Item: Sage Intacct
Rating: 8
Author: Carol Bruce

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Sage Intelligent Time which is integrated within Sage Intacct and use that to bill our clients. We use Sage Intacct for financial reporting and payables (although we are now using Tipalti which integrates). We push the time sheets over to our payroll system and can pull g/l info back in from the payroll system. We use Sage Intacct to produce our year end consolidated financials.

Pros and Cons

Project Invoicing
Breaking things down into dimensions and departments

We are a time sheet based company and I wish my time sheets would automatically attach to invoices
My clients want one attachment per email when invoiced. If I include attachments to my invoice the email has multiple attachments and I can't send those emails to my clients. So, I have to manually create the invoice/attachment for those clients. So, I wish that the invoice creation would automatically merge the invoice and all attachments into one attachment.
For time sheets, we wish that there could be more than one time sheet approver assigned to an employee. Our time sheet approvers go on vacation and wish that they could have their alternate approve the time sheet, without us having to re-assign a new approver - and with out us having to delete the original time sheet filled out by the employee.
For time sheets we wish that managers would get more than one email that the time sheet needed approval.
For time sheets, we wish that employees could not turn off the notifications that the time sheets are due.
For our specific purposes, our tracking of where sales takes place is not the project...but it is where the employee that works for that project is working. So far the location tracking is not accurately tracking where my sales are taking place. So, either we are not set up correctly, or Sage Intacct is not able to track this correctly. So, my project is [...]...[...] is located in Kansas. One person assigned to [...] is working in Missouri and one person working [....] is working in Texas. Sage Intacct is recording all of the sales for [...] in Kansas and I need them to be in Missouri and Texas because that is where the work is taking place.

Return on Investment

Sage Intacct was much more expensive than our previous option but reporting much more robust.
Time reporting is our bread and butter and Sage Intacct has slowed us down on that front.
The integrations have helped us be more efficient.

Sage Intacct Automation

I use an outside company for Accounts Payable automation and it integrates with Sage Intacct. I did watch the demo for Sage AP automation and it was suggested at the time that we should stay with the outside automation, but I can't remember why. I have also received emails regarding AR automation and have seen demos. I would love for the automation to be able to bill my clients and post payments that are sent via ACH or to our lockbox. Right now the automation seems to be for sending out emails regarding past due invoices and for our clients to be able to log into a vendor portal and make payments. Most of our clients pay via ACH or send checks to a lockbox and we do not accept credit card payments. I have many clients that have more than one billing contact, so an auto email will not work. One client, may have one of 10 different contacts depending on the invoice number. The automations that I use are some automated journal entries, automated order entries and some automated accounts payable bills.

Sage Intacct Extensibility

We use project accounting with Sage Intelligent time. It makes creating invoices really fast. We assign our resources to a project. They enter their time sheets. We are able to enter a period of time that we want to bill our client and Sage Intacct creates the invoice. We can include multiple resources or just one all on one invoice and you can move to the next project without changing your parameters (like time periods) and move to your next project. For me to process invoices using project accounting (from start to finish) probably takes me an hour or less. The only reason it takes this long is because I still have some manual processes of attaching time sheets to the invoices and merging time sheets to invoices for clients that require one attachment to emails. This probably took me a half a day before Sage Intacct.

Sage Intacct Configuration

We had help with configuration. I would not have been able to configure Sage Intacct on my own. There is a lot I would have been able to figure out myself but having extra help for configuration was a bonus. Even now after using Sage Intacct for over a year and a half (really two years now if you include the time I started training) there are times I struggle with things and need to call in the experts.

Key Insights

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

Not sure

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

Alternatives Considered

Sage 50cloud Accounting, QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Oracle Hospitality - OPERA, SAP Fieldglass, SAP Ariba Contracts, Coupa and SAP Working Capital Management from Taulia

I have used some other Oracle products, I just can't remember which ones. I have used all of these products in different capacities. The Oracle products I used were used a long time ago, before cloud based accounting was a thing. So, those systems were more dated and required a lot more training - and no mouse. I have also seen demos on Concur, and probably NetSuite.

I think Sage Intacct is very similar to these products. The use of favorites helps for younger generations. I have favorites, but I forget to use them. Sage is very customizable for your operations. You can get very granular. I would say Sage50 and QuickBooks Pro is a step below Intacct. If you don't need as granular of reporting (so, no intercompany, maybe no dimensions, locations, multiple departments in multiple locations), then those are better for you.

Other Software Used

ADP Workforce Now, Tipalti, Expensify, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Bullhorn ATS & CRM, CaptivateIQ, Employee Navigator

Likelihood to Recommend

In my opinion, Sage Intacct is a good solution, but is expensive. Because we are a time based company, what holds us up is waiting on approvals. We can't bill clients without approvals. The system won't let you bill with out the approval. We can't send a bill to the client without an approval. But, the time sheet system does not send out reminders to approvers to approve time. We have to do that manually. The payroll system will not pull over time sheets that are not approved....a lot of our issues revolve around time sheets and their approvals. Some of my clients get invoices that are 20 pages long. So, that was a big adjustment for them compared to what the used to get before we switched. There are some automations that have made things easier. Sending out invoices is a bit faster. As long as emails are in there, you can mostly, do it with a push of a button. I do have clients that will only accept one attachment. So, if you have attachments to your invoices (all of my invoices have attachments) you need to watch out for this. I have to manually merge my attachment with my invoice and send it to my client separately. You can import bank transactions and it can make doing bank reconciliations faster. Using some integrations we have automated several processes with expenses, accounts payables, and payroll.

Good product for detailed financial reporting.

Overall Satisfaction with Sage Intacct