Frustrated with your financial system?
Frustrated with your existing financial system? It might have been the right fit for your business a few years ago, but many financial systems are not built for the complex needs of a scaling organisation.
Many small organisations manage their accounting operations with small business software such as QuickBooks, Xero or Sage 50. These systems are great as bookkeeping solutions for small businesses, but as your organisation grows in size and complexity, you’ll start to feel some growing pains.
Benefits that a more robust system could bring include:
- Saving hours each month on manual accounting tasks
- Increased data transparency.
- Shortening the monthly close by up to 79%
1. You have insufficient information to make decisions with confidence.
Challenges
- Complex calculations are the norm – Are you performing complex calculations and data manipulation outside of your solution?
- Lack of transparency – Do your reports contain revenue and expense information, but no operational performance or outcome metrics?
- Lack of predictive metrics – Your reports look backwards rather than forwards. To make informed decisions, you need to predict where the organisation is going, not where it’s been.
Solution
A modern financial management system will allow you to quickly drill down with instant visibility to any level of detail you need. Sage Intacct makes it easy to slice and dice data for any view needed, resulting in real-time, deep visibility across budgets, transactions, and operational measures. This enables you to make more proactive management decisions.
2. Manual processes and spreadsheets have become unwieldy and prone to error.
Challenges
- Moving data from one tool to another – Are you spending time manually importing/exporting data, resulting in duplicate data entry and errors?
- Performing proper revenue recognition – Are you struggling to track revenue recognition across multiple spreadsheets, which can be complex and time-consuming?
- Lack of project accounting functionality – Do you lack the ability to allocate expenses and revenue across projects?
Over time, many organisations gradually develop sophisticated accounting requirements such as revenue recognition and multi-entity consolidation. If you are using an outdated or inadequate system as your financial foundation, it often means your team is forced to build cumbersome workarounds to complete these complex processes, leaving users over-reliant on spreadsheets and manual entry.
Solution
Modern accounting systems have built-in automation and workflows that streamline processes to save time and reduce errors while a lot of systems do not provide these built-in capabilities. Sage Intacct increases your efficiency and productivity by:
- Tailoring transactions and approval workflows to eliminate redundant data entry.
- Automatically routing and tracking digital approval signoffs on transactions.
- Automating revenue and billing processes.
3. Information silos have impacted financial visibility.
Challenges
- Systems are poorly integrated – Do you have multiple, disconnected systems that cause inefficiency and result in the need for duplicate data entry?
- No time for analysis – Do your current processes take up too much time manually tracking down data, which means less time for analysis to understand the causes and impacts?
- Limited view of the state of the organisation – Do disparate systems make it virtually impossible to gain a 360-degree view of your overall organisation?
Most organisations don’t integrate their financial systems with other key applications. It’s very common to see lots of manual integration points between business systems using financial systems such as QuickBooks, Xero and Sage 50 —which may be fine when transaction volumes are low but can hinder productivity as the organisation grows.
Solution
Seamless integration with other streams of organisational data will provide businesses and other stakeholders with the ability to track statistical metrics that are central to your organisation’s operations and programmes. Sage Intacct provides users an open API standard to enable businesses to integrate cloud-based systems with much less difficulty or expense than traditional software integrations. With Sage Intacct’s open API web architecture, your organisation can easily integrate best-in-class solutions. So, you’re free to choose business applications based on functional fit, instead of integration concerns.
4. Your audit trail is insufficient.
Challenges
Accountability is vital to the sustainability of your organisation. It is critical to have a deep and full audit trail to not only prevent fraud but to close your books efficiently and ensure that you are achieving the best possible return for your business.
When accounting software is outdated or lacks features, the audit process quickly becomes mired in sorting through the accounting records rather than identifying risk.
- Making sense of unorganised transactions – Are you spending time combing through transactions to trace them to financial statements to the general ledger and back?
- Audits must be completed onsite – Do you need an auditor to be on site to access information and supporting documents?
- Lack of visibility and transparency – Are you storing data in filing cabinets, multiple spreadsheets, and exporting/importing data out of other applications which can slow down your audit process?
Solution
A modern cloud financial system, like Sage Intacct, establishes a clear and complete audit trail from transaction to report and reconciliation—so auditors will be able to test your organisation’s accounting processes easily and effectively.
Once your accounting process is well documented and auditable, you can present your financials, reconciliations, and supporting documents to your auditors in a timely manner. Sage Intacct speeds up accounting period closes through automated calculations that eliminate the inefficiencies and inaccuracies associated with manual spreadsheets.
5. Your system hinders growth.
Challenges
- Inconsistent system up-time – Are you experiencing system crashes and loss of data resulting in wasted time re-entering data?
- Lack of functionality – Are you unable to manage revenue recognition and maintain compliance requirements?
- Unmanageable chart of accounts – Do you have a hard-coded chart of accounts which has resulted in an unmanageable, confusing number of account code combinations?
As your organisation grows, you need an accounting system that can grow with you. Most financial systems are designed for the needs of small businesses but are not designed to manage the sophisticated processes of a growing business, and do not offer advanced functionality or robust financial controls.
If you are adding or have added additional entities or locations; or have acquired any organisations, it’s likely that your current system isn’t serving your needs well.
Solution
Sage Intacct provides your business with a scalable architecture that allows for increases in transaction volume, the ability to add new entities and ledgers, and financial controls to ensure compliance and audibility.
Reduce complexity by simplifying your chart of accounts using dimensions. Streamline inter-entity transactions, allocations, eliminations, reporting, and analysis with extensive built-in automation and one-click consolidations.
Do these challenges sound familiar? If so, we can help. Sage’s robust suite of tools and expertise, we can help you revolutionise your financial system and unlock new levels of efficiency and productivity.
Sage offers comprehensive reporting and analytics features, allowing you to make data-driven decisions with confidence. Gain real-time visibility into your financial data, simplify complex accounting tasks, and automate time-consuming processes so you can say goodbye to manual errors and tedious spreadsheet work!
At Techsol Group our team of professional consultants specialise in Sage implementation, customisation, and training. We’ll work closely with you to understand your unique business requirements and tailor a Sage system to suit your needs perfectly. If you would just like to learn more about the Sage products on offer, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can contact us on 03300 245447 or email info@techsolgroup.co.uk.
Partnering with Sage for over 20 years, our experts have the knowledge to help answer any questions you may have.
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