Sage Intacct issues four quarterly releases per year – each release offers enhancements, updates, and features providing best-in-class financial management automation. The 2023 Release 3 was recently rolled out. Many exciting features elevated existing modules and tools Sage Intacct users currently use.
Last week, Tablespoon's Senior Sage Intacct Implementation Consultant, Brian Puckett, recorded an OnDemand walkthrough of the latest release, reviewing what restaurant groups need to know.
During the recording, he focused on:
- Accounts Payable Vendor Approvals
- Bank Transactions Assistant
- List Enhancements
- General Ledger – Restrict GL Transactions to the Entity Level
- General Ledger – Exclude Adjustments from the Trial Balance Report
- Match Tolerances for Purchasing Transactions
Below is a brief recap of the latest release highlights and how it might impact restaurant groups.
Accounts Payable Vendor Approvals
Accounts Payable Vendor Approvals is one of the most requested features long sought after. Now, you can approve vendors directly within Sage Intacct to ensure your vendor records are correct and the information used and accounts payable and purchasing transactions are as they should be. While a vendor record is being approved, any new accounts payable and purchasing transactions for that particular vendor can be saved as a draft but cannot be posted. Once the vendor is approved, then the transactions can be posted. While a vendor is awaiting approval, or if the vendor is declined, users cannot do the following three things:
- Post accounts payable and purchasing transactions for that vendor.
- Edit existing transactions for that vendor.
- Select vendor transactions for payments.
However, while you're in this transition, users can save new transactions as a draft, even for submitted or declined vendors. This allows you to capture new transactions as they come in and then post the entry after the vendor is finally approved. This also means that incoming draft transactions from AP automation tools can be saved.
Bank Transactions Assistant
Bank Transactions Assistant is now in the early adopter stage. This feature allows you to streamline your receive payments workflow in accounts receivable while accelerating the reconciliation process for bank reconciliations. You can now assign customers to bank transactions and then receive multiple payments for multiple customers, all from the bank transaction page. After you receive the payments, you can post payments within Sage Intacct and the bank transactions automatically match for reconciliation, which can streamline your effort in completing a bank reconciliation. You can also receive advances and payments at the entity level for multi-entity, multi-currency companies. To leverage this feature, you will need to assign customers to bank transactions. Once that is done you can begin receiving the payments or creating advances, which allows you to receive them in bulk.
If there's no invoice for a customer, you can create an advance using the new AR advances templates. You will need new Cash Management permissions. To ensure that the users involved in this process have those permissions and can utilize this transactions assistant.
Within accounts receivable, there is a new feature called Tracking Payments with Doc Sequencing. This allows you to track payments more easily with document sequencing within accounts receivable for payments. So, you can refer to specific posted payments and help with payment tracking and reconciliation. For example, if you've posted payments that were applied to multiple invoices and adjustments, you could create a custom report based on the payment ID to see which transactions the payments were applied to.
Note: You need to sign up to be part of the early adopter program.
List Enhancements
The Sage Intacct R1 2023 release included new enhancements in the list features for vendors. This is the same functionality that can be used to personalize your list views (i.e., advanced filters, manage lists, and record details side by side). It has now been expanded to attachments, attachment folders, the class department and location dimensions, tax details, tax schedules, and the tax schedule map. These are currently in beta format right now. So, you'll have to click on the turn on “list beta” checkbox at the top of each screen where these menus are within Sage Intacct.
General Ledger – Restrict GL Transactions to the Entity Level
Another feature that has been included in this release is to restrict GL transactions to the entity level. In many cases, there are justifications for entering transactions at the top level. But, in some scenarios, you may want to ensure that transactions can only be posted to the entity level. There is a checkbox under the General Ledger configuration that now allows you to utilize this feature and to be able to restrict, where applicable, General Ledger transactions, journal entries, etc.
General Ledger – Exclude Adjustments from the Trial Balance Report
Another enhancement in the latest release is convenient, especially for organizations that don't necessarily make year-end adjustments - some people like to call those periods 13 adjustments that come from an audit. Suppose you don't need those adjustments and don't want the columns to show up on your trial balance for adjustments. In that case, there is a checkbox under the General Ledger configuration that you can check on and exclude adjustments. Therefore, when you go to run the trial balance, the debit and credit for adjustments will not show up on the trial balance report, and will give you a cleaner report if those columns are not necessary,
Match Tolerances for Purchasing Transactions
The last new release feature we want to focus on is Match Tolerances for Purchasing. This allows you to set proper amounts for what you've ordered. So, with match tolerances, within Sage Intacct, you can automatically compare the quantities and unit prices that appear on converted transactions.
When you enable match tolerances on the Configure Purchasing page, you specify the transaction definitions to validate and the percent tolerance for the quantity and unit price. When the transaction is converted, Intacct flags any line where the percent tolerance is exceeded as an exception.
Want to learn more about the latest release?
If you'd like to learn more about the latest release, schedule a consultation with Tablespoon.
