Epicor Kinetic is a customizable, scalable, product-centric cloud ERP designed specifically for manufacturers.
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Sage Intacct
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Sage Intacct is a cloud ERP system targeted at high-growth small and medium-sized businesses. Intacct includes applications for core financials and accounting, purchasing, order management, and financial reporting and business intelligence. It also integrates with 3rd party software like Salesforce.
Epicor was a higher-powered product for a larger setting. While it had good features, they were likely offset by the software being less user-friendly. Staff would need to become experts in Epicor in order to keep day-to-day workflow going, i.e. required a lot of upfront …
Sage Intacct had the best customer service and road map to get us live. We also wanted something in the cloud. Sage Intacct has been focused on a cloud based system for over 10 years. They wanted and knew this would work long before it became obvious.
Epicor is an excellent system for most manufacturing customers and offers several features previously only offered on the very large (e.g. Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc) level platforms. Yet the pricing is mid-level, and the expandability through additional modules provides a great opportunity for future business growth. The architecture is easily scalable, fast, and offers great options for both on premise and hosted systems. Epicor is flexible, and large enough that regular updates and enhancements continue to be adopted to improve functionality and effectiveness. It is however, not for everyone. Competition in this sector is very good, with several mid-level systems being available at a similar price point. If you are considering adopting a new ERP system and are in the plastics space, you also owe it to yourself and your team to consider IQMS, which is becoming a de-facto standard in this segment. Also, for specific medical sectors, you will find that Epicor software validation for CFR Part 11 compliance can be quite costly-- although the software is capable of supporting this with modification. Overall, Epicor is a solid choice. Ultimately, it will be up to your team to determine what works best for your needs. You won't be disappointed with Epicor if you do the due diligence and take the time needed to properly review and demo the product. Remember though, demos are typically "best case" staged, so be sure to throw several curveballs at your vendor and bring out the unique requirements of your business.
Sage Intacct is well suited for organizations that have outgrown a basic accounting system and need real integrations, better reporting, and the ability to centralize financial operations without significantly adding headcount. For us specifically, it was the right fit because we needed to connect multiple systems, bring invoicing in house, and give leadership real time visibility into our financials. It works particularly well for small but complex finance teams that need the system to absorb work rather than create it. The system is powerful but it requires someone who understands accounting well enough to configure and maintain it properly. It is also worth noting that some of the more advanced features, like bank feeds and certain automation capabilities, can be harder to fully utilize depending on your banking relationships and technical setup.
Epicor has the best product configurator that I have seen on the market. This was one of the main reasons we went with Epicor, and have not been disappointed at all.
Epicor is also one of the easiest ERP system to learn, and has many ways for users to get training. Epicor University, on-line courses, or class room settings, also user conference every year, and user support groups.
The Enterprise search ability in Epicor is great, can find parts, customers, suppliers, etc. so easily. And if you can't remember where a report or task that you want to do is on the menu, you can search for that also.
Custom, real-time financial reporting. I am able to streamline my reporting to pull in various account groups and calculations which save me time from having to do it in Excel.
Out of the box standard reports for clients who don't require as custom of reporting or even as a great starting point to build out reports.
Integrations with other platforms, such as Airbase, various banks, Rippling, etc.
The dashboard module is extremely helpful in my monthly review of various entities.
Sage Intacct is continuously evolving and increasing it's functionalities. I am excited to attend conferences to learn what is in the roadmap for future releases. Additionally, using Sage Intacct allows me grow as a professional, I am really enjoy the knowledge that I have within the product to be able to share my experiences.
It is easy to use and can be used by multiple departments in our company. However every so often something goes wrong with the system and nothing runs. When that happens, a lot of works stops because we need the system to be re-booted by our IT department. Also sometimes managers want a specific type of report that Epicor Kinetic does not have. Therefore our Epicor Kinetic trained employees have to create the report and need help and they will have to contact technical help at Epicor Kinetic and that can take a bit of time.
The ease of use as a seasoned user is wonderful; however, new users struggle to adapt to the program efficiently. Better training videos--all in one location--would be beneficial. The use of a "sandbox" environment is a great tool for new employees or for the fiscal department to test certain journal entries or other transactions to verify accuracy of data.
There has only been one occurrence where Sage Intacct was not available to me, however I had already been working a number of hours trying to get a project completed. It honestly allowed me to step back and take a much needed break.
As fas as integration is concerned I don't feel this slows Sage Intacct down at all. However, sometimes I do feel it takes some larger reports more time to load due to all the detail. As well as, I "move very fast" in my motions so sometimes I double click on fuctions too quickly and the system seems to think that I have a duplicate request.
If the answer to your problem is not readily available in an answer book, your response or solution will take months, if you get one at all. Problems need to be sent to support and duplicated by them before they try to fix it. This is extremely frustrating because you have to prove to Epicor that you are having an issue. If by some miracle you get by this barrier, your problem is submitted to development for review. You can't speak to them or communicate in any way directly. This group appears to be completely unconcerned about user issues or customer service. Our experiences have been negative across the board.
Only a few times have we had to reach out to support, and every time we did, we received a relatively quick response and a solution was found fairly quickly. Only once was there an issue that took longer than a week to resolve, but it still did eventually get solved.
I have taken in person training classes at several of the annual Sage Intacct user conferences. It is very interactive and the trainers are very easy to follow and understand. They are great at getting everyone in the class involved. They also make sure everyone has learned to task before moving to a new one.
The free training is very minimal. For what we pay for the service, I would like more training. We end up training new users in-house because the provided free training is not nearly comprehensive enough. That being said, the training provided, for the material covered, was adequate and relevant for the given topics.
I would not use a thrid party administrator to implement your system, especially if you are going to be modifying the system at all. Use Intacct implementors as they will be able to better support you on any issues that come up after you go live.
Everyone at our organization really appreciated "made 2 manage" because of all of the quick access and some of the capabilities in accounting. So far, Epicor is much more advanced but the two can stand side by side. These two programs cannot really be compared just because it's just not fair to compare an on-site server ERP system to a cloud-based one.
Sage Intacct was selected as the best fit for our core financial management needs, reporting requirements, and finance team operating model. Sage Intacct’s dimensional model was a major factor. It allowed us to report by department, entity, business unit, customer, vendor, project, or other dimensions without creating an overly complex chart of accounts. The approval workflows, transaction history, supporting documentation, and reporting structure helped strengthen financial controls.
The software is pretty easy to use. Things are pretty clear on how to do them and if you don't know how to do something they have instructions on how to do them or you get an error code telling you exactly what to do. I have been satisfied with my overall experience.
The ROI can be hard to quantify. We spend more time setting up and entering information up front, but we spend less time than before trying to track project costs so that evens out. Purchasing the system and implementing it was very expensive, but the benefit is the the better information can save money on projects as we know where best to spend our time and identify potential problems earlier on a project. We believe it will have a positive impact, but I'd say it will take a few years (3-4) to be worth it.
Positive - It runs better than our old software when we all work together, rather than having to sign off on each other and deal with syncing issues.
Negative - It's not as easy to go back to fix an amount, a date, etc. Sometimes, a very small mistake needs to be corrected by voiding and redoing the entire transaction.
We can successfully sync other software we use with Intacct! It reduces workload when things are automated.
