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Maximizing Your Customer Journey Through Technology

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In this day and age, the customer journey is one of the most important aspects of any business who wants to continue to expand. With social media, customers can easily and instantly communicate their interactions and impressions of a company.  Customers are 21% more likely to report a bad experience than a positive one but what is even more likely after a bad experience is that they won’t come back. Without repeat customers, companies cannot survive.

There are many ways companies can maximize a customer journey such as unique purchasing experiences, top quality, and more. However, the best way to make a seamless journey externally and internally is to use technology to make every step seamless. This eliminates human error and also ensures time between steps is limited.

Companies who are using CRMs, automated marketing solutions, cloud-based ERP solutions, and automated warehouse solutions that all have integrations into each solution easily distribute a consumer’s information and creates automated tasks to be completed without missing a beat.  For example, once a lead identifies themselves, your marketing solution can send the information automatically to your CRM and notify sales while also putting them in an appropriate campaign to convert. Once sales converts them into a customer or they make a purchase your CRM can push the customers’ information to your ERP to create an invoice, covert the customers from lead to customers in your marketing for a new campaign, and send any purchase details needed to your warehouse. This eliminates hours of work per customer and ensures that all tasks are completed to keep a customer happy.

Who doesn’t love eliminating work while keeping your customer happy? Find out more how rinehimerbaker can help you implement these solutions and continue to improve your overall company strategy.


Does Your Accounting System Make the Grade?

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Your accounting system can make or break a finance department’s strategic impact on your company’s growth. If you find yourself having to put in hours of manual work, lacking insight into your business, and an inability to grow your company because of your accounting system it is time to consider if it’s making the grade. Read through our list of what your accounting solution should provide.

What You Should be Looking For in Your Current and Future System:

  • Accurate Bookkeeping- Overall an accounting solution allows businesses to keep track of financial transactions. This includes being able to create income statements, balance sheets, cash-flow statements, and custom reports all without human error. Being able to eliminate errors ensures that decisions for expansion are made on accurate information.
  • Scalability- The accounting system your company uses should have the ability to grow as sales increase. As your business expands through new locations, product lines, expansion into new countries, or additional customers your system should be able to easily add these into its system. Look at your current system if you added a new location to your company how long will it take for your accounting solution to add it? Hours or days? Is there a cap on how many can be added in total or is it unlimited? How easy is it to add a finance employee to your system? If your system is limited in its capabilities to expand then it’s not making the grade.
  • Ease of Use- Having a system that is user-friendly is key to maximizing the insight a finance department can produce quickly. This also allows you to focus on potential employees’ capabilities from a strategic point of view vs. their pre-knowledge of how to use your accounting system.
  • Audit Features- An audit can be an intimidating part of the year if your finances aren’t organized. An accounting system that allows you to add notes to any manual changes that are made as well as a drill-down ability makes it easy to get by with flying colors.
  • Cloud-Based/ Web-Hosted- In the current technology impacted times not being able to access your financial data anywhere anytime will instantly put you behind your competition. Does your current system allow you to have team members spread out across the country? Can you log in at any point in time to access a report?
  • Time Saving Automation- When companies implement new technology one of the biggest benefits they are looking to achieve is time savings. Your accounting system should be working for you. Reports should be instantly produced based on settings that have been saved. Your system should also have the ability to seamlessly integrate with your other software solutions such as your CRM. If your business changes how long does it take to get a new report from accounting?

Does your current accounting system do all of the above? Does it make the grade?

Find out how rinehimerbaker can help your company get results through the cloud by reaching out to accounting@rinehimerbaker.com.

 


family offices

When Family Offices Should Move to the Cloud

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Family Offices are key to managing wealth and asset growth for current and future generations of a family. As they grow, the ownership structures become more complex and sophisticated, the diversification of assets widens, and their need for real-time information becomes imminent. With that type of responsibility on a company’s shoulders, the last thing they need is additional stress that comes with being behind in technology advancements including their accounting solution. If a family office is still using an on-premise solution for their accounting department, they are missing out on the elimination of manual work, real-time data, continuous consolidation, and easy access from anywhere. A cloud ERP solution provides all of that and more. Below are the top benefits we have seen family offices gain from switching to the cloud.

Cloud-Based

Being cloud-based is the number one asset we can provide for family offices. This gives the office and family members access anywhere, anytime. The office managers can travel with the family and, with internet access,still have access to all their data. This also means that family members can access their information at home, or on the go. Lastly, the office can be located wherever the best talent is, leaving the family with the flexibility to be where they are happiest.

Multi-Entity

Another top benefit of a cloud-based solution is a multi-entity platform with continuous consolidation. This allows offices to manage each family member individually with the option for a quick total family roll-up. Our recommended cloud-based solution allows users to manage separate entities (aka different family members or businesses) under a single log-in. This provides the capability to produce individual reports at the entity level or consolidate at the family level. The reports require a quick few clicks and are instantly completed. Report templates can be saved which allows users to swiftly access them again. With reports being easy to create and run users can quickly see their consolidation which eliminates the need to combine reports manually.

Dashboards

Custom Investor dashboards are a great asset as they can be the login screen for each user and can be customized to their daily needs. Since family offices typically deal with a large portfolio of investments, having the real-time data displayed immediately upon log-in gives the user an overall view of the financial information that’s important to them. The dashboards can be customized to each user based on their position or to a certain family member that only wants to see their personal information. The dashboards also give the user a quick way to drill down into the details of data if they want to know more about it.

Eliminating Manual Work

Eliminating manual work can save family offices multiple hours of staff work as well as help keep their team lean. An example of this is when a family office has to process dozens of checks each week. When they move to the cloud, they eliminate all of the manual work which can include the opening of the mail/ printing emails, scanning the bills, routing them via email for approval and coding along with tracking where are in the approval process, entering into QuickBooks, printing checks, signing checks, stuffing envelopes, trips to the post office, and filing. On top of eliminating all of these steps, you also get rid of the constant paper waste. This can all be automated using bill.com where the bills get emailed directly to the inbox, coded, routed for approval and paid either electronically or with a check generated by bill.com. The details are then automatically synced with your cloud solution.

 

Overall, the benefits a family office can gain from moving their accounting ERP to the cloud will transform how they operate. The elimination of manual efforts allows for a better run business, quicker decisions, and growth.

 

Find out how rinehimerbaker can help your company get results through the cloud by reaching out to accounting@rinehimerbaker.com.


Sage Intacct reporting

Sage Intacct Reporting

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Check out November’s Sage Intacct Tips and Trick video produced by our internal team. This month we review Sage Intacct’s reporting capabilities and how they can give your company greater insight. The reporting capabilities allow you to slice and dice the data any way you want to really see into your data.

 

Find out more from our team by emailing accounting @rinehimerbaker.com


Where is Cloud Accounting Technology Headed

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Watch our webinar this week on Where Cloud Accounting Technology is Headed. The webinar was lead by Tonya Lilly and Michael Garrison. They discussed what the cloud is, what current benefits of the cloud are, where cloud accounting technology is headed, and how our team works with the cloud.

As you watch if there are questions you have please reach out to our team at accounting@rinehimerbaker.com.


Sage Intacct Advantage

rinehimerbaker’s customer recognized at Sage Intacct Advantage

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At this year’s Sage Intacct Advantage conference, our customer MemberClicks was recognized as a recipient of the Sage Intacct Customer Success Award, an award designed to celebrate customers who have made dramatic improvements to their business and financial operations using Sage Intacct.

MemberClicks’ mission is to “Empower member-based organization to thrive through refreshing technology and a heart for service.” Their purpose-built suite of technology and customer-centric culture helps them achieve this allowing their customers to focus on serving its members.

For MemberClicks, 2017 was a year that largely focused on growth. With that came the challenges that all growing companies face and in 2018 they decided it was time for a new system that would help, not hinder, their company.

Sage Intacct was implemented for its ability to automate their order to cash process, manage customers’ subscriptions, and automate revenue management to keep them compliant with ASC 606, along with many other benefits!

Using Sage Intacct, MemberClicks was able to increase efficiencies throughout the organization with capabilities like:

  • Producing consolidated financials from multiple entities with various currencies in just a few clicks
  • Closing their books in just four days and spending the ten days they saved to analyze the data rather than reconcile it
  • Seamless order to cash process starting in Salesforce and creating contracts when deals are closed/won
    • Automating revenue and billing management across 3,000+ contracts
    • Automating customer payments through recurring subscription billing

Using Sage Intacct, they now have a consistent customer experience across the entire organization from orders to renewals to payments and everything in between. This consistency provides key members the visibility into every stage of the contracts’ lifecycle.

rinehimerbaker worked with MemberClicks to design and deploy this fully integrated solution centered around Sage Intacct. As a group, we were committed to helping migrate the company’s entire accounting operations onto a system up to the challenge of supporting their dynamic organization.

With MemberClicks recognized as one of a few winners selected out of hundreds of applicants, the journey for them proved worthwhile and demonstrates that success like this can be achieved by organizations of all sizes when you work with people and software that strive to achieve great results!

Congratulations again to MemberClicks from the entire rinehimerbaker team!

Find out how rinehimerbaker can help your company get similar results by reaching out to accounting@rinehimerbaker.com.


Sage Intacct Advatnage

Sage Intacct Advantage Conference Recap

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The annual Sage Intacct Advantage was an amazing event again this year with great opportunities to learn about the future of finance, network with our customers and the Sage Intacct team, and enjoy Las Vegas! Below are our team’s top takeaways from this year’s conference.

Sage Intacct Advantage

1) MemberClicks won a customer success Award- rinehimerbaker’s customer, MemberClicks was honored with the customer success award this year at Advantage! This award celebrates customers who have made dramatic improvements to their business and financial operations using Sage Intacct.  Congratulations Brent Stringer and team!

 

2) Change in Thinking-There was a strong focus on how the accounting function is moving from the age of information to the age of answers. Gone are the old ways of simply reporting “what happened”; now we are focused “why it happened” which is quickly moving to “what will happen next and what should we do about it”. This focus shows how finance teams are moving away from manual work and utilizing technology to deliver strategic value so that organizations can further their mission, grow and scale more quickly.

 

3) Eliminating the Close– Sage Intacct continues to look for innovative ways to make accountants lives easier. They are currently working on AI capabilities that are embedded directly into the Sage Intacct Intelligent GL.  The goal is to have continuous GL and eliminate the close. How? By using AI to accelerate the capture of data, to detect anomalies and ensure data is accurate and compliant, and to analyze and make intelligent decisions.

 

4) Sage People– This was an exciting announcement. Sage People is a new HR/benefit/onboarding/payroll solution that will be fully integrated with Sage Intacct. With this full integration, users will be able to quickly and easily view analytics, reports, graphs and dashboards related to the HR function.

 

5) Growth in Use– Currently 38% of the top CPA firms are using Sage Intacct. The continued growth of users shows how impactful Sage Intacct has been in revolutionizing the cloud accounting world throughout many different industries. The fastest growing verticals adopting Sage Intacct are hospitality and healthcare.

 

6) Orlando in 2020– Next year’s Advantage conference will be held in Orlando, FL the week of Oct 13th. For everyone that couldn’t make it this year, mark your calendars for next October. It will be a great week to learn, and network!

Sage Intacct Advantage


Where is Cloud Accounting Technology Headed?

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What is cloud accounting technology?

 

Everyday companies make the decision to move from on-premise solutions to the cloud. With so many companies choosing to move to a cloud-based ERP solution to drive their finance department, what’s next with the cloud is always at the forefront of their minds. You are probably already familiar with the benefits of the cloud such as, not needing IT resources to support your finance function, one login with anywhere-anytime access, and API connections with other cloud solutions. For certain cloud solutions, you can also get real-time data, easy to create reports, company roll-ups, customized dashboards, dimensions to eliminate additional general ledgers, easy intercompany payments, and a notes section for communication between your team about changes.

Join us for a cocktail hour where we discuss where cloud accounting technology is headed

Where is cloud accounting headed?

 

As cloud accounting continues to develop the user interface and open API’s are a top priority for ERP solutions. Both of these factors are leading the way due to users continuing to want easy-clean way to run real-time reports and create an audit trail. The evolution of the user interface is a top priority. These changes will make or break companies’ decisions to move to their solution based on the quickness their employees can get through tasks.

 

The open API is an important factor for continued development as companies continue to want a best-in-class solution instead of a one-in-all solution. This means continuing to create seamless API connections on the back end with other top cloud software vendors.

 

Finally, the most exciting trend for cloud accounting technology is the use of artificial intelligence and the influence it will have in ERP solutions. Companies demand their technology to work for them and eliminate manual work, coding, and clerical employees will continue to lead to a need/desire for technology that can do more automatically.

 

Overall, over the past decade, cloud accounting technology has continued to go develop and change the landscape of finance departments. With the anywhere, anytime access, and consistently updates throughout the year, the technology can only allow for capabilities to drastically improve with less and less manual effort to accomplish tasks.

Sign up for our Cloud Accounting Technology Future webinar

Join us for our webinar on November 21st at 1 pm eastern time to deep dive into where cloud accounting technology is headed, and the updates we see with the software we provide every day to customers.


outgrowing quickbooks

How to Know When It’s Time to Kiss QuickBooks Goodbye

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Many small to medium companies start with QuickBooks because of its easy accessibility and low entry point cost. However, as your company continues to grow, you will likely find yourself rapidly outgrowing its capabilities.  Many companies deal with the manual aspects of outgrowing QuickBooks because they don’t realize there is are better cost-effective solutions.  Below we will give you some things to consider when looking to switch and what the ROI will be once the switch is made. 

 

How to know when it is time to consider a change 

 

While QuickBooks is a great starting point there are many points in the journey that are signals that you are out growing this solution. As you are reading through the list, if you relate to one or more of the bullet points it is time to start considering a change in accounting solution.  

  • You or your team are having to create reports manually 
  • You are exporting data into Excel and manipulating the data to get reports instead of being able to run the reports out of your accounting system 
  • You are having trouble coding because of the extensive structure created in QuickBooks to track things separately 
  • You are manually entering or tagging many entries 
  • You are up late at night just trying to get the accounting work done 
  • Auditing is next to impossible because everything is done manually 
  • You cannot rely on some data as you suspect it contains errors  
  • You are tired of signing manual checks and storing paper documents in filing cabinets 

 

What you should consider when changing 

Once you have realized your company is ready for the next step in accounting solutions there are a few different aspects you should be considering. Below is a list of internal company considerations that will affect what you buy, how you buy it, and any additional software that will need to be integrated/purchased. 

  • Do you have an in-house finance team you want to grow or is the owner currently doing the finance work? 
  • What key metrics or indicators do you need to make business decisions and when is the ideal time to receive them?  
  • What reports do you currently produce? How long does it take it to produce them? If you could have more, what other reports would you want to have? 
  • Does your business currently have contracts? 
  • Can you currently see project profitability? If not, is being able to produce those financials important to growing your business? 
  • Can you currently predict resources and staffing levels?  

 

ROI you can expect with a cloud ERP 

Changing to a robust ERP can seem overwhelming from an implementation or upfront cost perspective. However, the return on investment is vast and long term can end up saving you money.  How you ask?  

  • Accurate reporting – eliminates errors from manual processing and reporting 
  • Accelerate financial team productivity – automated processes take away clerical work and let your team focus on analyzing the data and making decisions needed to grow the business 
  • Employee engagement and retention elevates – when your employees are able to do work that matters such as strategy, planning, and analysis, they are happier and will stay longer 
  • Better numbers quicker – with the ability to easily create new reports and run custom or standard reports fast you will have access to your financials in real-time and shorten your month-end close 
  • Reduce total overhead costs – with a cloud ERP system you will eliminate the clerical work that comes with Quickbooks and the workarounds. Therefore, you eliminate the overhead of clerical employees and overtime. You can focus on hiring on key employees that are pushing the company forward 

 

Fill out the form below to contact rinehimerbaker if you would like a free consultation to discuss the possibility of moving off QuickBooks. 



Open API

The Power of Sage intacct’s Open API and Maketplace

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Sage Intacct currently has over 200 software solutions listed on its marketplace with that number growing weekly. Currently, 75% of their users have integrations with 2 or more of their software partners creating seamless solutions within the cloud. The marketplace partners cover a range of categories including payroll, CRM, time & expense, inventory management, finance & admin, e-commerce, and business management. They have been able to create this best-in-class solution for their customers by having a completely open API. 

What is an open API? 

An open API is a publicly available application programming interface that allows developers to create their own unique integration into a certain piece of software. This is the backend system that creates a gateway between two solutions that need to be able to automate sharing information. Sage Intacct has made its API open allowing software companies to easily create their own custom integration. When marketplace partners have the ability to create their own integrations it takes away the coding process for customers.  

 

What makes Sage Intacct’s open API unique? 

When creating their API Sage Intacct created the backend before the user interface which creates a very robust and stable solution for all marketplace partners to build out integrations. The open API is so stable that they guarantee their API won’t change in any of their upgrades throughout the years. They currently have a 15-year proven streak.  

The seamless integration allows for all your cloud-based solutions to easily push information back and forth eliminating manual processes that can be time-consuming and create mistakes.  This also means that your IT department won’t have to spend valuable time maintaining and installing new solutions. All of Sage Intacct’s main partners are plug and play. This means your accounting team can easily turn on new software and for those integrations that have a slightly higher amount of customization your VAR partner ( rinehimerbaker) can have you up and running quickly. 

The marketplace offers 3rd party solutions that allow connections between smaller software solutions that haven’t yet built out their own integration into Sage Intacct’s API. These additional connection solutions make the marketplace rare and powerful for its customers.  It also offers huge cost-savings to customers by being able to skip hiring an outsourced service to build out custom integration.  

rinehimerbaker’s Top Choices on the Marketplace: 

While Sage Intacct works with a variety of strong partners, here at rinehimerbaker we have a list we recommend based on our history and clients’ success.  

Bill.com is a software solution that helps you automated your accounts payable process to save time. We have implemented this integration for multiple partners, and all have had great time savings due to the automation and elimination of manual mistakes.  

Expensify is a mobile expense reporting solution that cuts down the hours of manual data entry and makes it faster to review expenses, reimburse employees and close the month. They allow employees to log expenses on the go through an app, easily reimburse employees the next day, and reconcile corporate cards through a complete integration. 

2CP is a custom payment solution that offers e-commerce, recurring capabilities, merchant services, and email invoicing through an integrated solution. This software solution helps you invoice quicker and get paid faster while eliminating data entry.  

FloQast is a close management software that helps accounting teams close faster and more accurately. It was built to address gaps in your organization, collaboration, automation, and integration for the financial close process.  

Salesforce is the leading CRM that has complete automated integration with Sage Intacct allow a business to see their customer’s journey from beginning to end. This best-in-class software has streamlined the quote to cash process and allows for better communication between departments.  

Workforce Go is a cloud-based human capital management solution. It helps manage payroll, people, and time from pre-hire to retirement. This helps save your company time, reduce manual errors, eliminate reporting delays, and make functionality choices.  

Avalara Avatax is a strategic tax compliance solution that delivers instantaneous sales tax decisions based on more than 12,000 taxing jurisdictions in the United States. This solution assigns hundreds of thousands of taxability rules to get the correct rate for your company. This takes the stress out of tax.  

 

To find your best-in-class solution, fill out the form below to speak with one of our senior accountants and implementation experts.