Sage Intacct: A Cut Above
January 13, 2022
Sage Intacct: A Cut Above
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Sage Intacct
We use Sage Intacct to centrally manage separate financial books for 3 affiliated non-profit 501(c)(3) entities (soon to be 4, with the integration of a K-12 private school). 2 of these entities were launched within the last 12 months to create arms-length distance between them and the church to be able to pursue grant funding from sources external to the church and provide expanded financial support for new community-support ministries. Our previous server-based accounting application did not support fund accounting and was inadequate to manage multiple non-profit entities elegantly to optimize accounting resources, scale for organizational growth, or provide consolidated financial reporting. Cloud-based Sage Intacct has allowed our team to work remotely as needed during the COVID pandemic and has allowed a pathway towards a secure and flexible paperless environment.
- Supports non-profit accounting and reporting needs
- Supports multi-entity environments
- Flexibility and scalability for organizational growth and change
- Use of dimensions: both default and user-defined for segmentation and analysis
- Real-time view of data for leadership team via dashboards and reports
- Financial reports require a serious learning curve. They are not for the faint-hearted. They are very powerful in what can be designed, but there ought to be some standard default formats for printing that are flexible and elegant. I print a lot of reports and spend a lot of time on just formatting. It looks like little thought was given towards default formats. Online HTML reports can look great, but printing them often does not look as elegant.
- Custom reports require a HUGE learning curve to discover where desired data resides and are frustrating with every encounter. Creating a report requires you [to] SAVE the report before ever being able to see the final product to determine if it yields the desired result, and often requires rework or deletion of the report just created. There are many tables, and desired data is not always found where one would expect. I'm aware that the Interactive Custom Report Writer (ICRW) addresses this by showing tables and data in a visual format that allows [for] elegant creation of pivot tables, etc. [It is an] awesome solution, but [their] pricing is prohibitive. ICRW functionality should be included in the core module.
- Some reports can be created by duplicating an existing report, but some cannot. This needs to be consistent, like a "Save As" universal feature.
- There is a feature that allows [the] printing of the company logo on printed reports. This is very nice. But in a multi-entity environment, I have to turn this feature off because there is only one logo that can be uploaded for the entire subscription package. I would like [to] be able to upload and store logos in [a] similar fashion as storing attachments, and then being able to print reports with entity-specific or department-specific logos.
- I use pivot tables extensively. I would LOVE, LOVE to have an export option for a "flat file" - an unformatted CSV containing only a column header and raw rows and columns of data without grouping, summary, headers, or footers that allows IMMEDIATE creation of a pivot table without first scrubbing the file to eliminate empty rows and extraneous elements.
- Please give a little more attention to [the] conventional printing of reports in general, [like] default formats that display elegantly and utilize space nicely. For example, the General Ledger report when printing straight to PDF does not automatically adjust column widths, although it does automatically scale to the page for printing. But because it does not adjust column widths, there is a lot of empty space between columns, thereby causing the font size to be smaller so the report fits on a page.
- Greater visibility and analytics capability across the board
- Raised the bar on non-profit accounting and reporting
- Simplified and enhanced multi-entity accounting
Automated financial processes make our bookkeepers more productive and more error-free. The inter-entity transaction features, with entity-specific payables and receivables, are a huge help in time savings and creating a quick view of monies owed.
I've used the multi-entity functions and transaction allocation models extensively to allocate expenses, track inter-entity payables and receivables through automation, and transfer cash between entities and bank accounts. This offers dramatic efficiency and time savings that would otherwise require manual tracking and issuance of checks.
Do you think Sage Intacct delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Sage Intacct's feature set?
Yes
Did Sage Intacct live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Sage Intacct go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Sage Intacct again?
Yes
We transitioned to Sage Intacct from QuickBooks
Desktop Pro. This version of QuickBooks was local server-based, and [since] we
did not have a VPN connection, our finance team had to be physically on-site
to work. This was challenging during the first 6
months of COVID. We had stretched the limits of the chart of accounts capability, which incorporated elements of
natural GL accounts, departments, and purpose all in one lengthy and redundant chart of accounts. [Creating] a "fund"
required the pairing of an income account with a corresponding expense account,
and a manual calculation to determine the "fund balance". [Creating a] new legal entity would have required [the] creation of a new QB file and
chart of accounts. End-of-month reporting was a tedious, time-consuming
process to produce and distribute to the team.
Sage Intacct is elegant in so many ways. The
combination of a stable "natural" chart of accounts that can be used
across all entities and locations, together with standard "Dimensions" (e.g.,
department, fund, project) and user-defined dimensions (e.g., activity) allows transactions and budgets to be customized to
accommodate [the] need and segment data for easy analysis and reporting. User
access can be customized by login to control access to only the data and
functionality they should have. Our leadership team can have real-time
visibility to [the] financials they need to see, which resulted
in dramatic time savings in periodic reports production. Shelby Systems and Aplos [Church Software] were a good fit for a church, but we were not just a church, but an expanding number of non-profit entities as well. Sage Intacct was a better fit for non-profits in general, but with greater scalability. MIP [Fund Accounting] was the runner-up in our search. But after checking with other similar size churches who had implemented Sage Intacct, they gave me very positive feedback on [Sage] Intacct. Additionally, [Sage] Intacct seemed to have a more developed API interface capability and ecosystem of preferred partners. In fact, some of our current church management systems and merchant services partners have interfaces with [Sage] Intacct.
Desktop Pro. This version of QuickBooks was local server-based, and [since] we
did not have a VPN connection, our finance team had to be physically on-site
to work. This was challenging during the first 6
months of COVID. We had stretched the limits of the chart of accounts capability, which incorporated elements of
natural GL accounts, departments, and purpose all in one lengthy and redundant chart of accounts. [Creating] a "fund"
required the pairing of an income account with a corresponding expense account,
and a manual calculation to determine the "fund balance". [Creating a] new legal entity would have required [the] creation of a new QB file and
chart of accounts. End-of-month reporting was a tedious, time-consuming
process to produce and distribute to the team.
Sage Intacct is elegant in so many ways. The
combination of a stable "natural" chart of accounts that can be used
across all entities and locations, together with standard "Dimensions" (e.g.,
department, fund, project) and user-defined dimensions (e.g., activity) allows transactions and budgets to be customized to
accommodate [the] need and segment data for easy analysis and reporting. User
access can be customized by login to control access to only the data and
functionality they should have. Our leadership team can have real-time
visibility to [the] financials they need to see, which resulted
in dramatic time savings in periodic reports production. Shelby Systems and Aplos [Church Software] were a good fit for a church, but we were not just a church, but an expanding number of non-profit entities as well. Sage Intacct was a better fit for non-profits in general, but with greater scalability. MIP [Fund Accounting] was the runner-up in our search. But after checking with other similar size churches who had implemented Sage Intacct, they gave me very positive feedback on [Sage] Intacct. Additionally, [Sage] Intacct seemed to have a more developed API interface capability and ecosystem of preferred partners. In fact, some of our current church management systems and merchant services partners have interfaces with [Sage] Intacct.