accounting solution

Article Dean Dorton

If your current financial management solution is starting to create productivity issues, it might be time to move on. Before you do, consider these questions to ask first.

1. What kind of benefit can we get from cloud accounting?

The cloud offers anytime/anywhere accessibility. Cost efficiencies enter in when companies move from on-premises to cloud-based solutions by reducing their need for complicated IT infrastructure expenses.

Sage Intacct, a cloud-based financial management solution also offers deep visibility into your most critical KPIs for fast answers to growth strategy and performance – something that on-premises systems cannot provide.

2. Can your software solution scale to accommodate growth?

Strong cloud-based software solutions are designed to scale with business growth to accommodate small and large companies alike. This means the right solution should fit whether you’re just starting out, or ready to add new locations, entities, or even go public.

Because Sage Intacct is also GAAP compliant and streamlines global consolidations, companies that plan to grow don’t need to worry about outgrowing this solution down the road.

3. What happens in the event of a disaster? Will we have a backup?

When a disaster happens, on-premises solutions can render your business inoperable, with the risk of permanent data loss in the case of weather-related disasters or power failures. Be sure the software you choose provides ample backup, storage and redundancy to ensure data protection.

Cloud-based solutions however are backed up remotely, and with Sage Intacct, your data is backed up and secure, both remotely and from wherever your teams work.

Sage Intacct provides continuous local and streaming backups to remote disaster recovery centers, with redundancy, so your data is secure, protected, yet accessible, on reliable Oracle database infrastructure.

4. We rely on other solutions – does your application integrate?

With the cloud, you don’t have to settle for an all-in-one solution to ensure your company data flows between departments.

Because Sage Intacct works from open web services, it can integrate with a wide range of applications from CRMs to SFAs to PSAs. This translates into time and cost savings by modifying only the financial management solution features you need, without re-inventing the wheel throughout the whole company.

5. If we customize our version of the software, will it work with future updates?

If you need customizations, consider whether your potential accounting solution will operate just as effectively down the road, after updates.

Sage Intacct provides frequent updates that happen behind the scenes to ensure a seamless workflow, and no downtime on your end things.  While Sage Intacct’s updates occur regularly, rest assured that they won’t alter the efficacy of your customizations in future versions of Sage Intacct’s software.

Still have more questions? Reach out to us to get important answers when choosing a modern financial management solution to drive your growth.

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Article Dean Dorton

Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies – A 5-Part Series

Article 3: Collaborative Systems to Support Flexible Reporting, Forecasts, and Budgeting

For Biotechnology companies, forecasts and budgeting is a high stakes balancing act.  It’s necessary to find the right spending cadence and application of funding.

Collaborative forecasting and budgeting are essential to keep projects moving according to plan – maintaining an optimal pace while closely monitoring cash flow. Not spending enough could delay projects while spending too much could prematurely deplete cash before additional funding becomes available.

Biotech companies dependent on disparate systems spend hours – even days – combining spreadsheets to deliver comprehensive information managers need to make informed forecasts.  When decisions need to be made quickly, those manual processes are a liability to the company.

What is your cash balance and how long is it going to last?

The big question for pre-revenue companies is, “What is your cash balance and how long is it going to last?”

“The forecast is crucial,” explains Andrew Graham, CFO at AgBiome, a biotechnology company located in Durham, North Carolina.  “It’s not something that’s done in a vacuum with just the Controller and CFO putting it together – you have to get everybody in the company involved to get reasonable assumptions about funding and revenues, headcount and hiring.  Because the majority of the expense in small biotech companies are headcount and expenses related to headcount.”

From cradle to market: collaboration not just limited to forecasting

“Successful teams are collaborating constantly and want technology tools to facilitate that communication,” observes Philip Massey, CPA and founder of Massey Consulting.  “Certainly within budgeting and forecasting, but also within financial accounting.”
Perhaps there is a $2,500 expense related to general supplies that should be split between Project A and Project B.  However, the entire amount gets assigned to Project C.

“Nobody wants to have another meeting or sift through email threads to get the issue resolved,” says Massey.  “Within Sage Intacct, there is a secure social layer embedded in the financial management called Collaborate that lets the Project C manager to drill into the transaction and alert the accounts payable staff that the expense was assigned to the wrong account. ”

Sage Intacct Collaborate allows team members to deal with non-routine transactions such as clarifying policies, gathering missing information, resolving exceptions.  And, it keeps track of the conversation: with a single click, team members can see all messages related to a particular issue, putting the matter in context and on its way to resolution.  A faster path to resolution keeps expenses associated with various projects accurate.  Project Managers can move forward with complete confidence in their budget to actual reporting.

“It’s all made possible by the flexibility of cloud technology and the strength of modern financial accounting software features – capabilities that simply aren’t available in old, legacy software,” explains Massey.

Throughout this series we have stressed the three important benefits of cloud technology:

  1. A single source of information
  2. The ability to respond quickly to change
  3. Reducing risk aided by data visibility

All businesses benefit from this trio of capabilities, but the importance is more acute within biotech companies that are moving towards new rounds of funding, public offering or merger and acquisition.

This concludes ‘Collaborative Systems to Support Flexible Reporting, Forecasts, and Budgeting,’ part 3 of the Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies series.

Click on the links below to read other parts of the Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies series:

Read Part 1: Accurately Track Costs with Project Accounting

Read Part 2: Automation Batch/Lot Tracking to Ensure Traceability

Read Part 4: Streamline Business Processes for Biotech Companies

Article Dean Dorton

SaaS companies are unique in their complexities.

In every stage of its growth, your SaaS company metrics focus should evolve to support success.  That means your financial system must come with some pretty fast footwork if it’s going to offer the flexibility and depth required to scale with your business for the long haul.

Companies just starting up are busy getting the word out about their business. They are pounding the internet pavement to get the subscriptions they need to build momentum. These companies need complex metrics relating to CRM, conversion rates, key leads, and website visits. They feel the squeeze between payroll, expenses, and A/P and A/R to keep customer relationships tight, and the business strong.

For early-stage SaaS with a solid subscription base, things start to get more complex as they keep a close eye on customer acquisition costs as well as monthly and recurring revenues. They gain their footing with new business and start hustling down the field, only to feel customer churn nipping at their heels.

SaaS businesses in the rapid growth stage have their roots and need to keep up with success while adjusting to their fast-growing size. As they start to build add-on’s and subscription modification options, they need to track their upsell, cross-sell efficacy, revenue recognition, and customer lifetime values, to name a few.

Finally, the SaaS public companies out there coming up on the end zone have to focus on metrics with even more complexity. These companies are looking at compliance on a massive scale, sales and quota forecasting, greater depth into market analysis, and in customer and revenue growth in year over year, and month over month break-outs.

With such a wide range of metrics that morph and fluctuate in priority through the many stages of industry-specific growth, SaaS companies need a system that can handle these changes quickly and effectively.

These companies need a flexible, yet powerful cloud-based financial management system like Sage Intacct. With Intacct, SaaS companies can get fast answers, and relief in smoother processes:

  • Deep, yet customized broad-scale automation to handle A/P, A/R transactions, consolidations, month-end closings and much more, no matter how big or small the business.
  • Flawless compliance with ASC 606 and IFRS 15 regulations specific to SaaS companies.
  • Real-time, customizable dashboards breaking out only the metrics decision-makers and stakeholders need to quickly build strategies and grow the business.
  • Lock-tight security and seamless integration with other best-in-class solutions that SaaS companies need to keep business moving along at a steady clip.

Whether your growing SaaS company is raring to go at the 50-yard line or coming up fast on the end zone, you can reach your 2018 goals with Sage Intacct’s SaaS business-ready solutions.

Download our FREE whitepaper: 7 Reasons to Move to Cloud Financials Now