Sage Intacct Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives 2023
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
Sage Intacct is a cloud-based financial management and accounting suite that automates complex financial processes, including payroll, tax filings, and inventory management. It caters to a wide range of industries—including construction, real estate, financial services, professional services, and nonprofits. Sage Intacct prices are available upon request, but you can sign up for the 30-day free trial.
Sage Intacct
What We Like
- Tailor-made features for nonprofits
- Can handle multientity transactions
- Multidimensional chart of accounts
- Drill down capability in financial reports
- Complies with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) standards
What's Missing
- No upfront pricing
- Complicated to use
- Not ideal for small businesses
- Expensive technical support
If you think general-purpose bookkeeping solutions might meet your company’s needs, check out our evaluation of the best small business accounting software.
Sage Intacct Deciding Factors
Supported Business Types | Businesses outgrowing QuickBooks |
Pricing | Custom quote |
Free Trial | 30 days |
Payroll | Through Rippling |
Standout Features |
|
Customer Support | Paid support, phone, and self-help library |
Sage Intacct Alternatives
Best for: Business owners that want to keep their own books | Best for: Best Sage product for small businesses | Best for: Nonprofits that need member management tools |
Software from: $30 per month | Software from: $57.17 per month | Software from: $59 per month |
Sage Intacct Pricing
Sage Intacct doesn’t provide prices on its website. However, business technology firm BT Partners reports that its pricing runs from $15,000 per year for a single-user system to $60,000 or more, depending on the complexity of your organization.
Sage Intacct Features
Sage Intacct has a robust set of features to simplify tedious and repetitive financial tasks such as grant tracking, budget planning, fund accounting, expense management, and financial reporting. Here’s a list of its top features to help you decide whether Sage Intacct is right for your organization:
Dashboards
There are several dashboards included in Sage Intacct. The main dashboard that you’ll see is the CFO Dashboard, which is useful for chief financial officers (CFOs) because it shows financial performance like profit and loss (P&L) by location or a comparison between actual and projected profit. You’ll also see key financial ratios, revenue charts, expense graphs, and a balance sheet.
CFO Dashboard
In addition to the CFO dashboard, there are role-based dashboards for project managers, controllers, A/P accountants, and accounts receivable (A/R) accountants. Overall, the CFO dashboard is the most comprehensive dashboard, and we believe it’s the best one for monitoring the financial aspects of your business.
General Ledger
Sage Intacct has a sophisticated general ledger (GL) with a multidimensional chart of accounts. The GL manages sophisticated financial tasks across multiple entities, whether locally or globally. You can merge data, manage currency conversions, and generate consolidated reports without having to wait for the end of the month.
Transactions are posted in real time, with the ability to configure how transactions are posted in each account. You can also create and organize account groups, like checking or cash, to help generate reports.
Sample General Ledger Report
Sage Intacct’s GL report is detailed, showing additional information that might be useful in tracking transactions. We’ve highlighted the additional columns that we like:
- Department Code: Sage Intacct shows the department codes whenever an entry gets posted to the GL. These codes can be useful in tracking transactions, especially when determining the source of the credit or debit to the specific account.
- Location ID: Aside from department codes, the platform adds location IDs so that you can pinpoint where the credit or debit came from. In the sample data above, location ID 100 pertains to New York, while location ID 200 is San Francisco (not shown in screenshot). So, a batch entry summary credit of $703.20 to the Wells Fargo Checking account is from a department in New York.
- Journal (JNL): Another striking feature is that Sage Intacct includes the journal where the posting came from. This feature is uncommon in accounting software products like QuickBooks Online. Showing the journal code is a good feature if you want to establish a clean audit trail.
Comprehensive Chart of Accounts
Sage Intacct’s default chart of accounts is impressive, especially for corporations. It contains essential accounts for financial reporting, including specialized accounts like the following:
- Goodwill (those arising from business combinations)
- Intercompany accounts (those arising from intercompany transactions)
- Special revenue accounts (as required by revenue standards)
- Cumulative translation adjustments (those arising from translating financial statements from functional currency to presentation currency)
Overall, we appreciate that the chart of accounts is comprehensive. However, we don’t see it as a good fit for small businesses without complex transactions. But if you’re a midsize company doing business overseas or engaging in complex transactions, Sage Intacct is the ideal software for you.
Accounts Receivable
Sage Intacct offers a traditional A/R system similar to those found in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. As such, its invoicing function is technical and not straightforward. In simpler accounting software, making an invoice involves simple steps like entering the product name, quantity, and rate. In Sage Intacct, invoicing focuses more on how it affects the accounts, so the bookkeeper must be familiar with all the accounts.
Another interesting feature of Sage Intacct’s invoicing module is the Posting Details section. Here, you’ll see all the accounts affected by the invoice. In the accounting process, an invoice affects two kinds of accounts: revenues and A/R. In the Posting Details section, you’ll see which accounts were affected and if they were debited or credited.
Below is the Posting Details section pertaining to invoice INV1272 in the previous image:
Posting Details
- Journal: This column shows the journal codes where the invoice was recorded. In the example above, it was recorded in the Accounts Receivable Journal (ARJ). By default, Sage Intacct has different journal codes for Purchases Journal (PJ), Cash Receipts Journal (CRJ), and many more.
- Journal Number: This column shows the journal entry number when the invoice was recorded. In the image above, we can say that INV1272 is entry number 685 in the ARJ. If you go to the ARJ, you’ll see that INV1272 is number 685 and described as a “Batch Entry Summary.”
Tracing the ARJ Entry from Invoice Transaction
- Line Number: This column shows the line where the entry was made. In our example, the credit to “Revenue – On Premise License” was recorded on line seven of the journal entry.
Tracing the invoice transaction to the journal entry
- Account Number and Name: These columns show the affected accounts. Under standard numbering of accounts, you’ll often see revenue accounts starting with “4” and asset accounts starting with “1.”
- Location: If you have businesses in multiple locations, the locations column is extremely useful. It keeps you from having to create special accounts like “Accounts Receivable – New York” just to track all receivables from that location.
Accounts Payable
The A/P module works like the A/R module. There’s no significant difference between the two, except for the nature of transactions in the A/P module. In terms of process flow, it’s the same. When you enter a bill, you’ll need to fill up vendor information and view the posting details. All bills are posted in the Accounts Payable Journal (APJ).
Cash & Banking
You can connect your bank accounts and cards to Sage Intacct in the Cash Management tab. An interesting feature of the cash management module is the level of detail it gives about your cash transactions.
Cash account information
- Journals Affected: You can modify how your checking or card transactions are recorded in the books. In the image above, you’ll see that the Wells Fargo Checking account affects the Cash Disbursement Journal (CDJ) for cash payments and CRJ for cash receipts. You can also specify where account charges and credits are recorded in the GL.
- Location and Reconciliation Information: If you maintain separate checking accounts for different locations, you can specify the bank account to associate with each location. There’s also information about the last reconciliation date and previous reconciled balance.
Bank reconciliation module
Sage Intacct’s bank reconciliation feature is also standard, but it’s hard for users to understand without experience in accounting information systems. A good feature in reconciling bank accounts is that Sage Intacct asks for the bank statement balance. In case you don’t want to connect your bank accounts in Sage Intacct, you can still reconcile your accounts manually.
Overall, experienced accountants will like the reconciliation module. However, we can’t recommend this to business owners wanting to perform do-it-yourself (DIY) bookkeeping.
Multientity & Multicurrency Management
Sage Intacct’s strength is multicompany accounting and multicurrency management. These features become extremely useful if you conduct transactions outside the United States and pay in foreign currency. If you have a foreign affiliate, Sage Intacct can also consolidate financial statements. There’s no need to create a tedious working paper when eliminating intercompany transactions or translating your foreign affiliate’s financial statements to US dollars. You can do that in Sage Intacct easily and conveniently.
Reporting
Intacct generates around 150 built-in reports, with visualization features like graphs, charts, and performance cards. It provides a multidimensional view of your balance sheet, income statements, cash flow statements, and other critical reports. You can also create custom reports using the interactive custom report writer. Reports and dashboards can be viewed on your mobile devices, and reports can be exported in comma-separated values (CSV), Excel, PDF, and HTML formats.
Sage Intacct Customer Service & Ease of Use
Sage Intacct’s user interface isn’t very user-friendly compared to other accounting software like QuickBooks Online. It’s similar to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and those without experience in complex accounting systems can find it difficult to use. Moreover, customization options for reporting can be overwhelming for beginners; however, it can be a great benefit for experienced bookkeepers and seasoned Sage Intacct users.
Sage Intacct subscriptions include the Essential support plan, and support is available 24/5. You can upgrade to Bronze, Silver, and Gold for additional services like consulting, learning membership, and faster response. Only the Gold tier has a response time of one to four hours; the rest of the plans have a response time of one to eight hours.
Sage Intacct User Reviews
Most Sage Intacct reviews are positive. Users praise the software because it helps them automate certain tasks and is flexible for different industries. However, some reviewers said that they find the custom report writer hard to use.
Here are the scores of Sage Intacct across review websites:
- Featured Customers: 4.7 out of 5 stars based on ~3,500 reviews
- G2.com: 4.3 out of 5 stars based on ~1,700 reviews
- GetApp.com: 4.2 out of 5 stars based on ~330 reviews
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is Sage Intacct hard to learn?
Users without accounting and accounting software experience will find Sage Intacct hard to learn. It isn’t software that can be used easily right out of the box, as it’s meant for certified public accountants (CPAs) and bookkeepers with extensive knowledge of accounting information systems.
What are the benefits of Sage Intacct?
Sage Intacct is software for mid and large-scale businesses needing more advanced accounting features—such as revenue recognition, allocation, and expense matching.
What’s the difference between Sage Intacct and Sage Accounting?
Sage Intacct offers more complex accounting features than Sage Accounting. Even though both are browser-based software, Sage Intacct is suitable for businesses with complex accounting issues like private equity accounting, fair value accounting, and derivative accounting. Sage Accounting is good for very small businesses and freelancers looking for a DIY bookkeeping solution.
Bottom Line
Sage Intacct is sophisticated and expensive accounting software for midsize and large businesses. If you have an accounting department that can take advantage of Sage Intacct’s advanced features, it may be well worth the investment. We recommend it for medium-sized organizations with complex financial tasks. Businesses with no complex transactions will find it too much for their needs. For easy-to-use accounting software, our choice would be QuickBooks Online Plus.