financial management

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These workarounds lead to entry errors, incorrect or outdated data, process inefficiencies, wasted time and resources, and a lack of control and compliance.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

Global Consolidations with Sage Intacct, the only AICPA-preferred financial management system in the market, just made it much easier to handle international accounting. Sage Intacct has a simple and user-friendly interface that has the functions of multiple international accounting software combined into one system.

Sage Intacct Global Consolidation (IGC) allows you to see your numbers in real-time.  Sage Intacct offers secure, up-to-the-minute accounting for your single or multi-entity business that allows for amplified automation.  Increased automation in the accounting world makes life more relaxed for everyone involved- saving time for the finance team, decreasing manual entry, eliminating the need for spreadsheets, and increasing business productivity overall.

With Sage Intacct’s cloud-based solution, your company has access to robust reporting and insight into a performance comparison from your business across the globe. Automation with Sage Intacct helps you close your monthly books faster and with more accuracy and allows employees to focus on projects and other tasks at hand.

Many global companies deal with the complexities surrounding foreign currency and the gain and loss of exchange rates- now that’s a thing of the past. The Global Consolidation feature inside of Sage Intacct gives the ability to automate inter-entity transactions using automatically generated conversions with the option for basic and advanced inter-entity mapping. Configuration and maintenance have never been easier! Also, Sage Intacct is partnered with OANDA, which is the leading provider of multi-asset trading services for businesses. OANDA’s standards are top tier and are trusted worldwide.

If you’re looking for automated conversions for your business transactions or your business needs to be reported and/or managed in multiple currencies, Intacct’s Global Consolidations (IGC) is the right software for you to increase accuracy and reduce manual operations for multi-entity and multi-currency consolidation. Regardless of your company’s size, the amount of locations or entities, Sage Intacct makes it simpler.

The most immediate benefits of using IGC are:

  1. Sage Intacct is a unified system that segregates access controls across entities, better connection with international subsidiaries by only using one environment, and has options for smaller charts of accounts through dimensions, vendors, customers and items shared amongst entities.
  2. Real-time visibility and insight into all inter-entity relationships, which minimizes user error due to less manual entry.
  3. Automated inter-entity transactions and roll-up of all operational data such as global aging, revenue trending or even breaking it down to reporting based on one entity for AR aging.
  4. Ease of centralized payment processing between offices locally or globally

Overall, with Sage Intacct’s cloud-based software, finance leaders can have visibility into their financial and business operations that work best for their international business solution. You can learn more about Sage Intacct below!

Datasheet: Multi-Entity and Multi-Currency Global Consolidations

Article Dean Dorton

Have you found yourself or your employees scrambling to cash in checks? Are you running to the office just to manage paper invoices and process ACH payments? During these challenging times of performing work at home and keeping up with the economic turndown, it’s critical that you have the right technology tools in place to properly manage your organization’s cash flow.

Join Dean Dorton for a high-level presentation on how automation and the right tools can make your cash processing quicker and more insightful- all while letting you successfully “shelter in place” and keep it all paperless.

Anyone who plays a financial management role in their organization including (but not limited to):

  • AR/AP Specialists
  • CFOs/COOs/Controllers
  • VPs and Directors of Finance
  • Accountants, Bookkeepers, Office Managers
  • Presidents, Executive Directors

Resources:

Article Dean Dorton

Get It Right, Get It Done: 4 Ways Outsourced Accounting Benefits Your Business

You know the advantages that financial management software brings to your business. Manual processes and outdated reports have gone the way of the dinosaur (unless you think Jurassic Park is real). Your accounting department has never run more smoothly.

However, your finance team may still be spending more time on routine tasks and less on your business’s core functions than you’d like. As your business grows and changes, your accounting functions need to grow and change, too. Outsourced accounting services take care of the day-to-day jobs and provide an adaptable, scalable platform to meet your company’s evolving finance needs.

Consider the following advantages of outsourced accounting services:

1. Enjoy the benefits of the latest financial management software. Your accounting services provider uses the most up-to-date financial management software, such as cloud-based Sage Intacct, so you can be sure your accounting processes are efficient and that you get real-time insights into your growing business. What’s more, the software is flexible and robust to handle your company’s changing needs, including revenue recognition, project accounting, subscription billing, and more.

2. Save on processing time. Why waste valuable human resources on mundane processes like reconciliations, closings, and cash management when you can assign your team to more value-added projects? For example, your finance department could analyze the feasibility of adding a new product line, location, or business model such as subscriptions. Plus you can save on operational costs and channel those funds toward more critical business functions.

3. Help ensure taxes are accurate. Incorrect numbers can create inaccurate tax filings. The result? Penalties and audits you’d rather avoid. Outsourcing accounting services to the pros help ensure accuracy at every level—from transactions to reports—so you can face tax season with confidence, not trepidation.

4. Take advantage of industry experts. Providers of outsourced accounting services use experienced professionals to handle your finances. You can learn the latest tips and get expert advice as your company grows and your accounting needs become more sophisticated. From accounts payable to monthly closing to board and investor financial reporting, you have professionals backing you every step of the way.

With a new year comes an opportunity to do your finance a new way, a better way. That’s why Massey Consulting is proud to announce its merger with Dean Dorton, a top accounting firm, effective January 1, 2019. Now our clients can take advantage of the latest financial management software and free up their accounting team to focus on what’s important—growing the business into 2019 and beyond.

Get the details of the merger and learn what it means for you here.

Article Dean Dorton

3 Things You Didn’t Know About Cloud Financial Management

Few things are a bigger investment of your time and money than a new financial management solution. Maybe you’re comfortable with QuickBooks or your on-premises system—even with their tiresome workarounds, error-ridden manual processes, and clunky upgrades. If you want to break free from these constraints, however, consider looking to the cloud.

Contrary to what you may have heard, cloud financial management systems offer excellent value, require little to no maintenance on your end, and best of all, give your finance team confidence in the numbers. A cloud-based system like Sage Intacct can:

  • Delivers better ROI than on-premise systems. A Nucleus Research report found that cloud deployments offer 3.2 times the ROI, have 2.3 times lower TCO, and provide a 2.2 times faster payback than on-premise deployments. One Sage Intacct user, a large restaurant franchisee that rapidly grew from 11 stores to more than 30 locations in only five years, began capturing ROI in only five months. Automation helped slash the company’s monthly close by five days, and real-time reporting puts relevant information right in the hands of managers, so they can be more proactive. And for a Bay Area talent identification and acquisition firm, the software paid for itself in less than three months.
  • Free you from IT tasks like support and upgrades. The cloud is low on maintenance and high on continuous value. With Sage Intacct, for example, you receive automatic quarterly upgrades that are touch-free for you—no business disruption and no costly upgrade projects. You can eliminate hardware costs and IT management from your cost of ownership. And Sage Intacct cloud accounting software delivers world-class security, backups, and disaster recovery, protecting your financial data and system much more efficiently and effectively than if you did it yourself.
  • Gives your finance team confidence in the accuracy of the data and reports. Ellen Grantham, CFO at K4Connect and Massey Consulting client, said, “[Before I came on board,] our CEO thought that [getting timely, accurate information] was more of a people problem, but it was a systems problem.” The finance department couldn’t answer questions about revenue in real-time, and the answer they finally provided was unsatisfactory.

When interviewing for the job, the CEO asked Ellen to answer some of his questions. She said that she could—but not with QuickBooks. “We’ve got to have a better system that we can look at it and drill down,” she told the CEO. “[Since] I don’t know all of the information right off the top of my head, I can look at [a new financial management solution] and see…what our revenue is from these particular projects, what is our inventory…and this is why our revenue is X.” She concluded, “[Sage Intacct] was a big driver for us to be able to have more confidence in the finance department.”

Still have questions about the cloud?

Trusting your critical financial data and processes to the cloud might seem like a leap of faith. The reality is, you can’t afford to be hindered by yesterday’s technology and inaccurate information. The business technology pros at Massey Consulting are cloud and accounting experts—they can help you design and implement a financial management system that you can use with confidence now and in the future. Contact us for a free consultation today.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Hear what Ellen Grantham had to say when asked the question at our “Future of Finance in the Cloud” event: “Many people have misconceptions about the cloud… Can you tell us a few benefits you’ve seen with the cloud to rule out those misconceptions?”

Article Dean Dorton

5 Reasons to Be Unthankful for Your Financial Management Software in 2019

‘Tis the season of gratitude. You have much to be thankful for—except for your financial management solution. As 2019 grows closer with its new challenges and opportunities, the limitations of your accounting software become all too clear. Here are five reasons why it’s okay to be ungrateful this Thanksgiving season:

1. You’re trapped by difficult, costly, and time-intensive upgrades. It’s hard to get the latest functionality if your company lacks the IT resources to upgrade related software, databases, and operating systems that are required for the upgrade. It’s no wonder that you’re making do with the risks and inconveniences of outdated software. And should you decide to upgrade, you may find the updated accounting system still lacks key features—so you’re stuck using workarounds.

2. You’re held back by disconnected systems and processes. The cost of integrating your on-premises financial management system with various applications and databases can be prohibitively high. Your finance team has to use manual, error-prone spreadsheets for crucial tasks like enterprise consolidations and revenue recognition. Even if you do decide to fund your enterprise integration, you’re often trapped in a constant maintenance cycle, where every new software upgrade breaks your integration.

3. You can’t keep up with business growth. Your legacy accounting system likely wasn’t designed to support the fast growth and expansions that smart businesses are pursuing. If you’re acquiring business units, you may be trying to cobble together a consolidated view across entities that use different accounting systems. That leaves you unable to track the costs of different lines of business or services projects. Soon, you’re hiring more people just to keep up with transaction volumes.

4. You’re challenged by new business requirements and regulatory compliance. Considering a new revenue model like subscriptions? Great! However, that’s placing new demands on your finance team, because the billing and revenue-recognition requirements for subscription businesses are more complex. Unfortunately, when your traditional, outdated accounting system was implemented, these new requirements and rules didn’t exist. Attempting to bolt on or retrofit support for these sweeping changes is either painful, expensive—or impossible—because your accounting system was never intended to do so.

5. You can’t fully track your business. Your legacy accounting system may is still be operating in batch-processing mode—slowly and with no real-time visibility—simply to deliver rigid financial reports. You’re likely forced to rely on third-party reporting and analysis tools to get even basic answers. Creating new reports, asking new questions, or customizing your old reports to reflect changing business needs is impossible. And you can’t support the self-service capabilities that business users want.

Tis the season to give thanks, with Sage Intacct and Massey Consulting

The new year is coming faster than a turkey can trot—which is pretty fast, believe it or not! It’s time to kick your old accounting system to the curb and give thanks for new technology, such as cloud financial management software from Sage Intacct. It’s designed not only to meet today’s business’s needs but also to adapt as your business grows. By moving to a best-in-class cloud financial management solution, you’ll gain time to be more strategic as you move into 2019 and beyond.

You’ll find plenty of reasons to give thanks this season with a free consultation from Massey Consulting, your cloud financial management experts.