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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.

 


Take your Business to the Next Level in 2020

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With 2019 wrapping up, many executives are looking for ways to stay relevant and innovative and stand out against their competition in 2020. Many companies are pursuing goals of increasing revenue and profitability, reducing costs, and expanding their cause. How are they going to do this? After looking at trends for next year, below are our top suggestions on how to take your business to the next level.

 

  • Improve productivity by automating

Automating processes for a growing company is a great way to get the most out of each workday. If your team is spending time on manual data entry every month, they probably don’t enjoy their work, you likely are not getting accurate data and their direction is not as focused on the purpose of your business as it could be. You may also lose the ability to make strategic decisions quickly because the data is useless by the time it becomes available. Cutting out manual processes, integrating systems and relying more on the cloud can speed delivery, eliminate the lengthy month-end close cycle and provide accurate results quickly, while data is still relevant.

 

Take a look at every team members’ daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. How many of them can be automated by upgrading your technology? While not everything can be upgraded at once, you can pin-point which manual tasks are taking too much time and which ones are costing the business by not being completed faster. This can be true for customer experience practices, month-end accounting processes, and sales activities.

 

  • Expand Your Reach

In 2020, the cloud will be even more prominent for businesses than it already has in the past two decades. By leveraging the cloud, you can influence more existing and potential customers in different markets and reach top potential employees for open positions.  The cloud improves access and collaboration like never before.

 

If you aren’t already using the cloud to grow your customer base, expand into new markets and reach the right employees for your firm, analyze which systems you are currently using for these processes and find out if they can be converted to the cloud.  If you don’t have a Customer Relationship Management system, human resource management tools and effective accounting solutions in place already, now may be the time to consider implementing one or all of these.  Most applications now have cloud-based options with open APIs allowing for seamless connections between each other. Rely on a trusted advisor who can educate you on the leading systems and processes being utilized in your industry. Consider how upgrading, integrating or implementing a best-in-class solution can give your company an advantage over your competition.

 

  • Elevate Your Customer Experience

The customer experience is what makes top companies different from their competitors. Companies who offer similar products and services must differentiate themselves from competitors and create loyal customers. How do they do that? They go above and beyond to make the customer feel special, have a memorable experience and exceed their customer’s expectations. Why is that important? Because there is so much competition that if your company isn’t memorable and competent you won’t create a loyal customer, they may not purchase from your company a second time and they will likely share their negative experience online.

 

What can you do? Evaluate your ideal customer experience and focus your efforts on delivering just that. Where do you go beyond? Where do you fall short? Are there companies that you have had a positive experience with in the past? Can you use innovation in your approach to interacting with customers more effectively?  Use the power of customer experience analytics to measure behavior, demographic and other metrics in real-time.  Find ways to reward your engaging customers, engage with them on social media and strive to make customer experience advocates out of all your employees.  Taking these initiatives can improve your current customer experience and make it a competitive advantage.

 

 


data driven

How Financial Leaders Can Become More Data Driven

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As we head into the next decade, financial leaders of fast-growing companies are focused on how they can better drive decisions based on real-time data. Having access to financial and operational metrics in real-time can influence strategic company decisions. Below are some ways the tech-savvy leader can continue to evolve.

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1)    Eliminating manual work through technology – The top way that financial leaders can become more data-driven is by eliminating manual work by modernizing technology. Companies that are taking advantage of integrated solutions and automation have shorter month-end close cycles, streamlined processes and reliable, real-time information.  By moving to the right cloud-based financial solution, finance departments gain the ability to use seamless API’s connecting multiple systems in one low maintenance ERP solution. Open API allows organizations to choose the systems that work best for them.  Having integrated systems eliminates duplicate entry, reduces the risk of human error and improves job satisfaction. Utilizing cloud technology allows leaders to have visibility to critical data and attain real-time insights.

2)    Shift the direction of the finance department to value-add analysis – Once manual work has been eliminated, your team can now focus on understanding the story the data is telling and predicting the future. By reducing the amount of time spent recording transactions, resources can be redirected to support organizational initiatives such as cost savings, growth, and pursuing your organization’s strategic mission.

3)    Use financial data to create strategic goals – Financial leaders are in a prime position to drive company goals, set KPI’s and achieve measurable results when they have accurate and timely data.  Key performance metrics may include those related to revenue, margins, sales cycle, or other operational measures of success.  A fully integrated, flexible, cloud-based ERP system allows Finance Leaders the ability to quickly model scenarios and analyze the impacts on revenue, profits and cash flow.

Make this decade one of distinguishing your organization’s strategic vision and differentiate yourself as a leader who adds value, drives growth and sets your CEO up for success.  How? Make technology a priority and move to the cloud. It is the first step in driving your company forward and becoming a data-driven financial leader.

 

Contact rinehimerbaker at accounting@rinehimerbaker.com  to find out how you can become more data-driven. 


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.


1000 North Case Study

Hospitality Finance Departments Save Big with Cloud ERP Solution

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Hospitality Finance departments have been able to save money, and time by moving their ERP solution to the cloud. The cloud gives finance employees access anywhere anytime with easy to create reports that help cut close times every month. Below you will find examples of how companies have saved big by moving to the cloud. If you want to find out more about how they were able to get these results sign up for our webinar on October 30th at 1 pm Eastern.

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hospitality finance


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.  


Franchise Management

Franchise Management with Sage Intacct

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Sage Intacct is the leading cloud-based ERP solution for franchise management. Franchise owners can easily manage multiple locations, access in real time data, and gain insights into each location’s performance without sacrificing roll-up reporting capabilities. All of this is made possible by Intacct’s best-in-class multi-entity management / consolidation capabilities and open API. Intacct relieves business owners of IT worries, all while eliminating cumbersome consolidations and manual reporting. Franchise finance and accounting teams can become proactive team players by refocusing their time on high value analytic tasks. Below are a few recommendations of how Sage Intacct can provide the boost your franchise’s finance team has been looking for:

Multi Location Reporting

Managing multiple entities or locations can be overwhelming with the wrong software. With Sage Intacct you can quickly see each individual location’s financial data, as well as the financial health of your entire franchise. The high configurability of Intacct makes roll up reporting for the executive team a breeze. Now decision makes can quickly analyze their total business with real-time data and seize time sensitive opportunities, both on the franchise and individual store levels.

Secure, Granular Permissions

Sage Intacct’s user permissions allow you to easily assign and update user permissions, giving each person access to only the location(s), reports, and financial data necessary to their role within your organization. With their own login, managers can see their store(s) financial information without sacrificing the security of other franchise financial data or them having to wait to receive manual reports from the corporate finance team. Now franchises can structure their accounting system to fit their organizational structure, instead of modifying employees’ roles to fit the accounting system’s capabilities.

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Streamlined Tech Stack

Sage Intacct has a fully open API for seamlessly connection to your franchises’ other systems, such as your POS, HR management, and business intelligence software. Being able to connect all of your business tools to Sage Intacct means you can now pull data from disparate systems into one place for expedited review. Imagine having a dashboard showing sales from your POS, headcount from your HR system, and comparative report showing revenue by headcount across all your locations.

Hassle Free Expansion

Adding a new store location in Intacct can be done in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. Intacct was designed for rapidly expanding businesses, meaning your new franchise location or holding company can be added quickly without any IT resources or reconfiguration of existing locations.

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Benchmarking and KPI’s

Benchmarking is made easier with Sage Intacct’s ability to consolidate and report information. Business owners can quickly see how each location is performing against their KPI’s and against other locations. This means owners and their management team can quickly identify performance issues. Also, through

Sage Intacct’s dashboards management can dive deeper into the numbers and understand the drivers of each locations’ performance.

Negotiate Pricing

Sage Intacct’s numerous reporting tools allow your team to tailor reports that slice and dice data to your company’s individual needs. With this ability, data can easily be analyzed to show how much your franchise is spending with each vendor, at each location, and what types of goods are being purchased. Management can easily leverage this data to negotiate pricing with vendors and identify opportunities to streamline operational expenditures. Sage Intacct effortlessly provides opportunities to your franchise managers for increased insight and control of operations, driving increased profitability for your entire franchise.

To scale your franchise’s growth, you need a solution that provides meaningful capabilities. Find out more about how rinehimerbaker can help you implement Sage Intacct and achieve success with your franchise. Check out this case study where rinehimerbaker leveraged Sage Intacct to drive success in a high-growth franchise.


Closing the automation gap

Closing the Automation Gap in Finance

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Closing the automation gap in finance is key to running an efficient business capable of scaling. Growth in your business, by product diversification or acquisition, creates additional work on your team. If the system is designed around manual tasks and spreadsheets, your company won’t reap the rewards or experience the profit growth you expect. Closing the gap allows finance teams to transform from error-prone clerical workers to strategic advisors capable of providing data and insight in real-time. 

What is the automation gap? 

The automation gap is the space between what can be automated within your current system and the actual processes your staff is executing.  The gap essentially represents the manual processes your team completes in order to run your business effectively.  As companies experience growth, the automation gap generally increases and can overrun a finance department. 

A great example of how the right system can close the automation gap is Sage Intacct’s multi-entity management capabilities. By automatically consolidating multiple companies and automating closing entries, when you grow by acquisition you no longer need to manually track the activity in spreadsheets and manually consolidate the books! With Sage Intacct, finance teams can rapidly close the books and reduce errors along the way allowing them to provide meaningful information to your management team faster. 

 

Growing through product diversification is great but that also means companies need to understand how that impacts their compliance standards such as ASC 606. Once you understand your compliance requirements, you then need systems in place to uphold them. 

When your current software doesn’t automate this for you, companies typically lean toward a spreadsheet as their process. Managing compliance in a spreadsheet is not sustainable over the long term as you experience continued growth and create new products. 

 Watch the Webinar: Closing the Automation Gap Now

Processes built around spreadsheets are extremely manual and the responsibility of managing and maintaining them typically falls on one or two employees who truly understand how the document works. We often find that the documentation and instructions of the process are nonexistent meaning all of that process knowledge leaves the company when the employees leave your organization. 

Managing complex processes using spreadsheets is not without risk. It’s not a question of “if” there is an error, it’s a question of “when” the error is going to occur and how big of an impact is it going to cause. 

Companies are trying to close the automation gap by hiring talent. However, hiring high-level talent that can create and understand complex spreadsheets comes at a premium. Continuing to hire employees at top salaries to perform these tasks is not sustainable over the long term. This also contributes to creating a company culture where the focus is on clerical work rather than strategic work. 

Watch the Webinar: Closing the Automation Gap Now

Why is closing the gap important? 

90% of the decision-makers are under pressure to make decisions faster but only 28% trust the data in their reports. This is largely due to the almost guaranteed mistakes that happen when a company relies on manual processes instead of working with a system that closes its automation gap. 

Current CFO’s have more responsibilities than ever to strategically lead their companies with real-time data. Reacting on three-week-old data that is almost guaranteed to have some error within the report is no longer acceptable or the norm. 

Are you unsure of how to discover your automation gap and implement a solution to close it? The rinehimerbaker team can help you evaluate your current processes, identifies your opportunities, and build a plan on how to close your automation gap. 

If you would like to find out more, click here to watch the full Closing the Automation Gap Webinar. If you are ready to discuss closing your own gap, please fill out the form below to speak with a representative at rinehimerbaker.  

 


Sage Intacct Partner of the Quarter

Sage Intacct Names rinehimerbaker, llc Partner of the Quarter Q4 2017

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Some big news from the team at rinehimerbaker. Earlier this month, we were named the Sage Intacct Partner of the Quarter for our strong sales performance and high levels of ongoing customer satisfaction. Learn what this means for our prospects and customers below. Read more

Lure the right talent with cloud ERP

Meet the Expectations of Top Financial Talent with Cloud-Based Software

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The benefits of cloud-based software are usually cited as lower costs, process and workflow optimization, and scalability. But the attraction and retention of key finance and accounting department personnel is another benefit of implementing the best-in-class technology—one that’s not included in the “top 5 benefits” lists, but should be. The reality is that today’s top financial talent—and tomorrow’s leaders—operate in a digital world, where 24/7 access, insight, and productivity reign. Read more