Sage Intacct

Article Dean Dorton

Dashboards don’t seem all that impressive at first. Decision makers are used to relying on a quick and easy rundown of performance metrics to guide what they do, so what makes dashboards any different?

For one, they update themselves instead of requiring an accountant or IT person on the back end to change the numbers as new data becomes available. Dashboards also update in real-time so that decision makers always have the latest figures to reference. Compared to past forms of performance tracking, dashboards involve a lot less input while delivering a much greater output.

That’s apparent in the speed and simplicity of dashboards. But it’s better exemplified by the amazing insights that dashboards supply and the significant impact they have on organizations. The humble dashboard looks unassuming at first…but there’s gold inside if you know where to look.

How dashboards drive decision making

More than just a performance tracker or reference tool, the best dashboards are thoughtfully designed to streamline decision making, improve objective analysis, and uncover the “right” choice much more often than before.

That happens first by allowing users to customize their dashboard to see the metrics most relevant to their objectives. The numbers that need to be top of mind stay top of mind. The ability to incorporate charts, graphs, and other visualizations presents the data in the most insightful and informative format possible. And by collecting all that information in one condensed location that can be digested at a glance, dashboards intuitively incorporate strong data into every decision making process. Whatever someone wants or needs to know is available now, not later.

Again, having good information on hand doesn’t seem like such a revolutionary capability. But imagine if confusion, errors, and uncertainty were removed from the decision making process and replaced with clarity, confidence, and (most importantly) intended outcomes. It would transform an organization’s fortunes and rewrite what’s possible. Dashboards turn data into gold by turning multiple options into one obvious choice. What could be a bigger asset in business?

Sage Intacct: A new standard for dashboards

Like other financial management platforms, Sage Intacct offers dashboard tools, but they stand out in a few important ways.

They are easy to create, change, and customize. Users need no technical expertise to build and update their own dashboards – a process that takes just minutes. The refreshing user-friendliness of the tool helps get more people onboard with using dashboards while enhancing what they can do with them. Likewise, those dashboards are easy to access at will and reference in an instant – there’s no obstacle to using them. Finally, Sage Intacct’s dimensional accounting capabilities take performance reporting to the next level by letting users easily slice and dice financial data to see new things. The dashboards are both more accessible than the alternatives and more advanced too.

See for yourself. Schedule a demo with Dean Dorton.

Philip Massey
Software Services Director
pmassey@ddaftech.com • 919.796.5408

Article Dean Dorton

Learn how to run the Sage Intacct revaluation process and post an entry to the general ledger at the end of every financial period. The step-by-step process below can come in handy for all users of global consolidations.

The value of transactions that occurs during the month that is not settled (AP bill incurred but not paid) by the end of the month, represents unrealized gains or losses to the business due to changes in currency rates.

Example:  Imagine a company that operates with a base currency of US Dollars. On July 15th, they incur an expense of 1,000 Euros that they do not pay by the end of that month. When the expense was incurred, the exchange rate between Euros and US Dollars was 1.00168. At the end of July, the exchange rate was 1.02254.

The difference between the two rates (1.00168 – 1.02254 = -0.02086), multiplied by the transaction amount of 1,000 Euros, represents an unrealized loss of $20.86 due to currency fluctuations. These amounts are posted to the financials to represent these currency fluctuations.

When the AP bill is finally paid, for instance on August 1, the system would record a realized loss of $20.71, representing the difference between the rate at the time of the invoice (1.00168) and the rate on the day the invoice is paid (1.02239).

Steps for Revaluation Process in Intacct

1. Set-up:

For each entity, identify any Asset or Liability accounts other than AR, AP, and Cash accounts that are transacted in a foreign currency with respect to the base currency of the entity, and will be settled in the foreign currency (for example loans).

  • Suggest exporting the COA, identify all accounts subject to revaluation, and then create a GL Group for these accounts – use a name like “GL Revaluation Accounts”.
  • General Ledger > All > Financial Structures > Account Groups

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2.  Run the General Ledger Revaluation:

Run the General Revaluation Report as of the last day of the month.

  • General Ledger > Reports > General Ledger Revaluation
  • Enter “As of Date” (typically the last day of the reporting period)
  • Revaluation Date (typically the last day of the reporting period)
  • Select Account Group “GL Revaluation Accounts”
  • Set Location
  • Either check the box for “Auto-create draft JE when offline”, or check the box after you’ve run the report
  • Reverse the entry on the first day of the following month

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3.  Run the AR & AP Open Items Revaluation Reports:

Post the adjusting entry to the last day of the month.

  • Go to Accounts Receivable > All > Reports >AR Open items Revaluation
  • Enter the date of the revaluation – typically the ending day of the month
  • Enter the name of the Location or Entity
  • Allow the system to auto-create the entry, or create it after running Revaluation Report. The entry should be reversed on the first day of the following month.

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4.  Run the Cash Management Reconciliation:

  • Go to Cash Management > All > Reports > Revaluation
  • Post any needed adjustment to the GL – note: this entry cannot be automatically created, but requires the user to manually post a journal entry. Also, this entry does NOT get reversed at the start of the following month.

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Jim Stubanas
Business Software Services Manager
jstubanas@ddaftech.com • 919.508.6068

Article Dean Dorton

The Cost of Your Family Office Team

How do wealthy families make the best use of their money? With help.

Many rely on family offices to manage and grow their wealth, among other financial services. Family office teams consist of various financial professionals who understand how to avoid risk, evaluate investments, minimize taxes, and manage assets for multiple parties with a collective interest. Family offices have become far more common in the last 20 years, owing largely to the immense wealth created by the emergence of the internet. Newly-minted millionaires with more money than time need to entrust someone with their funds, and family offices are an appealing alternative to institutional money managers.

Given the nature of their work, one might expect a family office team to have no trouble managing their own accounting obligations. One might also expect wealthy individuals to disregard the cost of their family office. But neither assumption holds up. Accounting, finance, and cost controls can all be challenges for a family office, and that should concern the family itself.

How Costs Get Out of Control

Prevailing wisdom says that family office costs should equal around 1% of the family’s active assets. Those costs typically fall into four categories:

  • Internal Costs – Salaries, benefits, overhead, technology
  • Family Expenses – Property, art/collectibles, taxes, consumption
  • Professional Services – Insurance, lawyers, consultants, security
  • Advisor Fees – Management, research, reporting, custody

As this table makes clear, family office costs can be complicated and considerable. They could easily exceed 1%, making a family office an essential but expensive resource. Alternately, costs could fall below the 1% threshold, suggesting the family office may be sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency. In either case, family offices costs can become difficult to track and manage for small teams with big responsibilities. A family office needs a big enough budget to cover their costs. But just as importantly, they need a way to manage that budget without it becoming a distraction or a disruption.

Fine-Tuning the Family Office

Adding an accountant to the family office team doesn’t make sense in most cases. What does make sense is utilizing accounting and finance outsourcing (AFO) to supplement the expertise already on the team. With an outsourcing partner in the mix, family office teams can focus on managing wealth while offsite accountants handle routine obligations like bill payment, general ledger management, and financial reporting. Teams can also rely on AFO to handle specialized finance if and when necessary.

If family offices need to keep costs in check without constraining their capabilities, AFO is the logical solution. It costs a fraction of hiring in-house accountants while delivering vastly more than one (or several) professionals could offer on their own. Arguably most importantly, the oversight and input of an outsourced team can prevent costs from compromising the family fortunes. With AFO, the family office becomes the asset it was intended to be.

How does outsourcing fit into your own family office operations? Explore the answer with the team at Dean Dorton.

Justin Hubbard, CPA, CGMA | Accounting and Financial Outsourcing Director
jhubbard@deandorton.com
859.425.7604

Article Dean Dorton

Cloud Technology for Real Estate: Remain Relevant, Stay Competitive

Statistic after statistic shows businesses flocking to the cloud in huge numbers, especially after the pandemic. They’re looking for software that facilitates remote work, along with new tools and insights to help navigate these uncertain times. Most people see the cloud as the future – and the real estate industry needs to catch up.

It’s no surprise that everyone from property developers to real estate investors to agents and brokers has been slow to embrace new technology. They’ve been historically slow to adopt technology in an industry where networks, relationships, and deal-making still dominate. The human aspect of real estate has always trumped the tech side…until now.

The Cloud-Based Future of Real Estate

It only makes sense that an industry that works out of multiple locations that change all the time could benefit from a technology that offers anywhere, anytime access. The cloud offers the mobility that real estate has always needed – and that’s just one advantage.

Real estate is also becoming more data-driven, fast-paced, and fine-tuned than in a previous era. Remaining competitive in any facet of the industry depends on making the right moves without unnecessary delays. That takes data, and tools to make sense of that data. New programs deliver both in an accessible format that can undergo regular updates and improvements to meet the evolving needs of users. Unlike the alternatives, cloud technologies are as agile as the real estate industry itself.

The future of real estate has arguably arrived already. The enthusiasm for solutions like Sage Intacct Construction suggests as much. In addition to being an all-encompassing business and financial management solution tailored to the specific needs of real estate, it’s the only native-cloud solution to serve this vertical. Developers and contractors who want to embrace the cloud can feel confident they’re getting a robust, future-ready solution in Sage Intacct Construction.

Having decided it’s time to upgrade, the question becomes how?

Cloud Migration Made Simple

Cloud migration can seem intimidating when it involves sensitive financial data and critical accounting responsibilities. The time and technical expertise required can also give people pause. The good news is that migration has become much simpler with time – and there are partners who can make cloud technology accessible to all.

Partners can be an incredible asset provided the right team is onboard. They should offer access to the leading cloud solutions available – like Sage Intacct Construction. They should also have experience working with real-estate clients, the more the better. Plenty of service providers offer to help with cloud migration, but it takes industry-specific expertise to ensure the migration (and what follows) works as everyone intends.

Dean Dorton has a 15-person team specializing in real estate accounting, taxes, and technology. Decades of combined experience ensures our clients get the in-depth insights and insider perspectives they seek – on migration specifically or real estate excellence more generally. Contact Dean Dorton to explore all the solutions we have to offer.

Philip Massey, CPA
Software Services Director
pmassey@ddaftech.com • 919.508.6062

Article Dean Dorton

For many small and mid-sized businesses, Intuit QuickBooks is usually the first choice for financial software in the organization’s early days – and for good reasons. QuickBooks is well-known and very easy to use, and it offers the basic functionality that almost any business can use to get off the ground.

Unfortunately, growing businesses soon realize that the early value of the management software is soon overtaken by its limitations.

Top 5 Limitations of QuickBooks

1. Over-Reliance of Spreadsheets to Support Financial Processes and Reporting

“After spending over one week sifting through massive spreadsheets, we discovered that we have a calculation error in how we had been recognizing revenue for the past three years.”

Sound familiar? Hopefully not – but many organizations naturally and gradually develop sophisticated accounting requirements (such as revenue recognition and multi-entity consolidation). And if QuickBooks is the financial foundation, that often means cumbersome workarounds because QuickBooks doesn’t provide the built-in capabilities for these complex processes.

  • Are you exporting data to multiple spreadsheets?
  • Are you creating additional journal entries each month?
  • Have you created home-grown applications for recording revenue or expenses outside of QuickBooks?

These workarounds lead to entry errors, incorrect or outdated data, process inefficiencies, wasted time and resources, and a lack of control and compliance.

2. Excess Manual Data Entry and Re-Entry

“How do I import customer order data into QuickBooks? I currently spend many hours manually creating invoices in QuickBooks, and there should be a better way.”

Most companies don’t integrate QuickBooks with other key business applications, opting instead to just manually integrate the systems (think: flat files, CSV dumps, and rekeying). That might suffice when volumes are small. But ask anyone who’s endured these workarounds and you’ll see it’s a real productivity killer as the business grows. Who has time to manually research, re-enter, and verify data that’s already captured elsewhere? Instead of automating your business, these manual integrations are invitations to errors and wasted time.

3. Limited Access to Reports and Information to Drive Decision-Making

“Rather than constantly struggling to keep up with incoming requests for data and specific reports, Sage Intacct lets us consistently report financials in a timely manner and feel confident that we can easily respond to any new request.”

Real-time visibility into business metrics is essential for timely decisions that boost performance. QuickBooks offers canned reports – and no dashboards – so your visibility is limited and you’re often forced to make decisions based on outdated data. By leveraging a financial system that incorporates both a multi-dimensional general ledger and report writer, you can transform your analysis and become a strategic partner who generates insights that answer the bigger questions facing management.

4. Difficulty in Adapting to New Business Requirements

“QuickBooks continues to crash, and I lose all our payroll data. I don’t have time to re-enter data for 350 hourly employees…”

Maybe you’ve seen a couple of the classic signs that you’ve outgrown QuickBooks. Those menus and screens – that used to be so quick and responsive – now have lengthy delays as the system struggles to keep up with data volume and calculations intensity. Report-printing takes forever. And queries seem to dim the lights.

This critical limitation is risky at best. It can force you to periodically shut down QuickBooks – just to maintain data files. In a worst-case scenario, you’re looking at potentially disastrous results: system crashes and the loss of crucial data. That’s no way to run a business.

5. Inadequate Controls Around Financial Processes

“Errors caused by manual processes and a lack of control resulted in $180,000 of improper expense reimbursements within a six-month period.”

Manual process is a fact of life with QuickBooks. Unfortunately, they increase the probability of data duplication and data entry errors, making it difficult to gain an integrated, real-time financial view of a company’s end-to-end operations.

Despite its popularity as a business application for small business, QuickBooks simply wasn’t designed for growing organizations that need advanced functionality for manage sophisticated processes.

The Next Wave of Financial Management Technology – Moving Past QuickBooks

Dean Dorton has helped many businesses make the move from QuickBooks to Sage Intacct. The accounting features on this product are simple and easy to use.

These companies now enjoy real-time data and processes, flexible reporting, and role-based dashboards. We’ve helped organizations increase productivity through accounting automation, extensive integration and user-defined workflows. And, these companies can scale with Sage Intacct – as the business grows they can increase transaction volume and easily add new entities.

Give us a call or shoot us an email if you’d like to explore Sage Intacct as your future financial accounting solution. If you’d like to see the software – join us for a quick daily demo.

Daily Demo

Philip Massey, CPA
Software Consulting Director
pmassey@ddaftech.com • 919.508.6062

Article Dean Dorton

Cash management can mean different things to different people. It can also have different faces depending on what sector your business operates in. However, at its heart, cash management is the process of overseeing and controlling the inflow and outflow of money through your business—and that can lead to problems.

Read on to discover some of the risks associated with improper cash management and how your company can overcome them.

Three Common Risks of Improper Cash Management

  1. Manual Processes: Too many of today’s modern businesses are still managing their cash flow manually. Whether this means your employees are counting cash by hand, or your CFO is manually entering data into a spreadsheet to track cash flow, these processes can lead to multiple issues—including human error and theft. While we would like to believe that our employees and associates are too-well trained and honorable to make mistakes or act dishonestly, manually tracking and managing your business’s cash is asking for trouble.
  2. Increased Labor Costs: Receiving incoming cash and managing its flow can be an expensive proposition. It’s time-consuming and requires a lot of man-hours and personnel. Your company may even be employing too many people to do this job effectively. Having too many hands in the proverbial pot not only increases the risk of error, but it also results in high labor costs and cuts into your bottom line.
  3. Outdated Information: If your company is operating and making decisions based on last month’s—or even last week’s—data, you’re relying on out-dated information. The future of cash management requires real-time figures and data. Relying on old information puts your company at risk and hampers your ability to properly predict future growth.

How to Address These Issues

The good news is that there is a simple, cost-effective way to address each of these risks. By employing best-in-class financial management software, your company can mitigate, or even eliminate, these issues. Your company needs a comprehensive accounting and financial management software solution with superb cash management capabilities. A best-in-breed option, like Sage Intacct, will replace manual procedures with automated processes, reduce labor costs, and provide real-time reports and statistics.

Sage Intacct’s cash management enables companies of all sizes to see transactions across all checking and savings accounts, as well as credit cards—providing a complete, real-time picture of the company’s money flows. Finance teams can easily import statements from all their financial institutions and automatically reconcile checking, savings, and credit card accounts to spot exceptions, manage bank errors, monitor for fraud, and maintain accurate cash balances. By streamlining payment processing and employing customizable dashboards, Intacct enables the finance team to save time that can then be put toward more value-added tasks.

Defuse The Legacy Software Minefield By Turning To Dean Dorton

Switching to best-in-class financial management software, such as Sage Intacct can not only help you navigate the minefield of legacy software, it can disarm it completely. Streamline your resources, lower IT costs, improve confidence, and save time as you move from outdated systems and into your future.

Contact our experienced value-added reseller (VAR) for a free consultation today.

Learn more about Dean Dorton’s Accounting Software services and products:

Accounting Software

Dean Dorton ERP Team
erpsales@ddaftech.com