mConnect

Article Dean Dorton

What are the signs of an unproductive accounting department? They are subtle. The important obligations still get done and major milestones get met – but never as effectively as they could or should.

The month-end close is a good indicator. Accountants have all month to plan and 12 opportunities each year to practice. It’s something that should fire on all cylinders. Yet for many, the month-end close takes days of hard work, cuts deadlines close, and never seems to improve. It’s adequate. What it’s not is a productive process that uses resources effectively.

Start looking around, and a similar problem appears everywhere. All the boxes on accounting get checked, but rarely without involving some delay, workaround, or lowered expectations. The unproductive accounting department feels like it is never caught up, fully prepared, on in control of whatever comes its way.

Adding staff or tweaking the accounting processes can help. But neither of those addresses the core problem: the accounting software. It’s either the engine that drives productivity – or, too often, the roadblock that stands in the way.

Accountants at Odds with their Software

Accounting software always starts out as a solution. It puts new tools and data in the hands of accountants, vastly improving how things are done.

But then the accounting team, company, and economy start to change. Perhaps a global pandemic breaks out. Whether slowly or suddenly, the circumstances facing accounting start to change – and yet the accounting software stays the same.

Vendors offer occasional updates (or expensive upgrades), but essentially the system in place on day one looks the same as the system years later. Meanwhile, the team using the software and the ways they are using it look drastically different. It’s that disparity – between what accountants need and what the software can deliver – that causes productivity to suffer.

The effects are small at first. But then a company takes on bigger accounting workloads as the number of employees, clients, and locations grow. Accounting needs simultaneously become more sophisticated as companies start to take on greater financial risks and responsibilities.

The disparity eventually gets so wide that the software breaks entirely. But productivity starts suffering long before that. Recognizing the problem and replacing the software (the earlier the better) is the first step. Implementing something that won’t replicate the problem is the second.

How Sage Intacct Keeps Productivity on Pace

As a leading financial management platform for mid-market and growing companies, Sage Intacct does everything. But it keeps the features updated, relevant, and productive in two ways.

First, cloud-native development means that Sage Intacct (including all accounting tools and financial data) travels anywhere and everywhere. Access never inhibits productivity. Second, free updates installed automatically every quarter bring new features, improvements, and additions to the platform on a regular basis. Stale tools never inhibit productivity, either.

Is the current accounting software pulling its weight? Contact Dean Dorton to put something more productive in place.

Stacey Neideffer| Software Services Senior Consultant
sneideffer@ddaftech.com
859.425.7739

Article Dean Dorton

2019 Success Recipe: 5 Ingredients to Prep Your Finance Team for Scalability

The end of the year is an excellent time for companies to get prepped to grow their business in 2019. The finance team, too, must be able to support their company’s ability to scale. Doing so requires finance to have easy visibility into real-time metrics, get information from multiple sources, keep their chart of accounts manageable—and have the flexibility and security to scale with confidence.

As the new year is right around the corner, your organization may be considering new financial management systems that can scale with the company’s projected growth. For example, a cloud-based system like Sage Intacct has all the ingredients that CFOs, controllers, and the rest of the finance team need to meet the increasing demands of a growing company:

Dashboards help you get reliable, timely metrics in front of the board of directors and provide the context and details needed to align on key decisions. For instance, performance cards, which are summaries pulled from account groups, are far more than groups of financial accounts. They can also summarize operational information, such as the number of employees or billable hours. Account groups can also be calculations, like revenue per billable hour and can be filtered just to show a particular location, department, or other dimensions. And charts and reports help show and explain financials to the board. Each visualization tells a big-picture story, while still allowing finance to drill into the report and transactional details behind the chart.

Best-of-breed integration with multiple systems. Cloud financial management software was built to “talk” to your other best-in-class systems with automated two-way, system-to-system communication. Web services API eliminates the need for business logic, and you have the flexibility to tailor your connections to your specific workflow processes. What’s more, you can connect the software to with any application you have—from proprietary custom applications or popular business systems like Salesforce CRM. This seamless integration serves as a foundation for adding new applications as you grow.

Dimensions to minimize the chart of accounts. Most financial solutions use a hard-coded structure for your chart of accounts. Say you want to track 3 locations, 5 departments, and 5 projects—you’d need 75 account code combinations. Plus, you’d end up with a complicated, unmanageable set of codes. Want to add a new location or department? You might be forced to add hundreds of additional accounts. Cloud financial management software lets you keep it simple with dimensions—all you have to do is set up your primary account codes. Dimensions also offer a new way to track and report on financial and operational data. You get quick access to insights that speed decision-making and help drive growth.

Reporting Flexibility. A cloud-based accounting infrastructure provides greater flexibility to your finance team. Whether you have staff working offsite, operate in multiple locations and entities, or have team members on the road, mobility and remote access are a requirement for efficiency and productivity. The ability to share data—anytime, anywhere—greatly improves your efficiency by providing real-time insight so you can take smarter action sooner. With the mobility capabilities of cloud computing, your internal and external stakeholders have full access to metrics, approvals, and financial reports—regardless of location.

Security. Major cloud providers have made extensive investments in deploying superior technology, processes, and initiatives to achieve extremely high levels of data security. Your company can benefit from levels of privacy and security that far exceed what on-premises solutions offer. That’s because cloud providers of financial management software can support millions of users to create more secure environments that incorporate the latest standards and controls for physical access.

Ready to scale and grow in 2019?

Cloud financial management software from Sage Intacct has the features, flexibility, and security—in other words, all the ingredients—that finance needs to scale the business into 2019 and beyond. The business technology experts from Massey Consulting can help; contact us for a free consultation today.

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Article Dean Dorton

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ClearPointe is a privately-owned company with headquarters based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since 1998, enterprise-level companies throughout the world have engaged ClearPointe for managed network services. ClearPointe is an international center of excellence for practical deployment and management of advanced Microsoft technologies.

ClearPointe wanted greater reporting capabilities as well as the ability to access ERP data from anywhere, but their current solution of Dynamics Great Plains, was unable to meet their unique business needs.

ClearPointe worked with Dean Dorton to evaluate and implement Sage Intacct’s cloud-based accounting solution. Sage Intacct would not only give them greater reporting flexibility but provided integration with their mission-critical software, ConnectWise, utilizing Dean Dorton’s custom-built mConnect integration.

Download the case study:

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The Challenge

ClearPointe began feeling the constraints of their on-premise Microsoft Dynamics GP solution. Their month-end close was was a manual process and taking additional time that they could not afford to lose. The finance team was consistently running into problems with their reports, which also took away time better spent analyzing the data rather than correcting mistakes.

“Dean Dorton has been our VAR choice for years,” said Tom Major, ClearPointe’s former CFO. “We chose to work with them to find a new cloud-based solution because of their educated consulting team as well as their mConnect integration with ConnectWise.”

The Solution

ClearPointe’s ideal situation was a cloud-based, dimension driven system that facilitates multi-entity, seamless reporting, and makes record-keeping for multiple entities easier.  Sage Intacct gave ClearPointe better reporting allowing their management team to focus on the bottom line and revenue.

Tom Major, Former CFO, ClearPointe

By choosing Sage Intacct, ClearPointe was able to set up customized dashboards to focus on different financial needs. This allows their leadership team to easily see where their company stands and what is sparking their rapid growth.  ClearPointe also gained the advantage of automatic updates four times a year by choosing Sage Intacct. This keeps their ERP solution current with all technology updates and financial trends.

Results with mConnect & Sage Intacct

Since ClearPointe implemented Sage Intacct, they have experienced a 20% increase in sales and profits. They have been able to spend more time managing the business and its finances as opposed to fixing problems with their reporting and struggling through a prolonged end-of-month close.

With both Sage Intacct and mConnect, the accounting team no longer has to manually synchronize data, boosting business productivity and eliminating manual processes.

Tom Major, Former CFO, ClearPointe

Why Dean Dorton?

Dean Dorton is a full-service accounting and consulting firm with a dedicated team that specializes in accounting software implementations and integrations. Our team is comprised of technology consultants that have experience as accountants, controllers, and information systems experts. We strive to provide our clients the most efficient, integrated software solutions that will allow them to focus more on their business and less on their software. We have been named a Microsoft Gold Partner and Sage Intacct’s Premier Partner since 2013.

Philip Massey, CPA
Director of Software Consulting Services
erpsales@ddaftech.com • 919.875.9635

Synchronize ConnectWise with Your ERP with mConnect

Article Dean Dorton

Imagine this… A day at the office where you and your finance team don’t have to scurry around, trying to import and export critical data between multiple systems. What about this? You aren’t stuck behind your computer for countless hours, re-keying the same data over and over again in different systems.

If your business uses ConnectWise as your main CRM, you can now seamlessly integrate all the data with your accounting system- either MS Dynamics GP or Sage Intacct. Massey’s mConnect integrator tool makes this possible.

With mConnect, you have real-time integration between your operations system, ConnectWise, and your ERP. The solution empowers your accounting system and ConnectWise to work together by identifying and sharing customer-focused information, making it all customizable for your needs. All data is visible where you need it and when you need it.

mConnect helps businesses:

  • Keep invoices up-to-date by automating the collections process
  • Customize their needs and integrate only the records THEY want
  • Automatically synchronize customers, vendors, and products inside accounting
  • Import sales invoices, procurements, and expense reports.

“Without mConnect, system users would have to manually import and export data from each system in order to synchronize and share information between the accounting, sales, invoicing, order processing, receivables and inventory functions,” said Philip Massey, CPA and President of Massey Consulting.

“mConnect simplifies and automates these tasks, making information readily available and decreasing the possibility for errors that occur as a result of manual re-keying of data.”

Article Dean Dorton

mConnect: Automating the Sage Intacct and ConnectWise Integration Experience

Managed service providers, or MSP’s, work hard to provide their clients and customers with the best quality work and productive outcomes. As companies work hard to improve their operational functionality to increase efficiency and get the most value out of the company, programs such as those found in Massey Consulting’s Sage Intacct, ConnectWise and mConnect, is the key to keeping both of these goals in sight.

mConnect enables companies to avoid having to manually import or export information between their systems, facilitating an efficient workflow and bringing positive contributions to the company’s bottom line. mConnect bridges the gap between aspects of the business by synchronizing information between ConnectWise and either Sage Intacct or Dynamics GP. This is done in real time, and as a result, higher quality information is delivered at a faster rate.

Fields of application:

Accounting

When it comes to running accounting integrations on your system, mConnect can facilitate this operation automatically across accounts.
Also, it can capture additional relevant information that can be pertinent to the way you handle your accounting operations. Once an invoice has been verified and paid, mConnect will mark it down and make a note in your records.

Accounts Payable

Making payments and managing invoices is essential for every company and mConnect makes this efficient. With the mConnect customer portal, you can keep all invoices organized and up-to-date and be able to act upon actionable data from these invoices to make smarter acquisition and purchasing decisions. mconnect allows you to track all invoices from a specific point, giving you a better idea of your payments as a whole on a format that can be reviewed quickly resulting in a simplified payment process and much happier vendors.

Sales

The sales industry thrives on data, particularly when it comes to correctly handling customer data and quickly providing your sales department with accurate information, which increases the chances of closing deals and bringing in profit. With mConnect, all sales data can be processed and updated at a rapid rate, keeping employees in the sales department cognizant of changes and operations. This is bolstered by the accurate analysis of up-to-date information, as well as processing real-time sales numbers. As a result, mconnect leads to more reliable income forecasting and sales numbers, allowing every department to anticipate their next move more precisely.

Inventory

The benefits of mConnect for inventory purposes are primarily based on its ability to centralize all data to a single location. In this way, you can measure inventory directly and efficiently. mConnect enables you to create a more accurate outlook of your stock levels without using elaborate estimation methods.

Customer and vendor relationships

In the network that is the business world, most companies are a central point between their vendors and the customers and mConnect makes it more efficient to operate between these two polar opposite groups. The integration of the system is customizable, making interruptions between working with vendors and customers less common.

Along with this reduced friction comes the ability to completely map your fields in the ConnectWise system. This feature gives companies an added amount of agility when working with the customer and vendor relationships. mConnect also gives you the option of integrating only the most essential records of your choice allowing you to take control of your data and use it to improve your business.

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Article Dean Dorton

One thing we know – along with accounting, is that great companies stay great by putting their customers first. This is on our list of top success priorities, and it’s a big part of what drives us to do what we do, and how we do it.

By putting our customers first, we learn all about their unique needs. This helps us figure out what products and services will offer the most help for them now, and in the future.

Our goal is to build close relationships with our customers, and stick with them as they grow, to see their company succeed every step of the way. That means we need to offer products that are a great solution for our customers now, and as much as in the future.

We’re Listening

Sure, we are “numbers” people – it’s what we do.  It’s the reason we can expertly help growing businesses without them missing a beat – or a winning goal like we did with the Carolina Hurricanes. But we’re also really good at putting our listening ears on – and leaving them on.

Staying in tune with our customers matters because it means we can offer custom solutions for their unique issues. We’ll help find solutions that streamline financial processes that can scale, to handle new growth challenges in the future.

Staying in tune with customers helps us create solutions that pave the road to their future success.  That’s how we developed our own unique integration product, MConnect, to make our customers’ software solution integrations even better.

We Deliver Long-Range Solutions

We put our customers first by offering a range of products and options that meet their unique needs.

When we met up with Legacy Healthcare, they had trouble moving beyond their current software arrangement. With multiple locations and services, they were building up to 300 different reports a month.  They needed a solution to simplify their complex reporting needs, while also offering flexibility to scale with their rapid growth.

Our financial management expertise comes from working with many other multi-location businesses with growth challenges. By knowing the industry-specific issues, we could show Legacy how Sage Intacct – a best-in-class financial management solution, simplifies and automates their complex reporting setup.

Sage Intacct’s cloud-based solutions boost accuracy and offer the flexibility to streamline month-end closings, while also breathing life into your unique success metrics.

Jay Huffman, Legacy CFO, talks about his experience with us:

“Upon taking my position at Legacy…I had a lunch with Philip Massey and Jim Stubanas… I felt completely at ease with the consulting firm choice afterward and looked to them for advice on moving to a new ERP system.”

Whether you’re a change-making organization like UAB Educational Foundation, or a franchise managing complex reporting with multiple locations, we want to know you!

Let’s connect! We will show you the love by tuning into your company’s unique needs to help drive productivity, boost accuracy, and streamline systems to fit your growing business.