Leading a successful, honest nonprofit requires a lot of attention to detail. With regulators and watchdogs breathing down your neck, standards boards making the reporting process more complicated than ever, and more competition for donor and grantor money, running a nonprofit is more challenging than ever.
Many Reporting Challenges, Many Stakeholders
How many people do you answer to? How many different ways do you have to answer a question? At a traditional small or medium for-profit company, answering these questions is often somewhat straightforward. However, for a financial professional at a nonprofit, this is much more disparate, and many stakeholders expect ad hoc reporting from the finance department for a much more disparate set of metrics and entities.
Think of what you need to track, how you need to track it, and who needs these questions answered. How often do you need to drill down to a specific metric to answer the questions of a potential or current large donor or grantor who wants to see if the money is being used effectively? How fast do these entities want this information?
The landscape is complex, with financial leaders at nonprofits facing the following battle, answering questions from stakeholders about many different metrics and dimensions:
| Nonprofits need to account for: |
Reporting to the following Stakeholders |
| · Funds
· Grants
· Projects
· Programs
· Locations
· Board
· More |
· Board
· Donors
· Grantors
· Staff
· Executives
· Congregation
· More |
Worse yet, if you’re like so many others, you have to make all of this reporting happen in spreadsheets. This means more time, effort, and unfortunately, errors as you attempt to cut and paste data between spreadsheets. This poses a problem, creating an environment in which nearly 90% of spreadsheets have errors.
The Answer: Simplify, Categorize, and Automate
When you need to answer multiple questions from multiple people about multiple data—fast, the easiest way to make this happen is through point-and-click reporting and automation. This is where Sage Intacct is built to meet the needs of nonprofit organizations, letting you get set up with point-and-click tagging, categorization, and customization. Better yet, add multiple attributes to a single element to improve analysis and comparison.
The Problem with Spreadsheets: Unnecessary Complexity
A recent webcast, The Modern Day General Ledger: Leveraging Cloud Technology for NFP Accounting, explored the challenges that even a nonprofit with a simple structure faces to account for a task like printing. This example nonprofit had a relatively simple setup:
- Five Funds: G&A, School, Facilities, Cap Assets, and Debts
- Four Grants: Federal, State, Local, Corporate
- Three Programs: Fundraising, Management/General, and Other
- One Restriction: Unrestricted/Restricted
With a spreadsheet-based approach, this nonprofit will need 60 different combinations of accounts—just to accomplish some form of printing. If you add a new grant, guess what, the account just grew from 60 to 75. Add on this another program (now at 5/5/4/1), it grows to 100. Maybe the grantor has a specific restriction, and you’re up to 200 combinations of numbers.
The Answer: Smarter Chart of Accounts
On the other hand, with a smarter solution like Sage Intacct, you can tag an action or line item as you need, reducing errors and speeding up the reporting process. Rather than setting up dozens or hundreds of different combinations, just select printing. From there, you can move down a list of drop-down menus so that the expense is sent to the right location. This presents less chance for a finger slip throwing everything out of whack. On top of this, you can even scan the invoice so that even in an audit, you can track down when, where, and how something happened.
Bringing it All Together: Answering the Who, What, and Where
By taking advantage of a smarter chart of accounts, it becomes easier than ever to answer the who, what, and where (when it needs to be answered). Through dimension-based accounting, nonprofit financial leaders can tag a transaction or line item in any combination they see fit. Sage Intacct offers eight standard dimensions, but takes this one step further by allowing you to tailor a dimension as needed:
|
Standard Dimension |
Tailored Dimension |
| Who |
Customer, Vendor, Employee |
Customer, Member, Funder |
| Where |
Project, Department, Location |
Project, Grant, Department, Cost Center, Program, Fund, Ministry |
| What |
Item, Class |
Item, Service, Restriction |
What This All Means
You may be thinking, “So what?” Good question, with a much better answer.
You want to save time, right? You want to generate more revenue for your mission, right? You want to make your own life easier, right?
That’s what dimension-based reporting is for. By taking advantage of flexible dimensions, you can improve the quality of your reports, you can do so in less time, and you can answer questions like “should we make this purchase now?” or “how can I be sure my money is going where it needs to?” quickly, easily, and accurately.
Learn More: Sage Intacct Making Life Easier for Thousands of Companies and Nonprofits
With over 11,000 highly satisfied customers, many of them in the nonprofit space, Sage Intacct has become a leader in the movement to improve the lives of nonprofit leaders and cut down the red tape between them and those they hope to serve. Whether the nonprofit is a church, association, charity, or school, they have been there, helping finance professionals to save time and money, making life easier, and helping these organizations get closer to accomplishing their mission. We welcome you to watch the entire webcast from Sage Intacct, and read some of the following case studies to learn more:
Meet the Tech Savvy CFO of 2017
/0 Comments/in Chief Financial Officer, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerAs 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.
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.
The Rising Value of the Strategic CFO
/0 Comments/in Chief Financial Officer, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerTechnology 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:
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.
6 Questions to Ask to Narrow Down Cloud Accounting Vendors
/0 Comments/in Cloud, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerIf 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:
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.
Seven Reasons Growing Businesses Love the Cloud
/0 Comments/in Cloud, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerWhat 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.
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.
Exploring The ROI of Cloud Accounting
/0 Comments/in Cloud, Intacct /by rinehimerbaker“What’s our ROI going to be?” If you’re considering moving your company’s accounting practices into the cloud, this is one of the top questions on your mind. You’re making a change to the way you manage your finances—and updating your technology is a big step in the right direction. But how can you be sure that your investment in a cloud-based solution is going to pay off and keep yielding returns?
Why the Cloud Delivers Faster Time to Value
A cloud environment, put simply, affords a growing business more agility and flexibility than any of their traditional alternatives. Consider the on-premise systems and boxed software programs that reside on your business machines (servers and PCs): they require you to maintain an IT infrastructure, which can be costly to establish and take care of. They’re costly from the get-go.
With cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, on the other hand, users access their apps, tools, and data over the internet. Their computing and delivery models make them inherently more cost-effective and scalable for long-term value. Take a look at these powerful stats:
Let’s take a closer look at what impacts the ROI of a cloud accounting solution:
Lower Implementation Costs
Cloud deployments, finds Nucleus Research, incur 63% lower initial consulting and implementation costs than on-premise ones. As we just stated, adopting a cloud accounting solution doesn’t require the purchase of new hardware and software licenses, or even the hiring of a skilled IT staff.
Moving financials to the cloud is a straightforward process for companies with basic infrastructures. They can upgrade to a best-in-class system without adding complexity to their tech environment. That means getting up to speed with web-based software is a faster, easier, and can provide results in a matter of a few short weeks—sometimes sooner.
Learn more in How Upgrading to the Cloud Lets You Hit the Ground Running.
Lower Maintenance Costs
According to Strategy&, the total cost of ownership for a cloud-based solution can be 50-60% less than for traditional solutions over a 10-year period. And Nucleus Research reports that on an ongoing basis, companies spend an average of 55% less on personnel to support cloud applications compared to on-premise deployments and they use an average of 91% less energy to boot.
These savings can be attributed to the cloud software vendors’ subscription model. Customers pay a per-user subscription fee for use of the software, hosting, and support, making the arrangement highly scalable as the company grows and adds new functionality and users. And vendor’s IT team—not your internal IT team—manages the upgrades, patching, user support, etc. It’s part of the service you pay for, enabling you to focus on building your business, not your IT systems.
“Automatic” Savings and Productivity Gains.
When your business replaces manual processes and workflows with automation, cost savings tend to follow naturally. Automating key financial and accounting processes is essential to saving time, increasing data accuracy, and ultimately, lowering costs. But don’t fail to take into account your employees’ ability to work from anywhere and on any connected device. And this includes users from the back office to the executive suite. There’s a great deal of ROI-supporting “power” in the real-time insights users can uncover 24/7. Take a more detailed look in How the Cloud Provides Real Time Insights for Real Time Decision Making.
Features and Functionality
Cloud-based software solutions are ideal for companies in the midst of growth. A cloud environment is an ecosystem that’s ready for evolution. Cloud accounting software suites typically come standard with core functionality that can be expanded as your business needs change—as your company takes on new clients, partners with more vendors, adds locations or product lines, etc. It’s easy to plug wew cloud accounting software modules into your existing workflow without a great deal of programming or “moving around” of data. This holds true for integrations, too, as cloud software is built with flexible APIs that enable seamless connecting of business systems.
The net result of this scalable product enhancement is that your business can grow without significant additional investments—and with each addition of new functionality, your team is able to add more value. Find out How Cloud Accounting Lets Users Take Control of Process.
Contact us to learn more about our cloud technology services and solutions.
What Does It Mean to Buy with Confidence in the Cloud?
/0 Comments/in Cloud, Intacct, Outgrowing QuickBooks /by rinehimerbakerHave you ever bought something, only to have buyers’ remorse? It’s a pretty terrible feeling—buying something, only to find out it didn’t hold up to your expectations or worse, feeling like you were the victim of a “bait and switch.” Maybe you made a decision without getting all of the facts, or maybe you were given information you thought to be accurate that turned out to be false (as discussed in our ‘Faux Cloud’ blog). Read more
Top Obstacles to Revenue Recognition Adoption for Healthcare Providers
/0 Comments/in ASC 606 IFRS 15, Intacct, Medical Practices /by rinehimerbakerThe healthcare industry in the United States is unique in many ways—for better and for worse. As the last country without centralized healthcare, providers and producers in the United States are still compelled to innovate and create new solutions that improve outcomes. However, the healthcare system in the US is also immensely complex, with many key players who have a say in how a patient works with a provider.
That said, providers enter into contracts with many of the third parties to provide services at different rates, and when entering with a contract to be paid by a government entity, the providers may be subject to retroactive adjustment. On top of this, some patients may not have a third-party payer and may not be able to pay, making collection unlikely.
ASC 606 Poses Challenges for Pricing and Contracts
This combination poses challenges for finance professionals throughout the healthcare continuum, and with new revenue recognition standards on the horizon, new challenges could manifest. A recent CFO Magazine article explored some of the problems that go into recognizing revenue at healthcare organizations, especially as it pertains to the third step: Determining the transaction price.
“There’s an especially wide diversity of provider types within the health-care system, including hospitals, health plans, physician practices, nursing facilities, and retirement communities. They all have specific nuances to them, and one size does not fit all” in terms of how they recognize revenue, says Venson Wallin, a managing director at BDO.
Consolidation, Diverse Revenue Streams, and the Recognition Challenges Ahead
Add on to this the consolidation of providers of varying services into larger health groups, and the financial professionals, legal team, and accountants will need to do a lot of work to understand and represent an ever-diversifying set of payments, contracts, and metrics.
“When trying to represent such diverse revenue streams in financial statements, health-care organizations will need to be careful to include appropriate supplemental disclosures and discussions to avoid inadvertently presenting misleading information,” according to a BDO alert on the subject.
Value Based Payment Initiative
With Boomers reaching retirement age and the expansion of Medicaid continuing, healthcare facilities accepting Medicare and Medicaid will need to play by the government’s rules. These rules, of course, include the new value-based payment initiative set up under the ACA. Under the value-based payment initiative, acute-care hospitals will receive variable payments based on the quality of care Medicare beneficiaries receive.
This shift poses its own challenges, as value-based payments move payments away from a quantity-based fee-for-service model and toward a model where reimbursements are based on “episodes of care” in which services directed at fixing a medical problem are bundled together for billing purposes.
“The program presents health-care CFOs with the added difficulty of tracking a whole new set of quality metrics on top of the straight payment metrics of the existing fee-for-service,” according to Wallin. “What’s more, the quality metrics are likely to be different for the physician and nursing groups within an integrated health-care organization,” he says.
This, according to the CFO article, will make the estimation of the transaction price a challenge for CFOs.
Bracing for The Future: How Healthcare Organization Finance Departments Can Thrive in the Cloud
The new guidance will take effect three months from now for public companies and just over 15 months for private ones. While this change hopes to simplify the revenue recognition process across many different industries, the process of adapting to the new standards poses unique challenges as well. From shared savings arrangements to bundled payments to self-pay (first-party) patients, healthcare providers have to look at services and revenue in a new light.
No matter how you look at it, this is just one of many different changes that financial leaders at healthcare providers will need to brace for as 2018 and 2019 approach. We covered many of the future concerns in our most recent whitepaper, Modern Financial Management and Cloud Accounting at Healthcare Organizations, which introduces readers to Sage Intacct, the first software of its kind built to handle revenue recognition challenges. Preview the whitepaper below and download it here.
ASC 606 Step-by-Step Step 5: Recognize the Revenue When/As a Performance Obligation is Satisfied
/0 Comments/in ASC 606 IFRS 15, Intacct /by rinehimerbakerWe’re entering the home stretch—in more ways than one. As we enter the Fall, private companies now have one year and one quarter to complete their transition to the new ASC 606/IFRS 15 standards pertaining to the way that all contracts are managed and accounted for. Additionally, we are entering the home stretch for this blog series, which took an in-depth look at the changes that are being made and the processes that will need to be changed as organizations get closer and closer to the effective date.
Today, we will close out our Step-by-Step Series, which looked to break down the 156-page standard and provide key takeaways, including who ASC 606 affects, a brief overview on the five steps, and a look at how ASC 606 will affect different industries. For more information, see each step in detail below.
ASC 606 Deep Dive Step 5: Recognizing Revenue
Biggest Impact: Aerospace & Defense, Asset Managers, Construction/Building/Engineering, Manufacturers, Licensors, Real Estate, Software
The last step in the revenue recognition process is to recognize the revenue after the performance obligations are fulfilled by the supplier. With certain rule-changing regarding costs to obtain a contract and specific disclosure requirements, the new rules pose large changes to the accounting practices for nearly every industry, with the exception of asset managers, healthcare, and telecommunications.
Recognizing Revenue
For many contracts, in which a performance obligation is satisfied when a good or service is transferred to a customer, revenue recognition is a simple process—transferring the promised good and recognizing revenue after it is transferred:
Performance Obligations Satisfied Over Time
The process for recognizing revenue differs slightly in the event that an entity satisfies a performance obligation over time. In order for performance obligations to be met over time, and revenue to be recognized in this way, one of the following three criteria must be met.
Measuring Over-Time Progress: Input and Output Measurements
For these, companies take a different approach, in which a provider will measure progress using one of the following two methods, output and input.
Satisfying Performance Obligations at a Point In Time
The alternative to over-time satisfaction of performance obligations is the satisfaction of performance obligations at a point in time.
Point in Time Consideration: Transfer of Control
To determine the point in time at which a customer obtains control of a promised asset and an entity satisfies a performance obligation, the entity would consider indicators of the transfer of control. Control, and therefore transfer of control, is explained as the following:
Additional Issues to Look At
In addition to the issues regarding transfers, there are certain practices that need to be heeded regarding things like repurchase agreements, consignment agreements, bill and hold agreements, customer acceptance, and more, as discussed in the full text and KPMG Revenue Issues In Depth Article.
Conclusion: Time to Get Moving
15 months may seem like a long time (it’s only three if you’re a public entity), but many organizations are seeing challenges in making the move to implement new processes and systems to meet the requirements of the new standard.
Even if we’re posting monthly blogs leading up to the effective date, you should already be looking at transition methods and other industry-specific considerations that you need to make. To address this, we’ve compiled a list of resources for companies looking to prepare for the upcoming standard:
On Demand Webcasts: ASC 606/IFRS 15
Sage Intacct recently presented a three-part series on the new standards, which you can view on-demand.
We welcome you to peer through the full text, the AICPA guidance, and to get in contact with us to learn more about preparing for ASC 606 with outsourced accounting services and/or a new accounting software designed with new RevRec Standards in mind.
How Medical Practices Can Leverage Modern Financial Technology
/0 Comments/in Intacct, Medical Practices /by rinehimerbakerThe medical provider industry has undergone massive change over the past decade, and with possible changes like tort reform on the horizon, provider organizations will need to stay on their game as new innovations and challenges change the landscape that is the healthcare industry.
Additionally, providers need to look at omnipresent challenges and threats posed to their organization from regulators, watchdogs, and cybercriminals who will gladly crush your organization for their own gain.
Healthcare Organizations Face Challenges, Finance Pros at Healthcare Organizations Face Even More
But for the financial professional, the aforementioned issues are just part of the set of challenges you face on a day to day basis. You’re dealing with the same cybersecurity, talent, and regulatory challenges that your non-financial colleagues need to handle, but you also have to answer all the questions posed by regulators, payers, and board members about where the money is going. But, it’s what happens when you’re the person with all the answers.
As your healthcare organization grows, however, being the person with all the answers becomes more and more challenging, as you’re sourcing data from more and more sources, and the time it takes to bring it all together grows. Adding a new location means adding (at least) a few hours per week to roll up the information and present it in a way that is useful. There comes a point when you just run out of time.
If you’re trying to do all this with spreadsheets, good luck answering if and when an audit happens. With nearly 90 percent of spreadsheets containing errors, it’s likely you’ll have to backtrack, reorganize, and correct a few things before you can even answer a question. But, there is a better way, one that provides automation to make your life easier, security that meets the needs of healthcare organizations, and user-friendly functionality so that you’re not calling IT for every tiny change.
Get the Guide to Modern Financial Management for Healthcare Organizations
We recently completed our latest whitepaper, the Guide to Modern Financial Management and Cloud Accounting for Healthcare Organizations, which aims to show readers the skills and technologies needed to own the financial future of your healthcare organization in the face of changes and challenges sure to affect the way your business operates.
From finding new ways to automate to leveraging enhanced security functionality to always having the latest software, this guide will show you what it takes to be successful in 2017, 2018, and beyond. Learn more about the guide by reading the preview below, and download it in its entirety here.
How Nonprofit Leaders Can Regain Control of Their Chart of Accounts
/0 Comments/in Intacct, Nonprofits /by rinehimerbakerLeading a successful, honest nonprofit requires a lot of attention to detail. With regulators and watchdogs breathing down your neck, standards boards making the reporting process more complicated than ever, and more competition for donor and grantor money, running a nonprofit is more challenging than ever.
Many Reporting Challenges, Many Stakeholders
How many people do you answer to? How many different ways do you have to answer a question? At a traditional small or medium for-profit company, answering these questions is often somewhat straightforward. However, for a financial professional at a nonprofit, this is much more disparate, and many stakeholders expect ad hoc reporting from the finance department for a much more disparate set of metrics and entities.
Think of what you need to track, how you need to track it, and who needs these questions answered. How often do you need to drill down to a specific metric to answer the questions of a potential or current large donor or grantor who wants to see if the money is being used effectively? How fast do these entities want this information?
The landscape is complex, with financial leaders at nonprofits facing the following battle, answering questions from stakeholders about many different metrics and dimensions:
· Grants
· Projects
· Programs
· Locations
· Board
· More
· Donors
· Grantors
· Staff
· Executives
· Congregation
· More
Worse yet, if you’re like so many others, you have to make all of this reporting happen in spreadsheets. This means more time, effort, and unfortunately, errors as you attempt to cut and paste data between spreadsheets. This poses a problem, creating an environment in which nearly 90% of spreadsheets have errors.
The Answer: Simplify, Categorize, and Automate
When you need to answer multiple questions from multiple people about multiple data—fast, the easiest way to make this happen is through point-and-click reporting and automation. This is where Sage Intacct is built to meet the needs of nonprofit organizations, letting you get set up with point-and-click tagging, categorization, and customization. Better yet, add multiple attributes to a single element to improve analysis and comparison.
The Problem with Spreadsheets: Unnecessary Complexity
A recent webcast, The Modern Day General Ledger: Leveraging Cloud Technology for NFP Accounting, explored the challenges that even a nonprofit with a simple structure faces to account for a task like printing. This example nonprofit had a relatively simple setup:
With a spreadsheet-based approach, this nonprofit will need 60 different combinations of accounts—just to accomplish some form of printing. If you add a new grant, guess what, the account just grew from 60 to 75. Add on this another program (now at 5/5/4/1), it grows to 100. Maybe the grantor has a specific restriction, and you’re up to 200 combinations of numbers.
The Answer: Smarter Chart of Accounts
On the other hand, with a smarter solution like Sage Intacct, you can tag an action or line item as you need, reducing errors and speeding up the reporting process. Rather than setting up dozens or hundreds of different combinations, just select printing. From there, you can move down a list of drop-down menus so that the expense is sent to the right location. This presents less chance for a finger slip throwing everything out of whack. On top of this, you can even scan the invoice so that even in an audit, you can track down when, where, and how something happened.
Bringing it All Together: Answering the Who, What, and Where
By taking advantage of a smarter chart of accounts, it becomes easier than ever to answer the who, what, and where (when it needs to be answered). Through dimension-based accounting, nonprofit financial leaders can tag a transaction or line item in any combination they see fit. Sage Intacct offers eight standard dimensions, but takes this one step further by allowing you to tailor a dimension as needed:
What This All Means
You may be thinking, “So what?” Good question, with a much better answer.
You want to save time, right? You want to generate more revenue for your mission, right? You want to make your own life easier, right?
That’s what dimension-based reporting is for. By taking advantage of flexible dimensions, you can improve the quality of your reports, you can do so in less time, and you can answer questions like “should we make this purchase now?” or “how can I be sure my money is going where it needs to?” quickly, easily, and accurately.
Learn More: Sage Intacct Making Life Easier for Thousands of Companies and Nonprofits
With over 11,000 highly satisfied customers, many of them in the nonprofit space, Sage Intacct has become a leader in the movement to improve the lives of nonprofit leaders and cut down the red tape between them and those they hope to serve. Whether the nonprofit is a church, association, charity, or school, they have been there, helping finance professionals to save time and money, making life easier, and helping these organizations get closer to accomplishing their mission. We welcome you to watch the entire webcast from Sage Intacct, and read some of the following case studies to learn more: