Item: Sage Intacct
Rating: 1
Author: Tammy Kerr

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a multi-entity organization that switched from QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise to Sage Intacct when we outgrew QuickBooks and needed to change to a product that could fit our growth. I made the decision to choose Sage Intacct. Our hope was to have a product that would help simplify our multi-entity transactions, make our company financials easy to consolidate, and provide robust financial support. Unfortunately, Sage Intacct has fallen somewhat short on a number of features. We have spent most of our two years struggling to make the features do what we were told they could.

Pros and Cons

Multi-entity companies are available in a drop-down menu and are easy to navigate between
Reporting showing all entities combined or separated is available
Top-level sharing of items (customers, vendors, bank accounts) makes multi-entity transactions and financial entry easy to use

Credit card transactions are not handled very well at all; the process is needlessly tedious and faulty.
Credit cards must be assigned to one entity and are not available for other entities unless you use the top level; however, credit card payoffs/payments do not work well at the top level, causing many issues.
For bank reconciliations, Sage Intacct's odd "match/unmatch transactions" process adds a step that is unnecessary--it's a rec, you should be able to simply check the appropriate boxes and move on.
Bank feeds are not true feeds in the sense that QuickBooks uses the term. This feature does not enter the transactions in Sage Intacct, it merely shows them. So you still need to manually enter any missing transactions. This also adds another unnecessary step to reconciling.
I have not found any of my requests for Sage Intacct support to be friendly at all. Some were downright rude. I posted a question in one of the community support forums, and a Sage Intacct representative told me "Please post an IDEA."
To add credits on invoices, you create a "credits available" line in the Receive Payments screen with the (incorrect) invoice total in the Invoices section. You're forced to treat the discount line as if you issued a separate credit, rather than have the invoice be what it actually is.
Their pricing model is very high. You pay a base, you pay per user, you pay per entity--they have outpriced themselves for the value they provide.
The multi-entity function doesn't actually work as well as you would expect, and you still need to double-enter transactions between companies. Without careful scrutiny, the multi-entity transactions can actually cause more issues than they provide solutions.

Return on Investment

Our ROI has been quite a bit lower since we've had to devote so many extra resources into fixing issues and troubleshooting.
When we can get the items fixed, the reporting will mostly likely help with our overall business objectives.
The lack of standard items such as recurring charge card transactions, recurring manual payments, etc. increases our workload and reduces our efficiency.
New accounts added don't necessarily appear on your standard reports; they may be left off, causing out of balance balance sheets and incorrect financial reporting, which decreases efficiency and ROI.

Usability

We have been very disappointed in many aspects of this product. We have to pay $2,500 a year for a "user" so our CPA can have access to our books or give them a scaled-down "read only" employee access. With multiple entities, you need multiple merchant services accounts to accept credit cards. However, Sage Intacct only allows you to use one credit card transaction key, so only one entity can use Sage Intacct to process charges; the rest have to be manually processed outside of Sage Intacct and then duplicately entered into it. You cannot set up a recurring payment entry in Sage Intacct; if you have an automatic payment, such as rent, that you make each month, you can either set up a recurring journal entry, or manually enter the payment every month. Similarly, you cannot set up a recurring charge card transaction for items that are automatically charged to your company credit card each month.

Support Rating

Sage Intacct itself has very unhelpful support. We use a third-party company for support, which then has to work with Sage Intacct anyway, when we need support. I have had very unhelpful and rude responses from Sage Intacct when I have, on occasion, asked for help.

Key Insights

Do you think Sage Intacct delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Sage Intacct's feature set?

Did Sage Intacct live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Sage Intacct go as expected?

Would you buy Sage Intacct again?

Sage Intacct Automation

My organization has not benefitted from these items, as Sage Intacct is a difficult product to use with complex companies, and the only things they truly focus on and do well are general ledgers and reports. Most companies can't run their business using only journal entries. Sage Intacct would work well for a smaller single organization without much need for complexity, but it would be vastly overpriced for such a company, and the procedures needlessly complicated, making it not very suitable for either small companies or large organizations.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

I liked QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise better than Sage Intacct; however, it could no longer meet our needs. Sage Intacct is not as "locked down" as QuickBooks products tend to be (QuickBooks really likes it and works best if you only use their own products, such as their credit card processing and payroll solutions), but Sage Intacct also doesn't have truly great integrations with third-party products either.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are a small single-entity company with only a few users that doesn't require much complexity, then Sage Intacct can work OK. If you use outside sources for most invoicing and accounting tasks and mainly use Sage Intacct for reporting, it could also work well for you. It is good for companies that don't have many credit card transactions. It is not good for companies that have multiple entities, that heavily use credit cards, and have many bank accounts, since the reconciliation process is not user friendly.

This product has a long way to go before it is worth the time and investment

Overall Satisfaction with Sage Intacct