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Infographic: Seven Deadly Sins of Financial Management

April 17, 2017/0 Comments/in Intacct, Outgrowing QuickBooks /by rinehimerbaker

As your business grows, you begin to notice that the challenges of today take a little bit longer to address than they used to. With more growth comes more data, and with more data comes more time needed to complete basic tasks like closing the books each month. Unfortunately, in the wake of growth, too many businesses commit one or more of the following sins that limit visibility and cause business pain.

Seven Deadly Sins of Financial Management

A recently released infographic took a look at common business practices that hinder growth, especially when you’re outgrowing entry-level accounting software like QuickBooks, noting the following seven sins that finance leaders commit, many of which can slow your business to a grinding halt:

Scattered Business Data: How much harder is it to close the books each month than it was last month or last year? As you grow, you have more financial data being generated each month, and managing this data in spreadsheets or on paper is not a good solution.
Departmental Silos: Did you get that email? How about that invoice—that was sent three weeks ago? Communication between departments can make for a huge drag on company productivity, and for many organizations the best way to connect a multitude of departments is to set up an enterprise social network that cuts down on email strings and puts data in front of the necessary users when and where they need it.
Spreadsheet Gluttony: Did you know that 88% of Spreadsheets have errors? With 89% of companies using spreadsheets for planning budgeting and accounting, a pretty hefty amount of organizations could have a fatal mistake somewhere in their books. Learnmore in our recent article, “Don’t Rely on Spreadsheets and Luck—There’s a Better Way.”
Slothful Tracking: Another deadly sin is one that affects more than just finance. When an organization uses laborious manual processes for expense management, they are only managing and measuring, not optimizing. By moving expense management to the cloud, you could see cost savings of over 20% or more.
Stale Financial Data: With so many manual processes in place, data not only takes forever to gather, it is inaccurate and has a short shelf life. Companies looking to overcome this should take a proactive stance, seeking a forward-looking system that can calculate information when you need it, where you need it, and based on the drivers you want.
Lack of Compliance: With new ASC Revenue Recognition standards on the horizon, as well as increasing scrutiny into the numbers from customers and investors, compliance is a necessity moving forward—and spreadsheets can’t cut it.
Antiquated Technology: Many of the solutions available to growing businesses were designed before the dawn of the internet, not for the modern needs of the modern business. Without forward-thinking technology, your organization is stuck in the past and unable to focus on technology.

See the Entire Infographic

The following infographic shares more about how you can gain absolution for these sins, so that you don’t end up in accounting hell (or worse—jail).

Gain Absolution with Modern Accounting

If you want to fight off expense tracking sloth, spreadsheet gluttony, and more, you need to swallow your pride and understand that it’s not you, it could be your processes or systems. Learn more about taking control of your organizations financial future by downloading the whitepaper, Eliminating the Risks of Spreadsheets in Finance, as well as by perusing the 2017 Buyer’s Guide to Accounting Software.

Ready to learn more? rinehimerbaker has released a new whitepaper for companies outgrowing QuickBooks.

Outgrowing QuickBooks—How to Know It’s Time to Change shares some of the biggest challenges that businesses face when growing, and the opportunities they have to ease growth.

Learn more by reading the first 3 pages of the whitepaper below:

Outgrowing QuickBooks: A Guide for Growing Businesses Whose Entry-Level Software Is Holding Them Back from rinehimerbaker, llc

Eight Things to Look For in an Accounting Software (Part 2)

April 5, 2017/0 Comments/in Intacct /by rinehimerbaker

At rinehimerbaker, we know accounting. We also are pretty well versed in accounting software. We recently discussed some of the most important features you should be looking for from a new accounting software, and would like to continue that discussion in part two of this two-part series.

Note: Part one highlighted the importance of having focused software that eases your day-to-day and month-to-month operations, ready to grow with you. See part one of this series here.

5: Implementation

As you look into new accounting software, two of the most complex and time consuming processes you will face—regardless of the vendor or partner—is the implementation and training process. You are entrusting someone to move a lot of information from your old accounting software to your new one and set your company up for success.

In this, it’s important to look for an accounting software that meets your timeframe while still allowing you all of the functionality you will need. Knowing what to expect during the process—timeframes, costs (direct, indirect, and hidden), and more—can help prevent the project from getting derailed.

We’ve discussed some of the key factors in a recent blog, How Long Does It Take to Implement a New Accounting System?

6: Short Learning Curve

In addition to implementation, any end users will need to learn about the software—new features, how to accomplish basic tasks, how to accomplish advanced tasks, and more. This decision can’t be understated, because some of the software options on the market today require a highly specialized skillset to do something as simple as generate or customize a report.

There are many factors that go into how easy—or hard—it is for your team to learn a new accounting software, including:

Whether it is a best of breed (only train specific users) or suite (train for every module you implement),
The age of the solution (older software is built on older and more complex code—less point-and-click operation)
The initial focus of the software (the more bells and whistles, the more training—solutions that grow and become more robust when you need them to be are easier to train)

These are a few considerations and decisions need to be made based on the overall technical aptitude of your team and ability to learn new products. This should be discussed with vendors, implementation/training partners, and customers of the software who are similar to your organization.

7: Integration

As we discussed in our Suite vs. Best of Breed article, integration is one of the key selling points of best-of-breed options, as point solutions are designed to do one thing well and allow other departments to choose what’s best for them as well. Suites often have much more complex (read costly) integrations that rely on hand-coding to operate if you choose to use something from outside of the vendor’s suite.

Whether you’re looking for a suite to handle all of the following or are looking for the best of the best based on your needs with a best-of-breed option, you should be looking for convenient “point-and-click” integrations (straightforward enough not to require IT skills) with commonly used applications such as:

CRM and sales force automation, like Salesforce.com
Human resources
Inventory and fixed assets
Project management
Payment processing
Payroll and ACH

Learn more about some of the options you have in the Intacct Marketplace, a resource for business software purchasers looking to connect applications.

8: Support

Whether you’re purchasing directly through the vendor or through an industry- and location-focused reseller like us, you should expect a knowledgeable, supportive, and focused partner who can walk you through the purchase, implementation, training, and long term operation of the software.

Support from Partners Means Support from Vendor to Partner

A good vendor and partner should be recognized for their reseller/partner program, as quality vendor-to-partner training is the first step in customer success.

Each year, CRN—a magazine for the solution provider industry—ranks channel programs based on a vendor’s ability to prepare their partners for success and only gives five-star ratings to the best of the best. It’s a good way for companies who are considering reselling a specific software to decide on whether or not the investment is worth it, but it’s also a good way for you to learn if your partner will be well-trained and able to help you.

If you love slowly progressing slideshows, you can view the 5-Star vendor guide here. If you’d like us to get to the point, our accounting software vendor of choice, Intacct, received top ratings in the cloud category.

Getting Focused Support: It Pays to Work with Someone in Your Location

If you’re looking for a partner to implement and train, it’s helpful to work with someone who knows you. Some states and locations will have different needs, and it’s important to have a support partner who understands your needs. As a company who started as an accounting firm and expanded to focus on the software game, we know all of the laws and regulations that face your Florida business, and are able to get to know you very well.

Conclusion

Choosing a new accounting software is a tough process that should be done with the input of everyone who will be using it. Knowing not only what to look for but who to work with can separate a successful implementation from a failure.

It’s important to shop around—for both the software and resellers. Think of your accounting software decision as you would a more complex kitchen remodel. You’re not only deciding on whether you want a Viking, a Wolf, or a Thermador, you’re also deciding on the people who have to be walking around your house during the remodel process. The same goes for a software implementation project.

We think you’ll like us at rinehimerbaker. Get in contact with us to learn how we can help you.

Additional Reading

Learn even more by reading the just-released 2017 Buyer’s Guide to Accounting Software and the Intacct Guide, Essential Features of a Modern Accounting System.

What are the Different Software Delivery Methods?

February 16, 2017/0 Comments/in Intacct /by rinehimerbaker

Last week, we introduced you to the signs that your organization is outgrowing its accounting software: Not having the reporting you need to grow, manual and error prone processes, mediocre-at-best integration, and lack of speed. For those organizations whose growth has outpaced your software’s ability to handle it, congratulations. Knowing this, however, it’s time to start looking toward the future.

As you begin to look toward new software for your company, one of the first questions you’ll be asking yourself is “How will my software be deployed?” If you’re coming from QuickBooks, it is likely that you worked with their desktop model, which, while great for basic accounting, lacked functionality as you grew and needed additional users in multiple locations.

Three Options to Consider

Knowing this, there are three main options to consider: On-premises, Hosted, and Cloud—all with advantages and criticisms.

On-Premises

With this traditional model, you license software and run it on your own servers. When considering this model, be sure to account for the capital and operating expenses associated with deployment, operations, support, customization, integration, maintenance, and upgrades.

While these costs can be too great for small and mid-sized organizations to sustain, on-premises solutions remain a viable option for some larger companies. These organizations often have a built-out IT infrastructure, investment capital, and expertise to support and maintain major software applications.

Hosted

In a hosted environment, the software physically resides at a remote data center operated by an expert third-party hosting provider. Your team would usually use a product like Citrix to access the software over the Internet and see the screens being generated at the hosting provider. This model eliminates the responsibility of maintaining hardware infrastructure, and therefore can help you avoid large upfront capital expenditures.

But it works by providing you with a unique “instance” of your financial system on a dedicated server. That means you would still face the same costs for customizations, upgrades, integration, and support and service

Multi-Tenant

Also known as “software as a service” (SaaS), these applications offer direct, always-on access to the solution, typically paid for on a per-user/per-month subscription basis. They are multitenant, which means you can unlock only your own data, but you work from a shared system—a single set of resources, application infrastructure, and database.

There are no upfront fees, capital investments, or long-term commitments because you do not buy, license, or manage the underlying hardware, software, or networking infrastructure. Upgrades are performed at no cost to you. Even if you make extensive changes to the system, your customizations “roll over” to work with the new upgrade.

Questions to Ask

When deciding on which delivery model you intend to pursue, it is important to ask yourself and the company who’s helping you choose a few important questions:

How long will implementation take?
Will customizations be affordable and easy, or time-consuming, painful, and costly?
Does the platform and model allow for easy integration?
Will the user interface be easy to use for beginners, yet feature rich for power users?
How often does the software update?
After upgrading, will updates maintain credibility with integrations?
Who’s doing the support? How much will it cost?
Who’s in control?
Do I own my data?
Will I need to make a hardware purchase?
If I’m using the cloud, how much uptime is guaranteed?
If in the cloud, what protections are taken with data?

These are some of the base level questions you’ll need to ask, but not the only ones. Be sure to get everything in writing as part of the service-level agreement. Stay tuned for a comparison of cloud, hosted, and on-premises and their ability to answer each of these questions in a future blog.

The Buyer’s Journey

Making the decision to upgrade accounting software is no small task, and should be taken with the highest gravity. For more information, please download the Buyer’s Guide to Purchasing Accounting Software from our friends at Intacct.

How to Know When QuickBooks No Longer Makes the Cut

February 13, 2017/0 Comments/in Intacct, Outgrowing QuickBooks /by rinehimerbaker

When a business outgrows an entry-level accounting software like QuickBooks, financial decision-makers have a series of realizations, decisions, and questions that will define the way their organization works in the near- and long-term future.

The first realization is often one of the hardest: Realizing that “It’s time.” For many of us, QuickBooks is like the first apartment we have out of college: affordable, cozy, and humble—essentially a roof over your head. Too quickly, however, that “roof over your head” becomes a constraint. You’re running out of space and you need more from your investment.

When a “Roof Over Your Head” Accounting Software Holds You Back from Growth

Similar to that small apartment, QuickBooks has constraints, namely in the form of theoretical company file size limitations—once the file size reaches 150 MB for Pro and Premiere and 1 GB for Enterprise, or the number of list items in the file exceeds 10,000 (Pro/Premiere) or 100,000 (Enterprise), the software begins to slow down, data gets corrupted, and working in QuickBooks becomes a hassle, according to a QuickBooks support company.

The company goes on to recommend three options—one of which includes starting a brand new company file, a process that includes recreating all of your opening balances and lists.

Even if you do take this “brute force” approach of starting a new company file, it’s likely as a growing business that you’re processing more transactions, paying more employees, and working with more suppliers, meaning that it’s only a matter of time before you have to do this again.

Common Complaints and Why They Occur

Size is just one of the issues that growing organizations face. A survey completed by a Colorado-based QuickBooks support company found that while QuickBooks was regarded for its ease of use and ability to meet basic business needs, business users also found many issues:

Limited reporting
Double entry and keying errors
Generic and impersonal support
Standalone application Lacks integration
Speed

There are many reasons for these issues:

The first two of these are generally the result of QuickBooks’ need for you to use Excel for any additional functionality.
The lack of personalized support comes from the sheer size and broad focus of the company—85% of the estimated 29.6 million small businesses in the US use
The lack of integration comes as a result of many reasons including its original nature as a desktop application (QuickBooks Online has made improvements, but there’s still a long road ahead) and its focus on basic small business accounting (which often doesn’t need other software like that for T&E, Billing, or CRM).
Speed is a result of the aforementioned file size issues, as well as the amount of manual processes, lack of integration, and the need of growing businesses for advanced functionality.

Making the Jump: Accounting Software for Every Size

When day-to-day operations become days-to-days, month-end closing takes weeks to complete, and reporting requires a melting pot of applications to complete, it’s time to realize that you’ve made it—you’ve hit the point when congratulations are in order. Your business has become highly successful, but in order to continue this success, it’s time to make a change.

Just as you left your tiny apartment for something bigger that met your needs, so must you make the decision to take the leap to the next step to choose something that can handle your business in its current state. Unlike your apartment, the “next step” will have fewer constraints, even if you grow.

Since 1997, Intacct has been a leading option for growing businesses, and has continued to improve its offering, now providing the same highly-functional, best-of-breed accounting with affordable options for businesses of all sizes—from the emerging small business to the software startup to the pre- and post-IPO public company.

Next Steps

Learn more about what it means for your business when you outgrow QuickBooks, and learn more about how to make the decision by downloading the latest whitepaper on choosing an accounting software for your growing business.

rinehimerbaker has released a new whitepaper for companies outgrowing QuickBooks. Outgrowing QuickBooks—How to Know It’s Time to Change shares the challenges that businesses face when growing, and the opportunities they have to ease growth. Learn more by reading the first 3 pages of the whitepaper below: