Implementing Intacct ERP for the first time

Today was the kickoff of my first ever Intacct implementation and the gap between the hypothetical situations presented in class and the real deal looms large. We will begin with an existing process review that ties closely with the Intacct implementation phase of DEFINE.  The goal is to uncover as much information about current processes, and use that information to reflect the legacy system as closely as possible. As a caveat, I want to be able to make suggestions where the powerful abilities of the Intacct platform may provide more efficient methods than currently utilized. Wish me luck!

Posted by Brian Dodd

My First Implementation

Work to be done

How do you eat an elephant…? One bite at a time.

​The BPR sessions went well, but have left me with a lot of ideas and tasks to be vetted. When I look at the project as a whole, I get a feeling that is very reminiscent of looking over the edge of a railing. Fortunately, Intacct has done a good job breaking pieces out by module. Most of these pieces exist within a hierarchical structure; you don’t have to tackle them all at once - but rather only focus on the next piece of the puzzle. I recommend following the checklist found under Company -> Setup -> Company Setup Checklist. I have a feeling it will be my closest friend for the next several weeks.

You see that first option, clear company data? Life saver...

Provision Company – wait that’s my job?

So I’ve spoken with all the key team members and have all these wonderful ideas and thoughts on how we are going to save so much time and money, I can hardly wait to get started! Let me just open up their version of Intacct and get to work…

​Umm, does anyone know the log-in for my new company? So in my first surprise moment, I have learned that I have to provision the instance for the client. It can be an intimidating task, as simple button clicks set off an account charging bonanza. A word of advice – spend the first session you have after the introductions with the project manager/executive sponsor and go through the company provisioning. In order to avoid wasting time, I have included a list of things to have ready below.

• Scope of work – including each module/feature that has been signed off in the contract.
• Company Information – this is where your sponsor/PM will be critical; you need to have information like company address, legal name, Federal Tax ID, fiscal and accounting periods, admin user info and a variety of other information unique to the business.
• Template and Quickstart choices – You have an option on the second tab to choose your template – you can create a new company, copy an existing company (more on this later) or choose a Quickstart template. The Quick Start has options for General Business, Services and NFP’s. Each includes different account categories, financial reports, graphs and dashboards. You can create custom versions of the last three, but the Quick Start templates will save you some serious time later. 

Templates, templates and more templates

The common factor among ERP systems is the mantra that “the data you can get out is only as good as the data you put in”. This philosophy has strong ties to your initial imports. I suggest giving the templates to the end users responsible for pulling the historical/legacy data as soon as possible. This approach has three main benefits: First - as the one responsible for the import, I feel that everyone who has not done data migration thinks there is a magic button and poof; your data has transferred seamlessly. Those who have done this know better; there are errors, incorrect fields, unknown values, non-acceptable values etc. By getting templates out early, you maximize the time you will have to import on the backend. Second - it familiarizes the users with the system. I like to explain this process as really a batch of individual transactions grouped into one large file to maximize efficiency. Check out the COA example below:

​Here’s how a single account entry is performed in Intacct:

Here’s what an import for the COA looks like:

By showing the user how the columns on the import template match up to the fields on the single account entry screen, you provide them their first Intacct experience. This allows for an earlier adaptation to Intacct and eases the transition for the BUILD/MODEL phase.  Third – it allows you time to configure modules while they are populating the templates. As you start to get a handle on an implementation, a number of unforeseen customizations, problems and questions arise. I never want to be the bottleneck in adhering to the timeline, so I often figure these critical setup issues out while we bounce the templates back and forth.

​PS – Intacct templates are smart! I have done a number of data migrations and am often frustrated that the template does not have some easy rules embedded that will stop me from importing thousands of records where one misplaced character nullifies the entire import. When I say smart, every column header has a note embedded explaining what the parameters of acceptable values. In the case where fields only accept predetermined values (i.e. account category), Intacct templates have convenient drop down lists that do not allow any non-valid characters to be entered. See below examples:

Printers: A Lesson Learned

So here’s the great part about cloud solutions like Intacct: no more printer configuration within the system. You print checks, invoices, reports and all other documentation like you would with any other webpage/pdf/excel. This is especially nice because most people are familiar with the printer options (printer selection, orientation, pages etc.) for these formats more than a new on-premise solution screen. The files are created automatically to a pdf, excel, text, html or csv format and then printed through those programs accordingly.

However, there is one point which I cannot stress enough. As of right now, Intacct does not print checks on pre-printed stock. Yes, that’s right; all of your existing stock that has account numbers and your company info cannot be used (Intacct is currently addressing this and has it on their roadmap for a future release). This is not quite the bad thing you may imagine though. If you learn this early in the process you can create an added value to the new system.  You can often run through the existing stock by the time Intacct is live, and simply order blank stock the next time( a side note on this – order the blank stock early, you don’t want waiting on an order to arrive as the only reason you miss a target go-live date). Additionally, pre-printed check stock is a security and liability issue. Even with the ability to print on existing stock, we often encourage clients to print on blank stock. No more blank checks sitting around tempting wandering eyes; just blank, watermarked paper. Finally, there is a small ROI; often pre-printed checks are more expensive than blank stock and once you make up for the cost of the special MICR ink you use, a long term savings can be realized.

An example of a PDF check produced in Intacct.

The power of dimensions

One of the major advantages with utilizing Intacct is the power of dimensions. Intacct promotes that they do not have “your mother’s chart of accounts” (link to the webinar with the same title here), and they do mean it. A typical account structure may look something like xxxx-xxx-xx-xx, with each segment representing some piece of information. As an example, an account like 6100-245-01-05 could represent a main expense (6100), a sub-expense category (245), a location (01) and a department (05). This creates an almost endless and resource heavy chart of accounts. Often times, many accounts are created that will never have a balance strictly to capture all combinations of accounts and sub-accounts. Most report writers will allow you to exclude zero balance accounts from your reports, but the multitudes of accounts create data entry and report creation issues.  Furthermore, if you add a location or department, you have to create all the new subaccount structures. This often results in a messy and imperfect system that is hard to maintain. See example below.

By utilizing Intacct’s dimensions, you can achieve the same data entry and reporting capabilities with one main account in the GL (1500), three locations, five department and five project data points. That’s 14 created records vs. 75. By requiring on the account set-up of GL account 1500 that an entry to it cannot be made without a indicating a location, department and project, we achieve the same result with much less work and potential for error.

As a recovering accountant, I can get excited about the advantages a system like this has. As an added bonus, data entry takes on a new meaning. I can’t remember how many times I had to reference a printed chart of accounts to remember the exact account combination for a specific transaction. So much so that I’ve often thought interpreting account structures could qualify as a foreign language. The Intacct way has eliminated much of the need to remember the alpha-numeric representations of a piece of data. If you look at the below screenshot, you will see that you can now intuitively type an actual location, department, project or account title and the system will recognize the text and populate the correct data piece.

And if you just want to enter in account level information the same you always have, in numeric segments, the agile entry will allow for that as well.

So let’s revisit the earlier example; 6100-245-01-05 and assume we are trying to capture an office expense (6100) for printer paper (245) at our New York location (01) for the finance department (05). In most systems, you would be looking at a receipt or invoice in one place and a blank journal entry screen in another. Unfortunately for us accountants, every vendor on the planet does not have our COA posted in their invoicing center and thus the information does not come over with our account structure on the line items.

This is what we normally are looking at for AP data entry

What we wish we were looking at

However, in our new Intacct system, this common task becomes less taxing. With a well provisioned dimension set, we can type our entry as easy as: “Off (TAB) Prin (TAB) Ne (TAB) Fin” and capture that it’s printer supplies for the finance department in New York. This certainly seems like a small detail and it is; however, when we extrapolate this small savings in time and error over the thousands of AP entries most companies make, we start to see a very real advantage. So far we have only looked at this from the data entry piece, but you’re not the AP person right, so why do you care? The true benefit of these dimensions comes in on the reporting piece, which we will delve into much deeper in posts to come.