Cloud Accounting

Article Autumn Hines

The madness doesn’t just happen on college basketball courts—it also happens when your finance team is stuck using a legacy on-premises accounting system like Microsoft Dynamics GP. If your accounting playbook is filled with outdated software, manual processes, and desperate workarounds, you’re in for a season of frustration. Let’s break down why running your business on legacy accounting software is the real full-court press of inefficiency.

The Shot Clock is Running Out

Modern cloud-based accounting solutions are running a fast break, while Dynamics GP is dragging through a slow-motion half-court offense. Every second spent on manual data entry, slow reconciliations, or system crashes is eating away at your ability to execute a winning financial strategy. With Microsoft shifting focus away from Dynamics GP in favor of cloud-based solutions, the shot clock is ticking—how much longer can you afford to play this outdated game?

Too Many Turnovers

Relying on Dynamics GP is like a team that just can’t stop giving the ball away. Manual data entry? That’s a bad pass. Limited automation? That’s an unforced error. Lack of real-time reporting? That’s like playing without a scoreboard. Without the agility of modern cloud-based accounting systems, every extra step increases the risk of costly mistakes and slows down your ability to make fast, informed decisions.

Getting Blocked at Every Turn

Trying to integrate Dynamics GP with modern financial tools is like trying to drive the lane against a seven-foot shot blocker—it’s just not happening. Dynamics GP was built for an era where standalone systems were the norm, meaning its compatibility with new cloud-based applications is clunky at best. Cloud-based accounting solutions, on the other hand, offer seamless integrations, allowing you to move the ball with efficiency and precision.

Your Bench is Running Thin

One of the biggest issues with Dynamics GP? The dwindling number of IT professionals who know how to maintain and support it. It’s like relying on a star player who’s past their prime with no solid backups in sight. As Microsoft gradually phases out support and fewer experts can troubleshoot problems, your organization is left vulnerable to unexpected downtime and expensive fixes.

Cloud Accounting is the Championship Move

If you want to stay competitive, it’s time to upgrade to a cloud-based accounting solution. Automated workflows, real-time reporting, best-in-class security, and seamless integrations mean you can execute a championship-level financial strategy. No more desperate last-second shots—just efficient, accurate, and strategic financial management.

Final Buzzer: It’s Time to Move

Sticking with Dynamics GP is the real bracket buster—filled with unnecessary struggles, defensive stops, and missed opportunities. If you’re ready to break free from outdated processes and start playing like a championship contender, it’s time to make your move. Don’t let your accounting team get stuck in the past—make the switch before the final buzzer sounds on your outdated system!

Article Dean Dorton

In the past, accounting was just a box you had to check, but lately, the bar has been raised.

Over the past few decades, companies have become more and more competitive with their accounting and finance capabilities. Some companies leverage their financial fitness and accounting innovation to outmaneuver their competitors. For others, though, inefficient or error-prone accounting processes are a liability that holds the company back. Simply stated, it has never been more important to excel at accounting, especially for companies with ambitions to grow or pivot.

Accounting Excellence – Easier Said Than Done

Many companies will make a few improvements or additions to their accounting department and assume they are fully equipped for years to come when, in fact, they need to level-up their speed, scale, or skills much more drastically than they realize. Successful companies don’t excel at accounting because they put a few pieces in place on one occasion – they excel because they are always putting new pieces in place.

The first hurdle is anticipating what strengths the accounting department needs to develop in the years to come. The second, much larger hurdle is developing those strengths given the time, budget, and skill set of the current department. Every accounting team would like to have new capabilities and competencies added to their repertoire automatically, but very few have that luxury. 

Sage Intacct users are the exception.

Pushing the Envelope Every Single Quarter

Software updates are nothing special – every vendor releases new features and fixes. Sage Intacct, a leading financial management platform, does things differently in two important ways.

  1. The developers behind Sage Intacct release an update every quarter without fail. Users can expect the platform to expand, improve, and evolve four times every year (more frequently than most competitors).
  2. Each update adds significant new tools, enhances upon what was already there, and incorporates feedback directly from users.

Sage Intacct is the rare vendor that has proven, quarter after quarter, their commitment to making major improvements with each update.

Take the last update, 2023 Release 1, for example. It came with updated company and administration tools, it added AP automation, simplified managing accounts payable and accounts receivable, and so much more. With this and each update, the developers strive to make Sage Intacct a stronger, smarter, simpler solution overall while also making it more accomplished at industry-specific accounting obligations (from construction payments to multi-entity management).

Each Sage Intacct update installs automatically with little to no setup required. So, once every quarter, accountants sit down at their desks to discover better software than they had the day before. And when the accounting software is always improving, so is the accounting team – just one more way that Sage Intacct helps users turn accounting into a strategic asset and competitive advantage. 

Ready to put your own accounting department on an upward trajectory? Contact the Sage Intacct specialists at Dean Dorton for a demo. 

 

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

Article Dean Dorton

Using legacy software can be like walking through a minefield. The terrain looks familiar, comfortable, and perhaps even safe—but costly issues often lurk within outdated systems. Some of these latent problems include staffing requirements, support, and maintenance obstacles, cost of time, and decreased productivity. Consider how these challenges can damage your business:

Headcount and Staffing Dilemmas

Legacy software isn’t adapted to today’s fast-paced digital world. It often takes years to become fluent in its use. Because legacy accounting solutions require specialized training and skill sets, hiring and staffing can become an issue. Finding employees who know these systems is difficult, and training new-hires into proficiency is a lengthy process. This often transfers into the need for multiple staff positions in order to operate the software. As headcount rises, your bottom line falls.

Support and Maintenance Obstacles

In addition to the hurdle of operating obsolete software, legacy systems need to be maintained. If your servers go down, your business lurches to a stop. Technicians either need to be called in or kept in-house—both of which are expensive propositions. Even if the system is up and running, you may face frequent service problems as the vendor terminates support for the aging software. All this adds up to a bulging IT budget and a maintenance nightmare.

Cost of Time and Decreased Productivity

Legacy software is notoriously clunky and non-intuitive. It takes time and effort to operate. Glitches, lag-time, and lack of mobility plague its users. Legacy software also doesn’t play well with modern applications, which means little to no automation. Data entry is almost always manual, and therefore, error prone. When employees are forced to spend their time laboring over these time-consuming processes, they can’t focus on strategic activities that boost your productivity. 

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

Article Dean Dorton

There’s an old saying that everyone loves an underdog. We like cheering for the downtrodden and urging on the slowest runner. However, being the underdog in today’s cutthroat world of business isn’t usually a feel-good story with a happy ending—especially if you’re a finance leader who senses their company is lagging behind the rest of the pack. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In fact, the majority of CFOs feel they aren’t doing a good enough job at keeping up with change.

Read on to learn about data-driven decision making and how you can use it to propel your organization into the future.

What Is Data-Driven Decision Making?

  • Simply put, data-driven decision making combines the right people with the right processes and the right technology:
    • People: Forward-thinking companies are looking for team members who are curious, creative and analytical. They need people who will monitor data, identify trends, and hypothesize the best ways for their company to succeed.
    • Processes: Today’s financial strategies need to use leading-edge analytic techniques and technologies effectively
    • Technology: Data-driven technology must employ automated financial operations, a multi-dimensional analysis of key metrics, and coordinate data with other systems in real-time

Why Data-Driven Decision Making Is Essential?

Gone are the days when financial leaders had the luxury of focusing on the past. Backward-looking statements and manually entering last month’s figures into an Excel spreadsheet are outdated practices. Knowing what your company’s figures looked like yesterday isn’t enough.

You need to become a data-driven strategist who uses cloud-based financial software with real-time reporting and custom dashboards to keep pace with what your company is doing right now. Not only that, you need to become a technology futurist. By taking advantage of best-in-class financial software, you will be able to use predictive analytics to guide your forecasts and strategically plan for your future.

In fact, Jason Miller, our Business and Technology Consulting Director here at Dean Dorton, says, “Data-driven decision making not only helps with the now, it tells your organization where to go next. Imagine being able to predict where and when to make your next investment. That’s the kind of power data-driven decision making can give you.”

Crossing The Finish Line

The advantages of data-driven decision making are clear. Your company doesn’t need to be the underdog. Let our team help you sprint into the future with best-of-breed financial software provided by Sage Intacct. Contact us for a free consultation today.

Download the E-book – Sage Intacct for the Data-Driven Finance Leader:

Download the E-book

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

Accounting Software

Dean Dorton ERP Team
erpsales@ddaftech.com

Article Dean Dorton

What is your idea of accounting utopia? Lounging on a beach while the work is being done for you? Having time to focus on strategic projects instead of fixing spreadsheets and inputting data? The secret to finance and accounting nirvana—whatever that may be for you—is automated integrations, or “automation-in-a-box.”

Automation-in-a-box occurs when best-in-class software that automates key financial processes is integrated into your ERP system. Data and systems communicate with each other, creating efficiency and offering fast, accurate insights into your business’s financial and operational performance. Rather than scrambling to keep up, you have the power to get ahead.

Dean Dorton is proud to partner with top software solutions that both automate core business processes and integrate with leading ERP systems, such as Sage Intacct. These include:

  • Avalara offers cloud-based sales- and use-tax management solutions. Avalara’s end-to-end solutions seamlessly integrate with hundreds of ERP, accounting, e-commerce, and retail POS systems, providing accurate sales and use tax calculation, painless exemption certificate management, and effortless filing and remittance.
  • Bill.com reduces the time you spend on invoice approvals and payments by 60% or more—and significantly reduce your operating costs too. Plus, this cloud-based, fully integrated AP and payment automation solution eliminates your need for manual data entry and all the headaches that come along with it.
  • Martus Solutions is a leader in providing a collaborative budgeting platform for non-profit organizations and businesses worldwide along with flexible reporting for budget participants to create, monitor and manage their budgets.
  • Nexonia offers a flexible, cloud-based web and mobile solution that makes corporate expense reports and timesheets easy, efficient, and automatic. Built with busy financial and operations leaders in mind, Nexonia’s full product suite consolidates corporate spending and time tracking in one convenient online portal.
  • WorkForceGo! Offers a comprehensive suite of workforce management tools, available as a package or à la carte that integrate with Sage Intacct and other general ledgers. WorkforceGo! HCM lets you track and analyze payroll, human resources, time and attendance data—and stay ACA compliant—from any mobile device, laptop, or desktop.
  • Yooz provides the smartest, most powerful and easiest-to-use cloud-based Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) automation solution. Yooz’s unique solution leverages Artificial Intelligence and RPA technologies to deliver an amazing level of automation with extreme simplicity, traceability and end-to-end customizable features.

It’s time to break free from burdensome, error-prone accounting processes and experience the accuracy, insight, and efficiency that automation can bring. Whatever your business requirements, you can trust the accounting technology professionals at Dean Dorton to help you design and implement your ideal automation-in-a-box.

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

Accounting Software

Dean Dorton ERP Team
erpsales@ddaftech.com