What’s new in Sage Intacct 2019 release 4?

I’m pleased to announce that the latest version of our award-winning cloud financial management software—Sage Intacct 2019 Release 4—is now available.

Release 4 offers new capabilities to save users hours of time, reduce compliance and business risk, and gain new and deeper insights. A few highlights include:

• Forecast more accurately with visibility into draft contracts
• Save hours complying with ASC 606 for service-based variable consideration
• Control your project profitability with task-level visibility
• Get operational insights with over 60 out-of-box interactive reports
• Access budget context from your financial reports with a couple clicks

Let’s take a closer look at some of the new Release 4 capabilities:

Forecast more accurately with draft contracts

Sometimes when you enter a contract, you may not be ready to post it. You might need to do some research, have someone else review it, or get an approval first. Or you may want to generate a new contract to plan a renewal. In Release 4, you can create contracts, contract lines, and expenses in a draft state. You can save your progress without posting to the Contracts subledger or general ledger. That means you’re able to research, verify, or plan before you post. Draft contracts also provide visibility into what’s coming, allowing you to forecast more accurately.

Save hours complying with ASC 606 revenue timing rules for projects

For companies that use Sage Intacct to manage subscriptions and services together, Sage Intacct has been steadily enhancing how Sage Intacct manages contracts with projects. Organizations can leverage contracts and projects to estimate projects, defer revenue, and then bill and recognize revenue as the project progresses.

In Release 4, you can include estimated and deferred revenue for timesheet billings in multi-element arrangements associated to a contract. Instead of manually re-calculating revenue whenever a project is re-estimated, automatic re-calculation eliminates complex spreadsheet work and re-entry of the results into Sage Intacct, potentially saving hours of time. You also gain visibility into your entire booking when you create the obligation.

Remove barriers to project collections and accelerate cash

In Release 4, you can quickly and easily bill individually for multiple projects associated with a contract with unified invoice generation across contracts and projects. You can set your filter once, apply exceptions, and run. No filtering projects one by one. Now you have the flexibility to get some project bills out sooner or to bill according to your customer’s preference, removing barriers to collections and accelerating cash.

Control your project profitability with task-level visibility

Now you can analyze costs and profitability down to the task level. Expenses and revenues created across Sage Intacct—in General Ledger, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable—can be associated to a task dimension. Associated tasks and attachments flow through to line items on the invoice. You get actionable insights and greater control of your project profitability. And, your customers have access to the billing details they need to inform their approvals, removing a barrier for payment.

Gain cash insights for your nonprofit with a click

The new, prebuilt Cash Analysis Dashboard provides instant and trusted cash metrics for nonprofit decision makers with the click of a mouse. It’s now part of all Nonprofit Quickstart templates. Whether you use the dashboard out-of-the-box or further tailor it to your needs, you potentially save hours of report and dashboard development time.

Get instant or accelerated value with over 60 new prebuilt, interactive reports

With over 60 prebuilt Interactive Customer Report Writer reports across all Sage Intacct application areas, you get instant, interactive insights. If you have the viewer subscription, you can view, pivot, drill, and filter the prebuilt reports to get transactional insights. Or, if you have the full builder subscription, you can use the reports as a starting point to accelerate your customizations, potentially saving hours of time.

Access budget planning assumptions from financials in a couple clicks

When you review your budget versus actual performance inside Sage Intacct and want to know more about the budget assumptions, that insight is now just a couple of clicks away. With easy drill-down to budget preparation details, you can quickly understand performance and adjust course where needed.

Synchronize your budget to your financials in a couple minutes

Budgets change frequently. If you have forecasts and other processes that rely on budget data, it’s important to keep your budget data up to date. But most budgeting solutions require you to export your data to a CSV file and re-import it into your financials. Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning connects directly to Sage Intacct, enabling you to push your budget data into your financials in just a couple minutes. And with Release 4, you have new, more flexible options. You can:

• Add to or replace an existing budget
• Synchronize your budget to financials at the top-level, specific entity, or consolidated budget for multi-entity, multi-currency companies
• Include budget comments for more context within your financials

These new options save time and provide the flexibility to help keep your downstream reports, forecasting, and analysis current.

Save time on transactions with new dimension flexibility and fixed allocation amounts

For transactions that have routine, predefined allocation splits across select dimensions, you can now assign values for remaining dimensions during transaction entry. Additionally, a new transaction allocation method handles over or under amounts after allocation. Any remaining amounts are applied to the transaction using the percentage allocation. These enhancements allow you to use your transaction allocation definitions more frequently, ensuring accuracy up front for true real-time reporting.

To learn more

Sage Intacct 2019 Release 4 is available now. If you’re an existing customer, you can check out the Release 4 Release Notes or talk with your Customer Account Manager for more information.

Not yet using Sage Intacct? Attend a coffee break demo to learn more about how Sage Intacct helps you drive improved business performance—throughout your organization.