Nuqleous Racks Up Revenue, Efficiency Gains with Sage Ahead and SaaS Intelligence

Upgrading to an efficient and scalable finance tech stack was a top priority for Brendan Ahern upon becoming the VP of finance at Nuqleous, the leading SaaS provider of automated retail space planning and performance analytics solutions for retail and CPG companies.

With previous roles at PwC and a cloud technology company, Ahern knew the existing QuickBooks system couldn’t deliver the incisive financial reporting and accounting efficiency needed at Nuqleous, who is a software provider for blue chip consumer packaged goods brands.

Here’s what we’ll cover

Nuqleous and Sage Intacct

Improved cash flow

Optimizing Customer Insights and Revenue Metrics

An Ideal Out-of-the-Box Solution

Final thoughts

Nuqleous and Sage Intacct

Ahern had worked with Sage Intacct in the past. After a brief evaluation of other solutions, Nuqleous selected Sage Ahead, a prepackaged solution with built-in accounting, billing, rev rec, SaaS metrics, expenses, and cash flow that can be deployed in as quickly as 60 days.

They also leveraged SaaS Intelligence, featuring real-time dashboards on key SaaS metrics such as:

• customer churn,
• ARR,
• CAC,
• CLV,
• NRR,
• and many more.

“With Sage Intacct, you can start simple, and it will scale to handle as much complexity as you need it to,” Ahern says. “As for SaaS Intelligence, there’s really no better solution that implements directly with a recurring billing financial system.”

Improved cash flow

Choosing Sage Intacct has triggered remarkable improvements at Nuqleous, an Arkansas-based company named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies in 2023 for the third consecutive year:

• Reduced close time 80%, from 15 to four business days
• Cut SaaS waterfall reporting from one week to 15 minutes
• Automated rev rec with push of a button
• Improved customer lifetime value
• Improved cash flow
• Increased net revenue retention

“It probably took us 15-plus days a month to close and put together good, solid reporting to share with key stakeholders,” Ahern says. “Now we’re more or less done with our close process in three or four business days.”

Nuqleous then has additional time to fine-tune reporting, with variance analysis and deep insights not feasible with spreadsheets. Ahern says he’s running subscription revenue “waterfall” reports in 15 minutes with SaaS Intelligence. This used to take him a week at a previous employer using a custom approach.

“The ease of use in the SaaS Intelligence dashboard frees up time to focus on our strategic priorities,” Ahern says. “It gets you out of the minutiae of non-value add activities.”

Optimizing Customer Insights and Revenue Metrics

The Sage Intacct Contracts module and dimension-based reporting is paying off in more effective customer renewal management. With integration into Hubspot, it is providing insights that help account managers better understand customers, tailor pricing, and enhance cross-sell and upsell.

“Before, we tracked renewal management in spreadsheets, and it wasn’t easy to figure out who we needed to bill and when we needed to talk to customers,” Ahern says. “Now our account managers can go into the Contracts module, look at dates and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t talked to this customer in a little bit, it’s time to reach out.’”

That contributes to Nuqleous improving key SaaS revenue metrics.

An Ideal Out-of-the-Box Solution

The Contracts module is also automating revenue recognition, now done at the push of a button.

Nuqleous is realizing additional efficiency gains by taking advantage of Sage Intacct’s straightforward APIs to integrate with best-of-breed applications.

These include TriNet for payroll, Avalara for sales tax, and Ramp for expense management.

“You do the mappings once between TriNet and Sage Intacct and just push the payroll entries, which has been great,” Ahern says. “Sales tax tracking used to be very manual, and is now completely automated with the Avalara Avatax integration.”

The Sage Ahead packaged solution includes embedded best practices and prebuilt reports.

This has proven ideal for the company’s goals to swiftly improve financial management without extensive customizations.

“We didn’t need a huge custom environment, so the way Sage Ahead was configured was a great fit,” Ahern says.

“Given my past experience with Sage Intacct, I knew I could do additional configurations and customizations myself if we wanted to expand beyond the initial scope.”

Final thoughts

Nuqleous is one of a growing number of companies to adopt Sage Intacct.

Sage Intacct is the #1 solution of choice for SaaS companies who outgrow QuickBooks or migrate from a legacy system, according to a study by The SaaS CFO.

Learn more about what Sage Intacct can do for your SaaS company at www.sage.com/en-us/industry/subscription-saas/.