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NAIFA Moves Its ERP to the Cloud with Sage Intacct
Learn how NAIFA supports its 90 chapters across America with Sage Intacct in the cloud, providing improved access and data security, and better financial reporting and insights.
NAIFA moves its ERP to the cloud with Sage Intacct to unite multi-entity accounting processes and better serve its chapters.In this case study:
Client: National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors
Industry: Financial Services
Products and Services: Sage Intacct, Migrating from local servers to the cloud, Security improvements, Licensing, Reporting and insights
Country: USA
“Our Quisitive consultant played a key role in helping us to rebuild our accounting processes to accommodate the new realities of our business. They worked to learn about our individual needs and how we work and helped us take our vision and make it a reality in Sage Intacct.”
Vice President of Finance, NAIFA
About NAIFA
The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) was established in 1890 in Boston. Since then, it has been delivering on its mission to advocate for a positive legislative and regulatory environment, enhance business and professional skills, and promote the ethical conduct of its members. As a proactive and dynamic organization, NAIFA empowers new services for its members whenever possible. But with nearly a hundred chapters spanning 50 states and over 40,000 members, things can get complicated.
The Need for a Cloud ERP and Accounting System
In 2018, NAIFA began offering association management services for its 90 chapters across the country, including much-needed accounting services. NAIFA knew that this new service offering could not be supported by its existing accounting platforms. The organization’s structure was already highly complex, with foundations and PACs not only at the national level but also run by many branches. This new service offering meant they had to find a new solution to accommodate the existing customizations and new scale needed to serve its members properly.
The organization’s leadership board was also pushing to migrate all business systems to the cloud. NAIFA’s existing platform was deployed on-premise, meaning users could only access the system using a VPN connection. Meanwhile, staff were using Sage 50, also installed on-premise on a local server. Security was a concern, and upgrades were becoming problematic. NAIFA knew that to support members with effective and secure accounting services, it needed to migrate its accounting platform to the cloud.
NAIFA had been working with Quisitive as a partner to support their Dynamics SL solution and knew that Quisitive was also an experienced partner across many ERP cloud platforms, including Dynamics Business Central and Sage Intacct. Staff were hearing great things about Sage Intacct as a solution for multi-entity accounting management and reached out to Quisitive to help them get started.
Rebuilding in the Cloud
NAIFA’s team approached the migration as an opportunity to review and optimize its accounting structure and processes. NAIFA’s team wanted to completely change their approach to accommodate the new reality of their organization, and this was the perfect time to evaluate what was working and what would be needed to accommodate the new multi-entity accounting services model they were striving to achieve.
The Impact
Redesigning their accounting system from the ground up with Sage Intacct and Quisitive was a significant project, but it also presented NAIFA with a range of new opportunities to streamline processes and realize substantial results.
Uniform Chart of Accounts
One of the accounting team’s major needs was preparing a uniform chart of accounts. NAIFA’s increasing organizational complexity included four entities at the national level and almost a hundred branches, each with sub-entities of their own. Seeing the big picture for the organization’s finances was tremendously important. With the new chart of accounts in Sage Intacct, they can now create consolidated financial statements and view organization results in one place—which is a major strategic win for the organization.
Better Tracking of Finances
Consolidating the financial systems across the organization dramatically improved how the accounting groups could work and collaborate. The national office has been able to do more to help chapters, with both sides having more visibility into each other’s accounting. More complex invoicing and charging across the organization is also now possible, enabling the accounting team to track finances with greater precision.
Improved Financial Insights
Another significant benefit of using Sage Intacct is the reporting, dashboards, and insights that NAIFA has been able to leverage. Department heads can now clearly see critical financial metrics and reports on an ongoing basis and quickly drill down to the details they need for tracking and decision-making. They no longer need to navigate through and interpret a large, complex, and sometimes confusing spreadsheet to get information.
Improved Access to Financials
The move to a Cloud ERP also had some expected advantages. As 2020 progressed and the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of virtual work, the growing NAIFA financial team was operating more and more remotely. Sage Intacct’s consolidated reporting and ability to maintain all entities in one environment online with 24-7 access have been highly valuable and set NAIFA apart in its ability to support chapters.
With these benefits, NAIFA’s move to the cloud is considered a major success across the organization.
“Quisitive knows Cloud-ERP and helped us smoothly migrate complex multi-entity accounting processes to Sage Intacct. We couldn’t be happier with the results and benefits we are seeing.”
Vice President of Finance, NAIFA
A Better Way Forward
NAIFA’s move to the cloud-based Sage Intacct platform was a significant win. It enables their staff to leverage accounting data from any location and manage all their entities in one system. The organization no longer has to budget for and manage upgrades or worry about critical data security threats of disparate on-premise systems.
Innovative and fresh possibilities are already appearing with Sage Intacct at NAIFA. Having all financial data available in one place enables a much more detailed understanding of the operations of individual chapters and helps leadership navigate precarious times with greater agility. NAIFA plans to leverage Intacct’s budgeting capabilities in the future to provide a standard financial statement for each chapter and recommendations for their financing and budgeting.
A recent survey conducted by Sage found that 93% of financial leaders are under pressure to accelerate month-end close. Finance teams everywhere are feeling the pressures to “close faster” and are looking for ways to shorten the average month-end close cycle from the average of 10-12 days.
Monthly close is an important task performed by the finance team where financial information is collected and made available to be analyzed by leaders and other stakeholders. The result of the data collected may produce cash flow statements, fixed assets and inventory levels, Income and Expense Reports, Balance Sheets, and a variety of other reports which help provide visibility into the financial health of the company and are used for important decision making.
An accurate and streamlined month-end closing process leads to fewer errors, better allocation of resources, and most importantly, information being routed to leaders for planning.
So how can finance and accounting teams “close faster” and better?
Tackling The Challenges of Month-End Closing
Month-end close is often dreaded by many accounting and finance professionals. Collecting the information needed to “close the books” every month is a data-intensive task.
This is compounded by the fact that not all information needed can come directly from the accounting team and must be collected by multiple business units and systems. Financial data comes from several disparate data sources. Finance managers must often create multiple spreadsheets to manage labor-intensive data cleansing, which slows down the process and increases the risk of outdated information and errors.
Most accounting teams not using an enterprise ERP are likely managing things like Fixed Assets, bank account reconciliations, deferred revenues, inventory, and pre-paid expenses outside of the accounting system (off-ledger). This means a lot of duplicate data entry, files, and manual lookup is needed to close the books and produce accurate reports.
Outdated or inaccurate information and reports directly affect your leader’s ability to make effective business decisions, making it very risky to rely on disparate data sources.
Tips for Best Practices Month-End Closing
#1: Start with a list!
Having a checklist is a good place to start as it streamlines the workload and ensures governance in information collection. Remember that a checklist is simply a tool to provide guidance and may need to be continually revised and updated to reflect changes to the business.
Your month-end checklist should include instructions for things like:
- Gathering bank statements
- Gathering necessary data from business leaders
- Reconciling sub-ledgers for auditors
- Calculating depreciation
- Recognizing deferred revenue and prepaid expenses
- Completing general month-end journal entries
- Consolidating inventory data
- Producing the correct financial statements
- Etc.
Efficiencies in this process matter as every hour saved means teams are more likely to meet or exceed the month-end closing deadline. Leadership depends on timely monthly reports and must be made aware if there are delays expected in the closing or reporting process.
#2: Delegate and Communicate
Communicate early and often with your team and leadership and make sure timelines are on track, or any delays are known.
Also, ensure everyone outside the finance team is aware of the timeline and expectations on their part. Building a relationship with other teams within your organization and providing clear goals and objectives required to complete the month-end process is part of the finance team’s responsibility. Often, finance leaders will host monthly or quarterly pre-close meetings to review the objectives and ensure timelines can be met.
This eBook offers more insights on how to manage your month-end process.
#3: Facilitate Month-End Close with Automation & Technology
With month-end close deadlines shortening, and teams stretched, the days of spreadsheet-based month-end close are numbered. Modern accounting teams leverage technology and automation to eliminate manual accounting tasks and deliver timely data and reports throughout the entire accounting cycle.
Today’s financial management solutions, like Sage Intacct and Microsoft Dynamics, provide many opportunities to streamline accounting tasks, data collection, month-end close and reporting.
By leveraging a complete cloud-ERP solution with integration and automation, manual work is eliminated and key accounting data points are kept up-to-date and available for reporting.
Leveraging technology to collect, sort, and calculate data reduces the risk of human error and facilitates the month-end closing. For example, technology improves how payables are posted and tracked all month long. When invoices are captured electronically, they are automatically coded, routed and approved, eliminating the need to collect that data at month-end. Another key way technology augments the month-end close process is through online data collection and reporting. When data from multiple systems and teams is fed into a central location, it is much easier to get one version of truth to use for decision-making.
There is no limit to the efficiencies that can be created with technology. Imagine being able to auto-post pre-paid expenses and recognize revenues automatically based on specific parameters and profiles. Technology allows you to automate the bank reconciliation process by importing bank statements directly into your ERP and can cut approvals in half with routing. Modern ERP solutions even offer real-time dashboards so leaders aren’t knocking on your door at month-end. If you are relying on a manual process for month-end close, or the technology you rely on is not robust enough to handle end-to-end financial management, it is worth investing in the right solution to facilitate accounting processes. Most organizations should expect to see considerable returns on the investment through time savings, a reduction in accounting and data errors, and improved insight.
Close Faster, Report Better
Quisitive is your trusted partner for complete digital transformation, including helping you leverage proven and scalable cloud accounting and ERP solutions to streamline key accounting processes and use your data for decision-making.
Book your free ERP assessment with us and we’ll assess your needs and recommend the best solution and path for success.
972.573.0995 | [email protected]
As you begin your journey of deploying a new financial management solution, one key decision in your planning is to determine if a multi-entity ERP system setup is necessary.
A multi-entity company is a business that may have subsidiaries, divisions units or brands.
For multi-entity organizations, it is essential to have a centralized system with access to real-time information. When working with multiple entities in your ERP system, you can view financial data at each entity level, but it is often impossible to roll up results to the corporate level. Because each entity likely has its own bank accounts, jurisdictions, and perhaps tax structures, roll-up is a nightmare unless your ERP or accounting system is designed to unify this data. The result is a lot of wasted time and errors caused by manually consolidating data.
Leveraging the experience of an implementation team, like those at Quisitive, can help ensure your Sage Intacct multi-entity environment is structured to take advantage of the strength of product.
Sage Intacct setup uses containers in implementing their solution. Some simple questions to ask when determining to deploy multi-entity vs. single-entity container include:
- Are there user restrictions to access to data within an entity?
- Are Tax ID and 1099 reporting required by entity?
- Are there automated inter-entity transactions, especially within AP and AR?
- Are you manually consolidating more than four entities each year?
If you answer YES to any of the above questions, multi-entity containers must be set up.
You must understand the difference between an Entity and a Location when building out the financial management solution design. As you move to the implementation of your Sage Intacct multi-entity environment, it is important to keep the following Sage Intacct design considerations in mind:
- Entities are parents to locations and essentially are part of the location dimension.
- If an organization has a separate FEIN, they need to be entities.
- Locations cannot maintain separate tax ID or separate 1099 reporting.
- Automatic inter-entity transactions only work across entities not between locations.
Sage Intacct leverages what is called a TOP LEVEL which gives you access to all entities that a user has permissions to. Based on a user’s access rights will determine if they log in at the TOP LEVEL or at the Entity Level. Best practices for what should be set up at the TOP LEVEL typically include the following:
Master Data, this includes:
- Users
- Dimensions
- Chart of Accounts
- Bank Accounts
- Transaction Definitions
If we think about why it is important to set up the above at the TOP LEVEL, first think about how sharing master data between all entities can reduce duplicates; and, the ability to use automatic inter-entity transactions helps to speed up data entry with minimizing data entry errors.
When implementing security within a multi-entity environment, often the end users ask that only certain users have access to certain things. Within Sage Intacct, this can be accomplished with user restrictions to entity/department or by setting up view-only users and restricting what objects a user has access to and then use Dashboards to limit reporting.
The functionality within a Sage Intacct multi-entity container is rich and can provide a great deal of analysis and insight when carefully designed before implementation begins. Working with an experienced team can eliminate “do-overs” during a deployment which can be costly and extend a go-live timeline.
Many companies that streamline their multi-entity consolidations correctly with Sage Intacct no longer rely on manual, error-prone consolidation or disparate data. Instead, they have control and visibility into real-time reporting and analytics across the entire organization. By having continuous access into multiple entities within a single view in Sage Intacct, executives are empowered to make strategic data-driven decisions to propel their business forward.
Contact us for a free ERP consultation
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Data Sheet: Cloud Accounting Software for Nonprofit Member Associations
Understand the ins and outs of Sage Intacct Accounting Software for Nonprofit Member Associations with this downloadable data sheet.
At Quisitive, we’re passionate about providing nonprofit accounting software that helps you navigate the complexity and demands of nonprofit financial management. Nonprofits face unique challenges: from compliance reporting to generating outcome metrics and providing real-time visibility—we want you to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what matters: advancing your mission.
In this datasheet, you’ll learn more about how Sage Intacct…
Is built for nonprofits
Provides real-time visibility and insights
Offers true cloud technology with open API
Contains a long list of capabilities
Is recognized by finance experts
Access the datasheet
Fill out the form to get instant access.
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Datasheet: Sage Intacct For the Data-Driven Finance Leader
Quisitive works with high growth, data-driven Financial Leaders who need to reduce risk and drive growth. Get the facts with this datasheet.
Understand the power of Sage Intacct, the #1 Financial Management Solution: Built for Finance by Finance.
Quisitive works with high-growth, data-driven Chief Financial Officers and VPs of Finance who need to reduce risk and drive growth instead of just documenting past financial performance.
Get the facts with this datasheet, Sage Intacct For the Data-Driven Finance Leader.
Access the datasheet
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eBook: The Benefits of Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations
Explore the clear benefits of Sage Intacct's Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations. Read more with our eBook.
Understand the power of Sage Intacct’s Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations.
We’re passionate about building nonprofit accounting software that helps you navigate the complexity and demands of nonprofit financial management.
In this eBook, The Benefits of Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations, we’ll cover…
Introduction: Accounting in the modern era
Cloud Computing: Why public benefit organizations are moving financial management to the cloud
Product Overview: Sage Intacct
Features and Benefits: Empowering the modern accounting team
Customer Success: Stories from the cloud
Conclusion: Accelerate your mission with Sage Intacct
Access the eBook
Fill out the form and get instant access.
Data Sheet: Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations
Spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what matters with Sage Intacct Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations. Learn more with this datasheet.
Understand the power of Sage Intacct’s Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations.
We’re passionate about building nonprofit accounting software that helps you navigate the complexity and demands of nonprofit financial management.
Public benefit nonprofits and quasi-governmental organizations face unique challenges: from compliance reporting to generating outcome metrics and providing real-time visibility—we want you to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what really matters—advancing your mission.
Learn more with this data sheet, Cloud Accounting Software for Public Benefit Organizations.
Access the data sheet
Fill out the form and get instant access.
eBook: Cloud Accounting Software for Community Improvement Nonprofits
Spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what really matters with Sage Intacct Accounting Software for Nonprofits. Read more.
Understand the power of Sage Intacct’s Cloud Accounting Software for Nonprofits
We’re passionate about building nonprofit accounting software that helps you navigate the complexity and demands of nonprofit financial management.
Nonprofits face unique challenges: from compliance reporting to generating outcome metrics and providing real-time visibility—we want you to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what really matters—advancing your mission.
Learn more with this eBook, Cloud Accounting Software for Community Improvement Nonprofits.
Access the eBook
Fill out the form and get instant access.