Sage Intacct’s R2 2022, released last month. There were many exciting features that elevated the modules and tools Sage Intacct users currently use. Sage Intacct issues four quarterly releases per year – each release offers enhancements, updates, and features providing best-in-class financial management automation.
On Thursday, June 16th Tablespoon hosted a webinar reviewing what restaurant groups need to know about the latest release. Andrew Lester, Tablespoon’s CEO walked through a few interesting highlights.
They included:
- Update on AP Bill Automation: Expanded Beta
- Vendor Payment Service Enhancements
- Bank Reconciliation Enhancements: Creation Rules and Reporting on Rule Sets
- New Bank Feeds for Wells Fargo and Bank of America
- Preview: the future in lists (expanded beta)
- Dunning notices for customer collections
- A new look for Sage Intacct
Below is a brief recap of the latest release highlights and how it might impact restaurant groups.
Update on AP Bill Automation: Expanded Beta
Sage Intacct is still in the early stages of rolling out updated AP Bill Automation functionality. We are very excited about this update because we know that AP is such a big pain point for many restaurant groups due to the transaction volumes that you have to manage.
This release is a continuation of the broader vision of Sage Intacct to automate as much of the day-to-day accounting to get to a continuous close.
Last year, Sage Intacct updated the CSI payment service to automate electronic payments and now Sage Intacct is rolling out the AP Bill Automation feature. We talked about this on our last Sage Intacct Release webinar, as well as the blog recap, but Sage Intacct is expanding the beta on this updated feature.
How it Works:
- Vendor Bills are received via email or upload into Sage Intacct
- Sage Intacct creates a Draft bill, using AI to assign the vendor, date, GL account, and dimensions
- Original bill is automatically added as an Attachment
- Final step: Review and Post
- Easy visibility into Duplicates and Exceptions
- Sage Intacct leverages Machine Learning and coding history to “learn” from corrections you make
This is still in Early Adopter status but hopefully Sage Intacct will roll this out in general release soon.
Vendor Payment Service Enhancements
Sage Intacct is enhancing their Vendor Payment Service. This is a feature that was introduced last year. This is an electronic payment service that is built right into Sage Intacct. The benefits of this service are time savings and lower cost in AP. It allows you to pay vendors directly from Sage Intacct and streamline your vendor payment process.
How it Works:
- Vendors are enrolled in the CSI platform and choose their payment method
- Utilize “CSI” payment method when selecting bills for payment
- Once payment decision is made, Vendor Payments handles the rest
- Full visibility inside Sage Intacct into payment status
If you are already paying vendors by credit card today, this is a great option to consider.
In the newest release, Sage Intacct has enhanced/added:
- Payment Withdrawal Options: Lump Sum or Per Transaction
- Separate Check Signature Option: You can now upload check signatures to be used only for CSI generated checks
- Vendor record in Sage Intacct now displays differences in Vendor Information
- Email address used for notifications from CSI can be edited/configured
There is no cost to use the vendor payment service. The only fees are a per check charge and ACH charge. This is native functionality with Sage Intacct.
Bank Reconciliation Enhancements: Creation Rules and Reporting on Rule Sets
Over the past year Sage Intacct has been adding a lot of functionality to help with bank reconciliation process. This is very important for restaurant groups that have high bank transactions volumes (i.e., store deposit accounts, payroll accounts, general AP accounts, etc.,)
In the last release, Sage Intacct announced an automation capability called Creation Rules and now with Release 2, Creation Rules are generally available to Sage Intacct customers. You can now automatically create journal entries from a bank feed.
Interesting Sage Intacct Creation Rule highlights:
- New Creation Rule option within Matching Rules
- Analyzes bank transaction data and automatically creates a matching journal entry within Sage Intacct
- Create transactions in Draft or Posted state
- Possible use cases: Daily deposits, Royalty & Marketing fee debits, bank fees, cash transfers…
This update is very exciting to restaurant groups because it can possibly save you a lot of time in your bank reconciliation process.
In addition to the enhanced bank reconciliation creation rules, Sage Intacct has added/enhanced:
- Rule Set Performance Insight – this will allow you to see in one screen how all your different bank rules are performing
- Direct integrations with Wells Fargo CEO Bank of America CashPro platforms
- Ability to include Zero Dollar GL transactions in the Bank Reconciliation
Preview: The Future in Lists (Expanded Beta)
We are very excited about this future update! Sage Intacct is refreshing List Views (i.e., Vendor List, Bills List, etc.,).
With this future update, you will be able to:
- Personalize your list view with ease
- Reorder, Resize, Freeze Columns with Drag & Drop Interactions
- Simple and advanced filtering
- Batch Operations
- Out of the Box List Views
- Fewer Steps / Clicks
- New Split View option
This will be a big improvement to Sage Intacct’s user experience.
Account Receivable Enhancements
There are two new enhancements to Accounts Receivable that we’d like to mention.
Customer Dunning Notices
- Accounts Receivable Customer Dunning Notices has been enhanced. Sage Intacct will automatically email payment reminders to past-due customers
Receive Payments Enhancements
- You now have the ability to automatically apply credits when you receive a payment
- You can also create Journal Entries, Advances, Adjustments from the Receive Payment screen
Want to learn more about the latest release?
There were a few other enhancements that we mentioned on our webinar that weren’t mentioned in this recap. If you’d like to learn more about the latest release, please schedule a consultation with Tablespoon.