Boost Your Productivity: 10 Sage Intacct Hacks You Need to Know.

Leveraging the productivity hacks, a list of actionable tips to enhance employee efficiency when using Sage Intacct.

In this article, we look at Intacct’s built-in productivity hacks that help you and your team become more effective and productive in work when using Intacct. With its many features and capabilities, Intacct can improve the effectiveness of your workflow. So,we’veidentified productivity tips that can help you increase overall productivity, automate tedious operations, and streamline your financial procedures.

Introduction

For those of you who don’t know, Sage Intacct is a comprehensive cloud-based financial management platform that offers a wide array of features designed to streamline accounting processes and enhance financial reporting. To maximise the benefits of this system, users can use various shortcuts to improve efficiency and productivity.

Maximising productivity is not just an option but a necessity. With the increasing demand for efficiency and the constant search for ways to streamline operations, leveraging productivity hacks has become crucial. Intacct offers a range of features designed to enhance business operations. Our hacks, shortcuts and tips are designed to optimise the use of Intacct, ensuring that businesses can achieve more in less time, with less effort.

Here we outline 10 actionable tips that can help employees make the most out of Sage Intacct.

1. Customising Dashboards

Intacct dashboards can be personalised to display the most relevant financial data and key performance indicators (KPIs). By customising dashboards, users can quickly access real-time insights, which aids in making informed decisions swiftly.

To do this, simply do the following:

1. Navigate to the Dashboards menu: If you are creating a new dashboard, click the plus sign to add a new one.

2. Name Your Dashboard: Give your dashboard a descriptive name that reflects its purpose or the type of information it will display.

3. Choose Layout: Decide on the layout of your dashboard. You can typically choose between one, two, or three columns. This determines how the sections of your dashboard will be laid out.

4. Add Components: Customise your dashboard by adding various components. Intacct allows you to include financial reports, graphs, performance cards, custom lists, calendars, links, and more to your dashboard.

5. Configure Components: For each component you add, you can configure its settings. For example, you can set up performance cards to show direct comparisons, or include graphs that highlight trends and exceptions in your data.

6. Set Permissions: Ensure that your dashboard displays the right information to the right people by setting permissions. You can restrict dashboard access to approved users only.

7. Use Filters: Apply filters to your dashboard components to analyse performance by various business drivers such as location, project, or department.

8. Save and Test: Once you have added and configured all the necessary components, save your dashboard and test it to ensure it displays the information correctly and meets your needs.

9. Adjust as Needed: After testing, you may need to make adjustments to the layout or components to better suit your requirements.

2. Automating Routine Tasks

The platform offers automation features such as scheduled report generation, automatic bank reconciliations, and recurring journal entries. Automating these tasks frees up resources for more strategic activities.

Some of the things that can be automated are:

1. Invoice Processing
2. Payment Automation
3. Supplier Portal for Self-Service
4. Electronic Invoices
5. Automated Matching with Purchase Orders
6. Inventory Management
7. Revenue Recognition
8. Fixed Asset Management
9. Prepayments and Amortisation
10. Month-End Close Process
11. Dashboards and Reporting
12. Payroll and Human Capital Management

3. Streamlining Approval Processes

Workflow automation in Sage Intacct allows for the configuration of multi-level approval workflows, which can accelerate decision-making and reduce bottlenecks.

Some of the examples of this streamlining are:

1. Automated Workflows: Workflow automation allows for the creation of custom workflows for transaction approval across the system. This includes approval policies for Accounts Payable (AP) Bills, AP Payments, Purchasing Transactions, and General Ledger Journal Entries. The automation ensures that no more approvals need to be sought via email outside the system, providing visibility of where transactions are in the approval process and retaining approvals within the system for audit review.

2. Manager-type Approvals: Manager-type approvals can vary depending on the transaction type and approval area. These include Employee Manager Approval, Department Approval/Transaction Department Approval, Transaction Location Approval, and Transaction Project Manager Approval. The approval to the appropriate manager based on the transaction’s tagged dimensions, such as Department, Location, or Project.

3. User-Based Approval: For smaller companies or simpler workflow options, Intacct allows for user-based approvals. This involves setting up an Approval Policy where the Rule type is simply choosing a Sage Intacct user or users in a specified order for transaction approvals.

4. Transaction Type-Specific Approval: Unique to the Purchasing module, this allows for different approval policies per Transaction Type, enabling a unique approval workflow for each document. This flexibility is particularly useful for businesses that require distinct approval processes for different types of purchasing documents.

5. Alternate Approver Functionality: Intacct provides alternate approver capabilities for situations where the primary approver is unavailable, such as annual leave or illnesses. When the main approver activates out-of-office delegation, approval requests are automatically rerouted to the delegated person.

4. Utilising Templates

Intacct provides pre-built templates for financial reports, invoices, purchase orders, and more. Utilising these templates can automate the creation of recurring documents, ensuring consistency and reducing errors.

We’ve set out below what templates are, how they can be used and why they can be useful:

• Sage Intacct Import Templates are documents designed to map external data into Sage Intacct and specify where incoming data should be placed within the software.

• These templates are user-friendly, resembling Excel spreadsheets, and do not require coding knowledge.

• You can use these templates for a variety of data types, including master files, transactions, budgets, and even credit card data. They are particularly useful for importing budgeting data from Excel and legacy data during software transition periods.

• Data should be in a CSV format. The templates can be used to import data from various sources, including QuickBooks transactions and Excel budgeting efforts.

• Intacct allows the creation of professional templates for various documents like invoices and purchase orders. These templates can include specific data with merge fields from Intacct.

• You can customise document templates in Microsoft Word, and then upload them to Sage Intacct for use.

• Custom document templates are useful for creating branded invoices, sales orders, and other documents that require a professional appearance.

• Billing templates, which are part of its Contracts and Revenue Management functionalities, can be customised and used for various billing scenarios.

5. Alerts and Notifications

Setting up alerts and notifications within the dashboard can keep users informed about critical events or changes, enabling proactive issue resolution and informed decision-making.

You can use notifications for:

• Email notifications: Such as those related to approvals

• Smart Events for emails: To notify individuals when specific criteria are met, such as when a bill of a certain amount is created.

• Events: Intacct allows setting up alerts and notifications within your dashboard to stay informed about critical events or changes.

• Declined bills: You can receive email notifications for when an approver declines a bill.

6. Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts in Sage Intacct can speed up navigation and data entry. Learning and using these shortcuts can save time and increase task efficiency.

While Intacct has many keyboard shortcuts, the main general ones are:

• Alt + S: Save the current record or transaction.
• Alt + Q: Cancel the current action.
• Alt + W: Save the current record and start a new one.
• Alt + P: Display the pick list in a blank field.
• Tab: Move the cursor from the current field to the next field.
• Shift + Tab: Move the cursor from the current field to the previous field.
• Spacebar: Select or clear a checkbox.
• Ctrl + N: Open a new browser window for multitasking.
• Up/Down Arrows: Navigate a drop-down list.
• Ctrl + Up/Down: Open and close the detail area for a line item in data entry screens.

7. Leveraging Role-Based Permissions

Role-based permissions in Intacct are a method of assigning access rights and permissions to users based on their roles within an organisation, rather than on an individual basis. This system allows for the creation of roles that correspond to various job functions, and each role is assigned specific permissions to perform certain tasks within Intacct. Once roles are created and permissions are set, these roles can then be assigned to users or user groups, streamlining the process of managing permissions and ensuring consistency across users with similar responsibilities.

The role-based permissions system is recommended over user-based permissions, especially for larger organisations, because it reduces redundancy and the time-consuming task of manually entering different permissions for every employee. With role-based permissions, if a new employee is hired and should have the same permissions as an existing employee, the administrator can simply assign the existing role to the new user’s record, which is a quick and efficient process.

8. Mobile Approvals

Intacct supports mobile approvals for timesheets, expense reports, purchases, reimbursements, and AP payments, allowing for flexibility and on-the-go management.

The types of transactions that can be approved via mobile include:

• Accounts Payable Bills
• Purchasing Transactions
• Employee Expense Reports
• General Ledger Journal Entries
• Timesheets
• Expense Reimbursements

The mobile access feature is part of the core software subscription and does not require additional installations or apps; users can simply use a browser on their mobile device to log in and manage approvals.

9. Integration with Third-Party Applications

Intacct seamlessly integrates with various third-party applications, which helps eliminate manual data entry and ensures data consistency across systems.

They can be for:

• eProcurement & AP Automation
• CRM
• eCommerce
• HR
• Payment gateways
• Finance
• Data warehouse
• Supply chain management

10. Real-Time Collaboration

Real-time collaboration with Intacct refers to the suite of features and tools within the Sage Intacct financial management software that enables users to communicate, share information, and work together efficiently on financial processes and transactions.

Using Sage Intacct Collaborate, you can do the following things:

• Unifying Conversations: Real-time collaboration on shared records inside Salesforce or Sage Intacct, providing clarity between sales and finance teams.

• Mobile Chatter Notifications: Notifications from both Sage Intacct and Salesforce can be received via the Salesforce mobile app.

• Group Messaging: The ability to create groups to focus communications on specific tasks such as quarter close, audit, order processing, and more.

• File Attachments: Uploading and tracking file attachments directly in conversations within Sage Intacct, with built-in version control.
• Automated Alerts: Notifications for changes in critical values like discounts and budgets.

• One-Click Visibility: Seeing all messages related to an issue with one click, which helps in avoiding repeated explanations of the situation.

• Integration with Salesforce: For Salesforce users, conversations in Sage Intacct appear in Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing sales teams to participate using the system they are familiar with.

As you can see, by leveraging these productivity hacks, Intacct users can significantly enhance their efficiency and productivity. These actionable tips are designed to help employees streamline their financial management tasks, allowing them to focus on more value-added activities and strategic decision-making.

If you would like to learn how using Sage Intacct can help with your business and improve efficiencies, contact us at Itas Solutions and we’ll be only too happy to help talk you through your options.

More about us

Itas Solutions is a multi-award-winning UK business that specialises in providing Sage accounting software solutions. Our main objective is to offer comprehensive services and support for all Sage products, including Intacct.

As a multiple-award-winning Sage Partner demonstrates our dedication to excellence in the realms of Sage technology and financial transformation consultancy.

Our team, which is made up of transformation consultants and technical experts, assists companies in maximising their financial operations through the usage of Sage software.

To learn more about this and how we can help, call +441824 780 000 or email [email protected].