Choosing your nonprofit year-end date

Nonprofits: Choosing or Changing Your Fiscal Year-End

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Running a successful nonprofit requires a lot of hard work and timely decision making, often without the prestige or paycheck that comes with doing so for a comparably sized for-profit organization. With all this in mind, we would today like to explore one tactic that could improve your visibility, help you better time your expenditures, and simplify your budgeting. This tactic, changing your nonprofit organization’s year-end, has both costs and benefits associated with it, but often can improve outcomes for the organization and its constituents.

Calendar Year vs. Fiscal Year

The IRS allows nonprofits to file using one of two methods: calendar year and fiscal year, offering the following definitions:

  • Calendar year– A calendar tax year is 12 consecutive months beginning January 1 and ending December 31.
  • Fiscal year– A fiscal tax year is 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December. A 52-53-week tax year is a fiscal tax year that varies from 52 to 53 weeks but does not have to end on the last day of a month.

Problems with “Traditional” Calendar Years

For some nonprofits, there is nothing wrong with a traditional December 31 year-end—or even a commonly-used June 30 fiscal year-end. For others, these dates pose inconvenience and uncertainty.

Moving away from a traditional calendar year for tax purposes could help you get more clarity into your revenue streams, as well as better control of your budgeting. For many nonprofits, changing your year-end can help you handle fluctuations in revenue (i.e. large amounts of donations coming in the last quarter of the calendar year), and adjust your budgets accordingly.

In addition to this, moving to a fiscal year can help you stay on the good side of employees, who may not want to spend their holidays closing the books, or who don’t want to immediately transition from filing their own income taxes in April to preparing their company’s Form 990 by May.

Why You May Want to Change Your Year-End

So, why would a nonprofit want to adopt a different fiscal year? Many reasons exist, but most commonly, a nonprofit would change its year end to match the ebb and flow of the revenue cycle common in not-for-profit organizations. As mentioned above, using a calendar year creates blind spots in budgeting, as it’s hard to plan an entire year around a highly volatile Q4.

Considerations on Choosing Your Nonprofit’s Fiscal Year-End

Laurie De Armond of BDO and Lee Byrd of Langdon CPAs explored the premise of changing your year end, finding that some of the most important considerations include:

  • Program year– the organization’s fiscal year should coincide with its program year so that one year’s program activities should not fall into two fiscal years. For example, if the majority of the nonprofit’s programs fall during the summer months, June 30th is most likely not the best option for that nonprofit’s fiscal year-end.
  • Revenue Cycles – If you put considerable focus on fundraising from individuals, it’s important to build around the end of their years. For instance, if an organization receives a considerable portion of revenue between October and December, a calendar year offers little to no flexibility or opportunity to strategize. While a move to end a year immediately preceding a heavy fundraising period my create administrative hassles, it has helped some nonprofit organizations position themselves for smarter spending.
  • Grant cycles– Some organizations may find it helpful to align their fiscal year-end with the terms of the organization’s major grants and/or funders. This enables the organization to develop a clean cut-off for grant reporting and simplifies the grants process.
  • Primary Funder’s Fiscal Year – This was discussed by BKD author Nikki Kubly, who offers an example similar to that of the grant cycle consideration: “the fiscal year-end may be chosen to coincide with a primary funder’s fiscal year-end and resulting reporting requirements. For example, if a major portion of an organization’s support is from the state government, the NFP may select the same fiscal year-end as the state to simplify reporting on state grants.”
  • Audit evidence– Nonprofits who require an audit generally need time subsequent to year-end to close out the books and gather audit evidence in preparation for the audit. Having a year-end that falls during the organization’s busiest time of year may impact the availability and timeliness of sufficient audit evidence.
  • Debt covenants– For organizations with significant debt covenants, the cyclical nature of the organization’s operations and the impact on the calculation of those covenants should be considered when choosing a year-end.
  • Impact on Audit Period and Presentation in Year of Change:Making a year-end change will affect how an organization presents its audited financial statements in the year of the change and in the following year. An organization can choose to extend the period under audit in the year of a change (i.e. have an audit for a 15-month period end), or have an audit for a short period, plus the organization’s original year end. For this reason, single year audit statements will likely need to be presented rather than comparative statements in the year of change.
  • State Charitable Registrations:Consider the impact of a change in year end on the availability of audited financial statements and your Form 990 for purposes of state charitable registrations.
  • Application for Combined Giving Campaigns:During the year of a change, consider the impact of the availability of an audit on your organization’s application for the Combined Federal Campaign or other combined giving campaigns.

Paperwork for Changing Year-End

Nonprofits looking to change their year-end need to file Form 1128, Application to Adopt, Change, or Retain a Tax Year, with instructions available here. Form 1128 is used by corporations, Individuals, trusts, and any other entity that needs to change its accounting period with the IRS.

Filing a Short-Year Form 990

If the organization changes its accounting period, it must file a Form 990 for the short period resulting from the change and write “Change of Accounting Period” at the top of this short-period return.

Timing Your Change in Fiscal Year

According to the Cullinane Law Group, a law firm in Austin, Texas serving nonprofits and social enterprises, “If the nonprofit wants to change its fiscal year, it must file IRS Form 1128 by the 15th day of the 5th month following the close of the new fiscal year. Example: Current fiscal year runs from January 1 to December 31; new fiscal year to run from October 1 to September 30. Form 1128 is due on February 15th of the following year.”

Learn More: Running a Successful Nonprofit

At rinehimerbaker, we are committed to helping you succeed. This is why we have written a series of helpful articles on running the finances at a nonprofit organization. We invite you to learn more by reading our articles on Outcome measures,  improving reporting, and increasing efficiency. Learn even more by reading these two nonprofit success stories from our friends at Sage Intacct, and contact us for more details.

Align Sales, finance, and Customer Service

Aligning Finance, Sales, and Customer Service at the Modern Organization

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With the speed of business faster than it’s ever been, missed opportunities are costlier, customers have higher expectations, and any hiccups, tensions or failures in communication could be the difference between growth and failure. Today, we would like to discuss one consideration in communications that is often overlooked—the relationship between sales and finance—that is a key factor in the modern organization.

Why You Need to Keep Accounting and Finance “In the Loop”

While your sales and customer service people may not think that they need to “have finance on speed dial,” there are many occasions when a situation arises in which finance needs to respond immediately. This could include any non-routine transactions—clarifying policies, gathering missing information, resolving exceptions—which require finance’s input and expertise.

Now, imagine the current process in which one of these non-routine transactions takes place. Such a process would commonly start with an email from the salesperson to finance. The finance person would then need to go into the accounting software, dig through the information, and make the decision, jumping from application to application to get context and respond. The process is clumsy, laborious, and time-consuming, and occurs at a time when speed is the name of the game.

This is why we would like to discuss with you an easy way to connect finance with the rest of your organization, bringing them closer to the rest of the company and allowing them to approve, clarify, and make decisions within the ERP/accounting software.

How Sage Intacct Collaborate Bridges Organizational Communication Gaps

One of the biggest initiatives by Sage Intacct (then just Intacct) over the last decade was to find a new way to connect finance with the rest of the organization. In 2014, the company introduced Collaborate, a function built on Salesforce Chatter to create a secure social layer across all finance processes and across devices through the Salesforce1 Mobile App.

For Finance, Sales, and Services employees, this means they can now work collaboratively to keep processes efficient even in the face of snags due to requested exceptions, ambiguous data, or changing policies. For many organizations, this has not only led to product and service improvements, it has also led to shorter order-to-cash (O2C) times, reduced reliance on email to accomplish tasks, and faster flow of information.

Learn More

Sage Intacct Collaborate is just one of the many features of Sage Intacct that empowers finance to work smarter, not harder. Learn more about the Collaborate platform here, read about the benefits on the Sage Intacct Blog, and contact us to learn more.

Software Firms ROI Cloud Accounting

How Cloud Accounting Drives Higher ROI for Software and SaaS Companies

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Cloud-based financial management and accounting solutions are the perfect fit for software, SaaS, and subscription-based companies. After all, they’re built on and deployed using the same technology as the products and services you’re offering to your customers. Automation, speed, agility, cost-savings, scalability—these are among the many benefits of using today’s web-based services, so you know first-hand there’s no reason you need to manage your financials manually using spreadsheets and outdated or on-premise software.

Let’s consider how a cloud solution can help you effectively address your top financial management and accounting challenges: 

Built for Today and Tomorrow

Cloud accounting solutions deliver the right information at the right time:

the accuracy of information, speed of information, and clear metrics and forecasting your software company requires to take advantage of growth opportunities. Whether you’re pursuing expansion or preparing to go public, you need both financial and operational insights to inform next steps.

Decision-makers today want to keep track of performance while tuning into real-time business intelligence—and cloud accounting systems, like Sage Intacct, provide users with multi-dimension reporting, drillable dashboards, and anytime/anywhere access to cash and critical SaaS metrics. And thanks to automation, both day-to-day and closing period financial activities are sped up, so executives (and other stakeholders, like potential investors) aren’t waiting for insights related to performance or forecasting.

What’s more, cloud-based software can easily be customized to centralize financial management for companies with multiple entities and even accommodate multiple currencies.

Syncs Front Office With Back Office

You want your back office to keep up with your front office—or even better, work seamlessly “quote-to-cash” so you can keep up with customer demands and boost the top and bottom lines. And you need a financial technology environment that can easily scale without adding accounting department headcount or making your existing workload more complicated than it already is.

Sage Intacct’s contract-driven financial management and accounting solution is built to align your sales workflows and accounting processes—with a focus on building relationships. Thanks to bi-directional integration between Intacct and Salesforce, both your sales team and accounting team have access to the same data. And it’s data that doesn’t need to be entered multiple times; data syncs and flows for optimal, interdepartmental use, with built-in collaboration tools for added efficiency.

As a modern software company, you have to be flexible with pricing and offerings to keep customers happy for long-term. The right financial management and accounting solution will make this easy, enabling you to customize customer contracts as well as revenue and billing workflows, even for subscription-based customers.

Supports Complex Revenue and Subscription Billing Management

Change happens fast and ensuring compliance can be nothing short of a headache for your accounting team. For starters, keeping all the guidelines and standards straight, like AICPA’s Statements of Position (SOP) 81-1, 97-2 and 98-9, SEC Staff Accounting Bulletins (SAB) 101 and 104, and EITF 00-21, 08-01 and 09-03, is cumbersome—especially if you’re using spreadsheets.

Plus, revenue recognition is difficult when you sell multiple elements bundled together with varying delivery schedules. Your company may have complex contracts with complicated billing requirements that practically beg for automated processes.

Cloud accounting solutions like Sage Intacct’s enable you to easily manage revenue recognition calculations and changes as well as complex billing options. It supports multiple price lists with appropriate pricing ratios support tracking, reporting, and auditing across product lines, channels, geographies, and time spans. And when it comes to renewal revenue, Sage Intacct empowers you with tools to maximize ongoing sales opportunities and bill customers in multiple ways, from recurring and usage-based to event-based percentage of completion.

 

To learn more, contact us.

Three Tips for Smarter Cloud Cybersecurity

Three Tips for Making the Most of the Cloud’s Cybersecurity

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It has been well documented that cloud providers work hard to protect your data, and generally offer more security, innovation, and data protection than you could justify spending—it’s just what happens when a company is managing more data than an average enterprise handles, and would go out of business if it was ever discovered that they were lax in security.

However, you can’t just put all of your data up in the cloud and call it safe. Recently, the Small Business Center of Excellence held a webcast on small business cybersecurity strategies, inviting a leader in the cybersecurity arena, Jerry Irvine, CIO of Prescient Solutions, to speak on important strategies for embracing cybersecurity. While he spoke of many things, one thing that resonated with us was this: While cloud providers do great work to lock down your data from their end, many businesses are still getting some of the most basic user-side security practices incorrect.

Three Tips for Locking Down the End-User Side of the Cloud Security Equation

Using one example, Mr. Irvine explained that just because a cloud provider has enterprise-level security, they also allow you to make poor security decisions such as declining multi-factor authentication, giving some people more access than they need, or failing to monitor logins. In this, many businesses still run the risk of user-side weaknesses in the event of business email compromise/phishing/spear phishing, business process compromise, and more.

Multi-Factor Authentication

In something that is surprisingly an option for many cloud vendors—as opposed to a standard feature—offer multi-factor authentication as an option. While one may think that this is a convenience issue, failing to enforce 2FA or MFA is a security issue.

What Is Multi-Factor Authentication?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of computer access control in which a user is granted access only after successfully presenting several separate pieces of evidence to an authentication mechanism – typically at least two of the following categories: knowledge (something they know), possession (something they have), and inherence (something they are).

How to Embrace This

Most cloud providers will require two- or multi-factor authentication. However, if they are leaving it as an option, you as a business leader need to enforce it. We recommend developing a policy within your organization to require any employee with access to company data—especially when it’s in the cloud—to use this to protect data.

Smarter Permissions Management

It’s a fact: Not everyone needs access to everything. One of the biggest weak points that could occur is when someone has access to something that they shouldn’t. IT departments often give non-technical executives (e.g. VP of Sales, CEOs, CFOs, etc.) broad privilege inside corporate applications, figuring it is better to give too much freedom to upper management than get yelled at when someone can’t create a report.

 

Many of the most avoidable breaches occur when someone with more access than they should falls for a phishing email, logs into the fake login page, and passes their information off to a hacker.

How to Address This

This one is a relatively simple fix: Only give broad permission to the ones that need it most. The fewer people who can fall for a scam or have their information (and the company’s information) compromised, the better.

Smarter Access

Public Wi-Fi is not secure. Hackers can get access to the Wi-Fi server relatively easily, look for logins, and in turn use them as their own. In addition to this, those who are trying to get into your data are usually coming from a less-than-credible IP address.

How to Address This

If employees are working remotely, one of the first steps you need to take is to make them use a VPN, denying access to cloud applications if they are using a public Wi-Fi hotspot. In addition to this, it’s vital to manage the IP addresses from which someone can log into an application. For instance, you can prevent certain ranges of IP addresses from accessing an application at all, and flag those which may be unsafe or untrusted.

Conclusion

Businesses are leveraging the cloud for its easy access, speed, and security, but sometimes, it pays to take a step back and make sure that you’re doing the basics right. From forcing strong passwords to the tips listed above, know that there is value in security. If you’re looking to move your applications to the cloud, we’d love to help. Learn more about rinehimerbaker and our services, and contact us today.

Outcome Metrics Nonprofits

Why It Pays to Embrace Outcome Metrics in Nonprofit Accounting

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In nonprofits, it’s all about the mission. As a CFO, Controller, or Accounting Professional at a nonprofit, it’s likely that you joined the firm because of this mission. While an honorable choice of career and employer, you’re probably working on a shoestring budget with a smaller staff than you should have, and are already burning the midnight oil to close the books or build a report.

Nonetheless, in order to fuel the growth of your nonprofit, you’re probably going to have to do even more reporting. Today, we would like to discuss the importance of outcome measures—key performance indicators that you should use to communicate your nonprofit’s effectiveness to donors, regulators, and stakeholders. Read more

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Celebrating National Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the Cloud

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Among other things, October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a month designated by the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies as a month to teach individuals and businesses about the importance of cybersecurity and discuss opportunities to prevent breaches of personal and business devices. Today, we would like to talk about the month and discuss one very specific way organizations can improve their cybersecurity. Learn more below. Read more

Tech Savvy CFO

Meet the Tech Savvy CFO of 2017

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As we discussed in our last blog, the role of the CFO has seen immense change in the past few years, as the position has evolved from number jockey to strategist, decision maker, and futurist. Today’s CFO has an evolving set of responsibilities, but is luckily graced with new tools to tackle these responsibilities.

The Changing Role of 2017’s Tech Savvy CFO

Today, we would like to discuss some of the changes the CFO has faced in the past decade, and share the opportunities that he or she has to embrace new tools for success. Thanks to our friends at Sage Intacct, we present to you their newest infographic, The Tech Savvy CFO—Changing Roles, Changing Worlds, and Changing Opportunities.

Evolving Priorities

It’s hard to think a role has changed so much in a decade, but if you look around the boardroom, you’ll realize not only that roles have changed, but it’s likely there are new people. Business priorities have changed, and new people have come to take some of these on. This said, the CFO still has new priorities that he or she must tackle.

Looking back only a decade ago, the “numbers jockey CFO” of 2007 was so focused on audits, reporting and planning, and capital structure that the modern priorities were just a pipedream. Luckily, technology has eased some of the basics so that today’s CFO gets to think more strategically, focused on big-picture ideas—moving from audit to risk management, reporting to strategizing, and capital structure to strategic capital allocation.

Broader Metrics

The pace of business evolution has put us in an environment in which yesterday’s metrics were just the beginning of things you need to measure. Whether you’ve begun to report beyond GAAP—focused on metrics that drive business forward or just on different GAAP measures required by recent changes from FASB, IASB, or both, reporting has evolved. Luckily, the reporting tools have evolved along with the needs.

New Skills

Again, looking back a decade, the CFO was much less about the decisions and much more about the decimals—meaning that while many had Masters in Business Administration, the major requirement was being chief CPA—with skillset to match.

Learn More: The Changing Role of the CFO in the Changing Business Environment

Sage Intacct recently released their updated infographic discussing the Changing Role of the CFO, which we are sharing with you below.

Tech Savvy CFO

Learn more about the evolving role of the CFO here, get to know Sage Intacct here, and learn more about receiving a free 30-day trial, courtesy of rinehimerbaker.

Value of Strategic CFO

The Rising Value of the Strategic CFO

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Technology is reshaping the role of the CFO, moving action from the back-office into the boardroom. For a growing company, this couldn’t be more important. Back in the days of spreadsheets and desktop software, CFO primarily focused on bookkeeping and historical reporting. But today, they can look forward—and take a seat at the strategy table, where they help drive the future of the company.

Riding the Tides of Change

Administrative financial and accounting tasks have always been—and will always be—essential to business operations. In fact, the critical nature of this work is one of the reasons key financial department employees were traditionally found burning the midnight oil in front of a stack of invoices and a calculator. They had no choice but to immerse themselves in the time-sensitive, manual requirements of tracking financials, paying bills, running reports, ensuring regulatory compliance, and more.

For more insights, find out How to Know When QuickBooks No Longer Makes the Cut.

With technology, the CFO and their staff have been able to streamline their processes, one “automation evolution” at a time. For most companies, paper ledgers were transposed to electronic spreadsheets and desktop software, which are now being shifted to an online, cloud-based chart of accounts, and so on. Every system iteration brings more functionality to the finance and accounting department, however small, cutting time and improving accuracy. It has taken data out of silos and enhanced team and interdepartmental collaboration.

Learn more How Intacct’s Cloud-Based Financial Software Supports Growing Businesses with Automation.

Leading the Technological Revolution as a CFO

Tech-driven changes have freed CFOs from much of the day-to-day minutiae so they can take on more back-end and strategic and projects. They can evaluate more data, report on it in new ways, and work with other company leaders to plan for the future. With access to more comprehensive operational and financial data—and more sophisticated, even real-time, reporting tools—CFOs can easily:

  • Look beyond the numbers to understand what’s impacting performance and driving bottom-line business results across the organization.
  • Make better use of resources to increase value to customers, strengthening the top-line.
  • Identify trends, risks, and opportunities inside and outside of the company, developing a voice in M&A conversations and others that determine the company’s growth trajectory.

Depending on Technology

Without the right technology solutions in place, however, a CFO’s strategic potential is stunted—or at least delayed until the company makes the appropriate investments in solutions that deliver the data and functionality they need. Even if they’re participating in strategic growth discussions, many CFOs continue to spend too much time and energy grappling with the inefficiencies of manual processes. They’re limited by disparate and disconnected systems, insufficient reporting tools, and even impatient decision-makers.

Implementing cloud-based financial management and accounting software can be an important next step for companies and their CFOs who are in this uncomfortable position. A scalable and cost-saving system eliminates their dependence on spreadsheets and gives them access to the tools they need to take control of their processes, better manage their employees’ projects, and provide fast and accurate insights to anyone who needs them.

Don’t miss How the Cloud Provides Real Time Insights for Real Time Decision Making.

What’s more, the enhanced capabilities will allow them to do more than they could ever do before—with historical and real-time data, for example—and keep up with a rising transaction volume as the business continues to grow. The right software will make it easy to centralize their data and integrate all of their business systems, even those they haven’t implemented yet.

Is It Time to Make a Change?

If your financial and accounting organization is ready for an upgrade—so your CFO can get more strategic—contact us to learn more about your options. We specialize in connecting growing companies with cloud technology solutions customized for your needs.

Questions to Ask Cloud Accounting Vendor

6 Questions to Ask to Narrow Down Cloud Accounting Vendors

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If you’re outgrowing QuickBooks or simply looking to simplify and automate your processes by moving accounting to the cloud, the process for building a long list and then narrowing it down to a short list can be a challenge. As part of the narrowing-down process, you will spend a lot of time demoing the software and discussing it with the sales team for each vendor.

As you narrow down your options, it’s important to understand what you’re looking for and how the solution will fit into the equation. This is why we have developed a non-exhaustive list of important questions to ask—and what you should expect in terms of an answer.

Question 1: How Much Uptime Can You Promise?

The uptime discussion is one of the main things that can separate vendors, and should be one of the first things you look for. Uptime is generally discussed in terms of “nines,” as in “how many nines can you promise,” and shouldn’t be taken lightly, as each nine promised is a testament to the company’s commitment to the customer:

  • Two Nines (99%): 3.65 days per year, 7.2 hours per month, 1.68 hours per week
  • Three Nines (99.9%): 8.76 hours per year, 43.8 minutes per month, 10.1 minutes per week
  • Four Nines (99.99%): 52.56 minutes per year, 4.32 minutes per month, 1.01 minutes per week
  • Five Nines (99.999%): 5.26 minutes per year, 25.9 seconds per month, 6.05 seconds per week

While five or more nines is often reserved (and priced) for mission critical applications like telecommunications, utilities, and more, your cloud provider should be able to promise and deliver more than two nines. Often, the sweet spot for SaaS applications is right around three nines, meaning you will see no more than ten minutes of unplanned downtime per month.

However, the real way to judge a vendor is not by promises made, but promises kept. For instance, a leading vendor in the cloud space promises 99.8% uptime, but delivers a 12-month rolling average of 99.987%—nearing the five nines “promised land.”

Question 2: Have You Worked in Our Industry Before?

While the answer is probably yes (the cloud accounting and ERP market is relatively mature), the real question you should be asking is “have you had success with our industry?” It’s common for a vendor to have product or service pages for many different industries, but few case studies pertaining to the industries. It’s important to look at these case studies and success stories for companies like yours in size, needs, and industry.

Question 3: How Much Will It Cost to Get Up and Running?

Another of the natural advantages of a cloud-based accounting software, there are still differences in start-up pricing and implementation. This is an example in which time is quite literally money, as you will be charged for each hour of migration, training, and other necessary services.

The biggest differentiator in this equation is the scope of the implementation—how deep will the software reach into your organization? Suites will naturally take longer to implement, but it will be a one-time project. Single-focus best-of-breed applications can be done quickly and easily, but you may have to complete multiple, less disruptive projects. We discuss the Implementation process in our blog series, Eight Things to Look for in Accounting Software, Part 2.

Question 4: How Will Ongoing Pricing Work?

Pricing is one of the key advantages of SaaS-based applications, generally allowing a move away from licenses, which in turn helps to offer more transparency and ease decision-making. With this in mind, as you compare vendors, one of the most common structures you will see is the per-user, per-module pricing.

In this, it’s important to know what you’re getting, how much it will cost, and how much it will cost for additional users—some users will need additional access, functionality, and modules. Know what you’re getting, how much you’ll be paying, and how much it will cost to add users, modules, or more as your business expands.

Question 5: Is There a Process for Requesting New Features?

At some point, you’ll be using a software, and think, “wow, wouldn’t it be nice if I can do [this]” or “how much easier would my job be if the software could do [this]?” One of the advantages of the cloud is that updates are much more flexible and frequent. Rather than having to wait a year for new patches, cloud accounting applications offer much more frequent updates—up to four times a year.

Knowing this, it’s important to understand the process for requesting new features. Is it easy to ask? Will you be given the same opportunity to request as a large business? How does the vendor narrow down what will be added in the release?

Question 6: How Often Will These Updates Come Through?

As we said, cloud software updates more frequently and easily than an on-premises offering (updates are hands-off; often you walk in to an update the next day or on a Monday). However, the more moving parts that a software has, the less frequent or focused an update will be. This is a main difference between suites and best of breed offerings—suites add a lot of complexity to the equation, so R&D money is spread across multiple products.

Conclusion

When you look to change accounting software, it’s just as important to plan as it is to find the right software. If you know what you want, you will be able to narrow down vendors with minimal stress. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog in which we discuss some of the internal discussions you will need to have before you even start looking at new cloud solutions, coming early next month. If you’re ready to learn more about the power of Sage Intacct for your growing business, contact us today.

Reasons that Growing Businesses Love Cloud Financials

Seven Reasons Growing Businesses Love the Cloud

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What does it take to get ahead when your business grows? The right knowledge at the right time. With so much competition in the modern business environment, there are certain factors that could separate successful businesses from unsuccessful ones. From automation to collaboration, we explore some of the top reasons the cloud is making business smarter, faster, and doing so more cost effectively than ever.

Recently, Procullux Ventures released a guide for businesses looking at their options for financial management software, sharing a recent guide written by finance and consulting expert Phil Wainewright, CEO of Procullux, co-founder of diginomica, and frequent ZDNet contributor. The guide, 7 Reasons to Move to Cloud Financials Now, explores just that, seven reasons the cloud is important for businesses in need of smarter financial management.

Seven Reasons Businesses Love Cloud Financials

While the entire guide is available here courtesy of Sage Intacct, we would like to provide you a brief overview of the cloud’s importance in the financial management initiatives for growing businesses.

Once upon a time, financial system kept to its core role of keeping a reliable historic transactional record. That was all. Today, however, it’s all about connectivity. While the core role has stayed the same, today’s finance department needs to make faster decisions based on more inputs. Connectivity matters, and today’s finance software needs to play a role in much more. Here are seven reasons that the cloud affords you this connectivity and competitive edge.

  1. You Can’t Afford to Delay Changes: Businesses today need the flexibility to rapidly seize emerging opportunities or quickly deal with new challenges. But many are held back by disjointed processes and cumbersome systems that don’t easily adapt to new requirements.
  2. Knowing What You Need to Know, Now: If the business doesn’t have a financial view of day-to-day operations, it can’t control spending or margins effectively. Having an in-depth view of today’s numbers—today—can help stakeholders make smarter decisions.
  3. Clearing Logjams: Silos, spreadsheets, and other slowdowns have no place in the modern business. Automation may be one thing, but if you can’t merge processes automatically, you’ve taken one step forward and two steps back. Many cloud applications can help clear the logjams by breaking down barriers by automating integration.
  4. The Lean Business: Up-and-coming businesses gain a significant competitive edge when they harness digital connectivity to streamline productivity and enhance outcomes. Unfortunately, many incumbents are held back by laborious processes, meaning highly-paid finance pros spend more time digging through spreadsheets than making improvements. This makes them unhappy and less productive, and more willing to jump ship at the first chance they get.
  5. Finance for Finance, Not IT: Too often, it takes a village to generate a simple report. This is a problem. Many systems require the help of specialists to code a report, turning a simple report or change into a massive bottleneck. As the speed of businesses increases, they will need to either hire more people to code reports or find ways to make reporting easier through point-and-click generation and editing.
  6. Getting More Done Faster: No one likes waiting for answers. While automation and integration are logical first steps, the picture is not complete until your people can communicate efficiently to co-ordinate and react promptly when exceptions arise. This creates a need for a third piece of connectivity: collaboration.
  7. Answering Tomorrow’s Questions, Today: In today’s fast-moving, digitally connected world, enterprises have to be on top of their game to survive and thrive. This means that you need to keep an eye on the future, as well as the present.

The cloud is more than just cost savings and increased accessibility. When speed is the name of the game, and every day that you wait to move on something creates more and more missed opportunities, the cloud is there to help you automate, integrate, collaborate, and thrive. We welcome you to read the full report, filled with examples, explanations, and use cases here, and if you’re ready to learn more, contact us.