can’t take a week just to gather and manipulate data into a form that everyone can understand,” Souders said. “Adaptive Insights lets us create reports a lot faster for any level of analysis we want. We can distribute data rapidly across the organization—not only for analysis but to help make final decisions about budgets and allocations.”

At the end of the day, cloud-based FP&A tools like the Adaptive Suite benefit not only the mission of the organization but the quality of life for its finance team.

“Because we didn’t have a single source of truth, I used to find myself poring over spreadsheets at 5:30 pm on a Friday night, looking for errors,” Schmidt recalled. “It was time spent that I didn’t have to spend. Now I can close the books in an hour—and I know it’s done right. People have been telling us that it’s the best budget they’ve ever seen.”

Permission to repost from Adaptive Insights marketing team.

Article Dean Dorton

April 1 is commonly known as April Fool’s Day. It’s also the date when Amazon will start collecting sales tax in four more states — Maine, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Idaho —bringing the total to 45 states and the District of Columbia.

Amazon is no fool and sales tax nexus is no joke. States are tired of losing revenue from tax-free remote sales and are starting to crack down on businesses who fail to register or collect sales tax when their sales activities are deemed substantial enough to warrant it. Amazon’s decision to volunteer to register to collect sales tax in more states may simply be pre-emptive to ensure that, should their sales into that state meet nexus thresholds in the future, their bases are covered.

While merely speculative as to motive, it is a smart move – and one that other companies may want to consider. The Quill v. North Dakota decision is decades old now, and the physical presence standard for nexus doesn’t adequately cover e-commerce. Congress still has yet to rule on new federal online sales tax legislation, despite multiple opportunities to do so. As a result, states are starting to reinterpret nexus to their own benefit in an attempt to collect tax revenues they feel are owed them. Under these broader terms, businesses can establish nexus through such activities as attending trade shows, engaging drop shippers, hiring remote employees, and (yes) online sales.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

Amazon was one of the first e-commerce sellers to challenge remote seller nexus rules – an action which dubbed those policies “Amazon tax” or “Amazon laws.”  In the nine years since the e-commerce giant took New York to court over its 2008 Amazon tax law, the floodgates have opened to even more nexus changes at the state level, first with affiliate nexus and click-through nexus, and more recently with economic nexus laws.

The penchant for states to change or introduce new nexus laws has made it increasingly difficult and risky for businesses who sell online or into multiple states to keep track of their sales tax obligations. While it may not make sense for smaller to mid-size e-commerce sellers to volunteer to collect sales tax as universally as Amazon is now doing, it would be wise to have a solution in place to help you manage sales tax nexus — one that will scale with your business as it grows or changes.

Know your nexus

So much so, that they created a page on their website dedicated solely to helping companies understand nexus and even find out what nexus laws apply to each state where they do business.

Companies frequently engage Avalara’s professional services tax experts to help them determine their nexus obligations. And complying with multistate nexus is one of the biggest motivators to companies deciding to onboard Avalara’s tax automation solutions. Avalara’s software makes critical sales tax decisions automatically, pulling from the largest and most comprehensive tax database in the world and applying accurate, verified, up-to-the-minute rates and rules to all your transactions. In most cases, Avalara is a simple integration to existing financial systems so setup is fast and easy. Avalara can also assist with exemption certificate management, as well as file and remit of sales tax returns.

For a refresher on nexus obligations, read Avalara’s guide, Everything you wanted to know about nexus (but were afraid to ask).

Permission to reprint or repost given by Avalara. Content previously published at www.avalara.com/blog.
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