Item: Sage Intacct
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My department provides outsourced accounting services. Intacct is our primary tool for middle-market clients with needs beyond basic financial reporting and recordkeeping. With many of our clients being foreign-owned, the cloud environment and custom reporting are just what they need.

Pros and Cons

The custom reporting package is robust and doesn't require advanced scripting training like some other ERP options.
The web-based deployment is great for modern companies with remote employees and international business.
Quarterly feature updates are deployed smoothly and seamlessly, unlike the tricky upgrade process of other programs.

The various modules are somewhat "siloed" off, and some business transactions are tricky to record (reimbursing employee expenses through payroll, recording billable client expenses on corporate cards, etc.). Other programs allow cross-module transactions simply by tagging the data to the correct dimension.
Many basic fields are unchangeable once entered, such as employee IDs and GL account numbers. You must always think ahead when adding new data.
Cash management doesn't always mirror modern banking functions. For example, wire transfers and EFT payments still must be posted like checks with no number.

Return on Investment

Intacct has allowed our firm to bring on larger clients that we could previously with other accounting software options.
Our client service has improved when using web-hosted programs, since all parties can review the live data together.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Pro,Xero,QuickBooks Online,Sage 50 Accounting

Intacct offers many features not offered by smaller market programs, especially in the areas of dimensional reporting and user roles and rights. We still use the other programs for smaller or start-up clients due to their simplicity and speed.

Sage Intacct Rating for Public Practice CPAs

Intacct works great for clients with complex needs. Once your implementer has experience with a few clients, you can gain efficiency with templates for the program itself and recommended workflows. The rating would be higher if there were more tools specifically for outsourcing. For example, Xero recently released a "Find and Recode" feature specifically for advisors to ease the process of transaction correction. In Intacct, I often need to void and repost transactions that are unchangeable once approved. Workflows for BPO are not the same as internal and should have different approval options.

Percentage of clients doing full Business Process Outsourcing

Fewer than 25% of my clients

Likelihood to Recommend

It is targeted and priced for middle-market companies, so naturally small businesses would deal with too much cost and complexity. Also, I have found it challenging to use with rapidly-growing companies with changing business processes, since many implementation options are unchangeable once set.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Best tool for middle-market companies

Overall Satisfaction with Intacct