If you’re spending way too much time on financial housekeeping, and too little time on strategic goals and initiatives, you may be outgrowing your accounting software. If you’re finding it hard to track your company’s KPI vital signs that tell you what’s happening in the business and how to improve performance, you may be outgrowing your accounting software. Inflexible manual processes, data (in)accessibility, reporting perplexities, and more, all suggest you need more robust software to improve your accounting processes.
Organizations everywhere are contemplating Sage vs QuickBooks, but end up looking to Sage Intacct for advanced features and capabilities that keep up with their growing businesses. Let’s explore why and see if Sage Intacct can help you too.
The Sage vs QuickBooks Dilemma
First, let’s address the elephant in the room. QuickBooks is great for a while, but as companies try to scale operations, it makes it impossible for them to stay efficient and in the know of their financial health. If you’ve been there, then you know these sorts of issues when you try to take your business to the next level, like the insidious long-term effects of wasted resources, error-filled reporting, and lack of timely access to information.
QuickBooks is well-known for small startup companies with more than 29 million small businesses in the U.S. using it as their primary accounting software. It’s an attractive option to so many businesses because it’s a one-size-fits-all platform that is relatively inexpensive, quick, and easy to set up for the average Joe. However, problems emerge when, for example, your transaction volumes increase as you expand internationally. Or, when you’re needing to integrate other software to build a more cohesive solution that provides essential functions, like sales tax management & automation, time & attendance, personnel expense & spend management, project reporting, etc. QuickBooks’ limitations make themselves loudly heard… kind of like having an elephant in the room. It can’t be ignored.
QuickBooks has been making good progress on this, but growing businesses are still realizing its limits when they need more automation, centralized reporting, and visibility. Fortunately, time and effort savings for accountants are on a whole new level with Sage Intacct‘s cloud-based solution offering a better, more modern way to manage accounting that is still easy to use and very cost-efficient.
Multi-Entity Management
On average, approximately 60% of finance activities can be fully (40%) or mostly (17%) automated with technologies available today. Your multi-entity consolidation process is one critical finance activity that can be fully automated. It doesn’t have to take days to run your month-end consolidation process or involve complicated formulas spread across a bunch of different Excel documents and tabs.
Accountants of growing businesses with multiple locations or entities struggle with tracking and treating intercompany activity, different tax compliance needs, and multiple currencies. All of this is just too much for a basic accounting software program. One of the most attractive attributes of Sage Intacct for accountants, when comparing Sage vs QuickBooks, is how easily it centralizes accounting and simplifies consolidating various reports.
Intelligent automation is the secret ingredient to making all this happen so efficiently. Sage Intacct multi-entity automation tools transform your business without adding more staff. Rather than rely on error-prone labor-intensive activities, like gathering, compiling, and then analyzing each location’s reports, Sage Intacct takes care of this automatically using strong financial controls that keep the tax(wo)man and the CFO happy.
Customized Reporting
Accountants can customize and include real-time operational and financial data on the same reports within Sage Intacct. Creating customized reports of various activities and viewing with several dimensions within the same environment is “music” to accountants’ ears because they can better spot trends, compare benchmarks, and drill down into the details to slice and dice the data at a granular level.
14% of C-suite level employees spend more than 70% of their time making decisions. Fast decisions are critical to the well-being of a business. Executives must execute accurate, immediate decisions that are often tough and frequent. Sage Intacct’s reporting makes this part of their job easier (and did we mention faster?) and gives them back time to focus on innovative ideas and strategic initiatives that drive growth and revenue. In our humble CPA opinion, when it’s Sage vs QuickBooks, Sage Intacct is still the CFO’s bestie.
Accounting technology isn’t new – Fun Fact: it’s believed to have started after World War II when General Electric moved their factory payroll to a system called Univac – but it is constantly evolving and that is changing the face of accounting. The right accounting software increases accuracy and optimizes workflows that were traditionally done manually. If you’re looking to seamlessly scale your business with less effort and frustration (i.e.: less work and more play), turn to us at Forbes Andersen Technologies for implementing Sage Intacct in your budding business.
