Intacct Accounting Software Review

Intacct Strengths and Weaknesses

Competitive positioning in the cloud ERP software market is highlighted with the following strengths and weaknesses.

Intacct Strengths
 

• Intacct is a true best of breed SaaS accounting software system. The accounting software feature sets are deep and mature, the system is logically organized around efficient back office business processes and the software supports common compliance and governance policies.
• Relative to competing SaaS ERP and accounting software vendors, Intacct is relatively quick to deploy. Software configuration is flexible but straight forward and simple software customization can be performed within the provided tools easily. The company claims that more than 95% of its customers successfully go live within three months of subscribing to Intacct. ERP buyers concerned with extended implementation periods and quick time-to-value will favor Intacct.
• Revenue policy and compliance support is strong—Intacct supports deferred revenue, revenue recognition methods, billing and renewal processes, and advanced accounting treatments for multi-element arrangements, such as Vendor Specific Objective Evidence (VSOE), Third Party Evidence (TPE), and Estimated Selling Price (ESP). The company also has a packaged integration with both Aria Systems and Zuora for complex SaaS and subscription billing processes.
• Intacct is well recognized as a 'life after Quickbooks' solution. Migration services from Quickbooks are mature and the company provides comparatively low subscription pricing for those ready to step beyond entry level accounting. In North America, there about 4 million small businesses with a total of about 25 million end users managing their accounting with Intuit's QuickBooks. This marks a sizable target market for Intacct to convert.
• Intacct Insights is a respectable ad hoc custom report writer and business intelligence reporting solution. The visual, point and click wizard aids finance staff in bringing real-time information visibility which can include financial, non-financial and operational data.
• The system delivers deep accounting and financial capabilities important to smaller SMBs, and helps businesses stay compliant with with GAAP, SOX and FASB standards such as SOP 97-2.
• The accounting software uses industry standard technologies, a Platform for extensibility and an open API to enable the accounting software to work with other legacy systems or best-of-breed applications.
• The consolidations module is very strong. Consolidations can be processed on-demand, and the system performs the data roll-up, currency conversions and inter-company eliminations. As opposed to some direct competitors who offer only a soft consolidation process, Intacct can also perform a hard consolidation thereby maintaining a better audit trail, permitting more flexible (i.e. multi-tier) consolidations and better permitting post consolidation transactions, such as adjusting entries, to the consolidated entity. This module will be appreciated by multi-entity companies.

Intacct Weaknesses
 

• Support for multi-national and global companies is mixed. A flexible consolidation module can roll-up multi-entity data, perform inter-company eliminations and currency conversions. However, with no language packs other than English, no international presence (other than software development facility in India), very limited native support for international tax and no data centers for SaaS delivery outside the U.S., global companies will be impaired to adopt Intacct.
• Company viability is unclear. Intacct is heavily venture financed and may require additional venture funding to continue. The availability or terms of future funding may impact company operations. ERP software buyers will need to engage Intacct in confidential discussions and apply their own due diligence.
• Some basic financial software capabilities, such as sales commissions calculations, are lacking or are provided only by third parties.
• No native CRM functionality. Intaccts close partnership with Salesforce.com is a plus for existing Salesforce.com customers, however, is a negative for companies using any other popular CRM system.
• No native manufacturing modules for process- or discrete-based functionality.
• Very limited supply chain capabilities for inventory management. The system offers straight forward procurement, sales order processing and inventory management, however, the collective suite is much more of a light distribution suite as compared to a supply chain management solution.
• No mobile capabilities. Intacct provides no native support for any mobile device. While a mobile device browser can access an Intacct accounting system, any lack of design for the form factor will likely render the user experience frustrating.
• No Enterprise 2.0 or social business capabilities.

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