Sage Intacct

Article Autumn Hines

Healthcare organizations are buried in data – patient data, claims data, financial data, operational data, and more – and that includes finance leaders, the finance team, and the C-suite. But just how much of all this data is being organized and leveraged for practice success?

Respondents to our recent Healthcare Finance Team Leadership Survey told us that manual, time-consuming reporting and a lack of real-time visibility into key metrics and performance were the biggest internal frustrations their organizations are facing today. Further, our respondents are overwhelmingly looking for automation when it comes to reporting – to enable turnkey, on-demand, self-service reporting so they can free up the finance team to spend more of their time on strategic work.

There’s clearly a need for data, so the question becomes: What do you measure? How? And what do you do with the insight? To answer these questions (and more), I sat down with Linda Pinion, Sage Intacct’s Principal Solutions Consultant (and resident expert on all things KPIs, dashboards and reports) to uncover tips and tricks for healthcare finance leaders looking to take measurement and reporting to the next level for practice success and how financial and accounting reporting for healthcare organizations can help with that.

Linda’s advice? Focus on a few key areas for the most impact:

What to Measure? Everything!

Linda urges healthcare finance leaders to go beyond traditional revenue and expenses when thinking about measurement. Dig into the details! Consider comparing supplies versus equipment, or direct versus indirect expenses. Compare provider performance or location against location, revenue by insurer, or the profitability of certain treatments or services over others. Challenge yourself and your team to look beyond the “standard” financials and explore how things like capital improvements, revenue, and expenses related to patient care and procedures, participating in new payment models, or offering new products and services, will impact the bottom line.

Sage Intacct customer Paige Oldham, CFO of Health Solutions, did just this, and now enjoys more visibility and streamlined efficiencies, telling us, “We can combine different kinds of KPIs all in one report for a much clearer picture of what’s going on with the business. I have [everything] all in one place and can drill down as needed, which helps immensely.”

The lesson learned? You won’t know until you measure.

Communication & Collaboration

What good is measurement if it’s done in a vacuum? Practice success hinges on everyone working towards the same goal and clearly understanding the health of the business today, and where it is trending for the future. Linda recommends that healthcare finance leaders find ways to enable members of your team and broader members of the practice to access tailored dashboards and reports. That way, whether it’s a specific provider, department, entity, location, or other functional area of the business, they know where they stand, what they are accountable for, and how they directly impact and influence practice success.

If you have a means to communicate and collaborate in an automated way within your finance system, that’s even better – your team will spend less time creating reports and more time on strategic work that will help move the practice forward.

Go Beyond the Financials

While strong financial reporting is critical, don’t underestimate the power of combining financial, clinical, and operational data to uncover a deeper level of understanding and a more sophisticated way to measure the success of your practice.

Consider how Virginia Jones, PhD, and COO of Village Family Dental, took reporting to the next level:

“The system identifies which offices or service lines are making money (or not), so we can decide which lines of business to expand or reduce. Expanding on pediatrics and OR cases and reducing certain insurance carriers has increased revenue by as much as $40,000 per month. After we started offering frenectomies and sleep apnea services, it was simple to evaluate each one’s profitability and determine contributing factors.”

Perhaps your providers want to see revenue or expenses by patient, per visit, or procedure. Perhaps executives want to understand profitability by provider, the impact of entering a value-based contract, or the potential revenue from adding a new service like Virginia and her team at Village Family Dental. Combining financial, clinical, and operational data all in one place enables healthcare finance leaders to move away from simply reporting on the events of the past and shift gears to strategically predicting the future of the practice.

Authored by Melissa O’Dowd

Melissa is a leader within the Healthcare practice at Sage Intacct, having spent the last 18 years working within the healthcare industry, helping healthcare technology, consumer health, medical devices and diagnostics, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology companies change the lives of the patients they serve.

Article Autumn Hines

The financial stability of any K-12 school directly impacts its educational mission. Now, more than ever, academic institutions need tools that provide visibility and help plan for the future. Effective accounting systems should balance core financial functions with specialized reporting needs unique to educational institutions. Selecting appropriate accounting software is a crucial decision that affects the administration, teaching staff, and students.  

So, what are the things K-12 schools should be looking for in an accounting system? 

Cloud-Based Accessibility

You need financial tools that work wherever you are. Cloud-based solutions give you secure access from your office, home, or even while traveling to that education conference. This means your administrative team, department heads, and board members can all see the financial information they need when they need it. 

Multi-Dimensional Reporting

Let’s face it – school finances can be complicated. K-12 schools have complex financial structures that require sophisticated reporting tools. Effective accounting software should offer multi-dimensional reporting across: 

  • Departments and programs 
  • Campus locations 
  • Restricted and unrestricted funds 
  • Grants and endowments 
  • Capital projects 

This functionality is essential to allow schools to track how resources are allocated and maintain compliance with donor restrictions and reporting requirements. 

Real-Time Visibility

You can’t manage what you can’t see. Key stakeholders need accurate, up-to-date information to make informed decisions and ensure financial sustainability. Your accounting software should give you: 

  • Dashboards that you can customize for different roles 
  • Educational-specific performance indicators 
  • Quick comparisons of budget vs. actual spending 
  • Financial metrics based on enrollment 
  • Analysis of per-student costs 

With these tools, you’ll spot trends early, address problems quickly, and make decisions based on live data. 

Process Automation

If you’re part of a small admin team, you probably wish you didn’t have to do the same repetitive tasks over and over. Accounts payable and receivable, bank reconciliations, and expense management are all vital, but they take time. Automating these routine tasks reduces the likelihood of errors and frees time to focus on mission-critical activities. 

Integration Capabilities

Your finances are interconnected, so your accounting software should be, too. You need it to integrate with things like: 

  • Fundraising tools 
  • Tuition management software 
  • Payroll 

When these systems communicate, you eliminate duplicate data entry, improve accuracy, and get a complete picture of your operations and finances. 

What to Consider When Choosing

As you evaluate different options, look for software that addresses these key requirements. A solution like Sage Intacct checks all these boxes – providing education-specific functionality, scalability, appropriate access controls, strong security, and measurable ROI. The right accounting platform will become a foundation that supports your financial operations and educational mission, giving you the insights you need to help your school thrive. 

Article Dean Dorton

For managed service providers (MSPs), the devil is in the details. This is a fact that Stacey Neideffer knows all too well. Before joining Dean Dorton as a Sage Intacct consultant, Stacey served as the CFO of an MSP. There, she found that despite her accounting acumen and finance expertise, she spent much of her time doing data entry. Was it time for an accounting software replacement?

Their accounting software at the time was QuickBooks. To get data into the system, they had to batch information together and wait for large files to transfer. Batching was slow and cumbersome. It meant the information in the accounting system was often outdated and irrelevant. Most of all, it kept Stacey from more important responsibilities. She realized that the company had outgrown its accounting system and saw first-hand how much trouble that created. When she made the case for upgrading to superior software, the rest of the leadership agreed. The upgrade, Sage Intacct, exceeded expectations, and the MSP thrived as a result. 

This is Stacey’s story—but at a recent conference of MSPs featuring Stacey as a panel discussion leader, she learned her experience is a familiar one. Many providers are struggling with their accounting, wondering if their software is the problem, and thinking about what an upgrade would mean. 

To anyone in the same boat, the panel was an enlightening one indeed. Here are some of the key takeaways to emerge.

Batching is bad for business

A common refrain during the panel was the disruption that batching caused. Everyone who used QuickBooks dealt with it. And everyone agreed it was a constant drain on their time. More than that, it was a dangerous limitation to their financial visibility and control. If the panel had a consensus conclusion it was this: batching indicates the accounting function has outgrown the software supporting it. 

QuickBooks loses its luster

Another commonality between the panel and the participants was the struggle to make QuickBooks work for service providers. That was especially true once they grew into multi-entity organizations. Cheap, easy, and adequate, QuickBooks looks great for providers eager to start serving clients, but those benefits quickly become obstacles. The MSPs at the conference who had already left QuickBooks made something quite clear: if you haven’t outgrown it already, it’s coming sooner than you expect.

Software selection isn’t easy

Another sentiment was echoed throughout the panel. Even when the need to upgrade accounting software looks obvious, concerns over picking the wrong replacement or disrupting the accounting process keep many MSPs from taking action. Stacey and others stressed the importance of integrations between the accounting software and other business tools. This helps eliminate batching, and also creates shared data sources and overlapping toolkits to make each piece of software stronger.

What comes after QuickBooks?

With expertise spanning technology, accounting, and the MSP ecosystem, Stacey has a rare skill set that makes her a unique asset to service providers that have outgrown their accounting software. That came through in the panel—and it comes through to clients who recognize Stacey as someone who’s been in their exact same situation before.  

Make the right replacement by relying on the right partner. Contact Dean Dorton.

Article Dean Dorton

The sports and entertainment industry has the same basic accounting responsibilities and priorities as any other industry: keep the books straight, pay the right amount in taxes, stay on-time and up-to-date. But in so many ways, sports and entertainment accounting is unique – from the seasonal nature of demand to the fluctuations in revenue and tax liabilities. 

These factors make it challenging to find suitable accounting software. There are plenty of options with adequate features and sufficient capabilities, but while they “get the job done,” they do little to make life easier for accountants or help companies manage money more strategically. 

Why? Many reasons, but a lack of flexibility is the core issue. Sports and entertainment companies, by nature of the industry they operate in, need accounting software that can adapt, scale, and extend anywhere with ease, and most options aren’t flexible enough to keep up. That’s when cloud accounting options come into play. Cloud accounting is a perfect fit for the sports and entertainment industry, and for many companies, it’s key to remaining competitive and relevant.

Why the Cloud is a Superstar in Sports and Entertainment Accounting

The benefits of cloud accounting are extensive and impressive – from lowering costs to accelerating implementation to streamlining IT management. For companies in the business of hosting events and selling tickets, cloud accounting excels in three important ways:

  1. Conduct Accounting From Anywhere – Sports and entertainment accounting is never static. It bounces between locations, goes on the road, or happens from multiple sites at once. Cloud accounting, with its anytime/anywhere accessibility, gives users access to all their financial data and the complete accounting toolkit from anywhere with internet access. Time and place are never an obstacle to accounting. 
  2. Integrate With Key Systems – Cloud accounting solutions with open APIs can integrate with other businesses systems, including industry-specific solutions, to share data and combine capabilities. Integrated systems are more efficient, accurate, insightful than disconnected systems, and with cloud accounting, building those bridges is easy.
  3. Consolidate Data and Capabilities – Anywhere money is flowing in, out, or through an organization, cloud accounting is there to capture and consolidate the data, forming a single-source-of-truth that decision makers can draw on to inform any decision (financial or otherwise) they make. The cloud also puts financial tools – some for advanced users, others for non-accountants – into the hands of whoever could benefit.

Sage Intacct – Cloud Accounting Built for Sports and Entertainment

Some software does not offer cloud accounting. Likewise, most cloud accounting software does not have features tailored to sports and entertainment. Sage Intacct is the rare solution that was built for the cloud and optimized for sports and entertainment. It’s the exceptional option in a sea of adequate choices. 

Frustrated with your current software? Ready to upgrade? Contact Dean Dorton to implement Sage Intacct and serve as your partner in cloud accounting. 

How the Carolina Hurricanes Made the Move

Operating a sports team and an event venue comes with its own set of accounting challenges. Learn how Dean Dorton helped the Carolina Hurricanes make the move to the cloud and provided a winning solution with Sage Intacct.

Get the Case Study

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

Why You Need Construction-Specific Software

Every construction company on earth, from small contractors to mega developers, uses accounting software. What’s surprising is how few use the right software. Many have something less-than-optimal in place. And for some, the software hurts accounting as much as it helps.

That leads to an important question: does your construction company have the right accounting software in place? The answer is complicated. Ultimately, it boils down to this: if you don’t have construction-specific accounting software, think about making a change.

Why Horizontal Solutions Are Never Adequate

Horizontal accounting software strives to be a Swiss Army knife for financial management. It packs a bunch of basic tools into one package in order to meet the most popular accounting requirements. QuickBooks is the most common example, but there are many others.

All-in-one accounting solutions are great for companies getting off the ground. Not only do they offer essential accounting features at an accessible price point, but they streamline those features to be simple and efficient. By design, they make it easy to get accounting up and running no matter what industry you’re in. That’s the biggest strength of horizontal accounting software, and it explains why so many construction companies use it. It’s also the biggest weakness, though.

By doing everything adequately, these solutions do nothing particularly well – a classic jack of all trades but master of none scenario. In accounting, as in construction, mediocre tools cause lots of unexpected problems. Even bigger than the problem of under-powered features, however, is the fact that horizontal accounting solutions don’t address the unique requirements of construction accounting.

Just a few examples include progress billing and integrating payroll into job costs. Construction companies deal with both on a regular basis, yet very few horizontal accounting solutions include purpose-built solutions or even adequate functionality. They make the fundamentals of construction accounting harder. Similarly so with things like managing work orders, inventory, and projects. When horizontal solutions address these issues at all, it’s not in a construction context.

Horizontal accounting software offers lots of features. What it doesn’t offer is true solutions to make accounting simpler, smarter, and more scalable for construction companies. That takes a different kind of software.

Benefitting From Construction-Specific Software

Construction-specific accounting software comes with features that are not just adequate or appropriate for construction but customized for this industry.

The benefits of using an accounting solution built for construction are hard to overstate. Accounting becomes simpler, faster, and more accurate for the in-house financial team, helping them accomplish more work in less time. The quality of their financial insights and planning improves as well, putting a construction company in a much stronger position through smart money management. Everything runs better when companies can use accounting to their advantage – and that starts by having the right software in place.

Software like Sage Intacct: a financial management platform with a full-suite of construction-specific tools. For builders of all sizes, it’s the closest thing to a complete accounting solution available. See how the right software could transform your company – schedule a demo.