Sage Intacct vs. NetSuite – Accounting and Full-Scope ERP

True-cloud software is defined as an application that, from its inception, was built to run in the cloud with web technologies. Two leading solutions for the mid-market are Sage Intacct and Oracle NetSuite. Both are powerful and successful at helping businesses of all sizes to manage their business financials as well as other aspects of their operations. Which one is right for your needs? Let’s find out in this comparison.

Sage Intacct: Best-In-Class Accounting and Financial Management

Sage Intacct is hard to beat in the finance department. It provides extensive functionality for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Cash Management, an Intelligent General Ledger, Purchasing, Order Management, and much more.

Demonstrating the depth of its accounting prowess, more specific and sought-after features are its invoicing, fixed assets accounting, project accounting, inventory management, allocations, revenue recognition, and subscription billing (especially useful for SaaS companies). Such functionality would be hard to come by in competing products, often only found through 3rd party add-ons.

Intacct has powerful reporting capabilities, allowing you to create real-time custom reports, and review company performance data via dashboards with KPIs.

It also has the distinction of being the only accounting software endorsed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). This makes it a favorite in the finance department, especially for its adherence to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which ensures your company will adhere to accounting best practices and will work the way your staff expect it to.

Dimensions are a very useful feature to simplify your Chart of Accounts. Dimensions allow you to categorize transactions without account coding, which can then be used for advanced reporting, allowing you to sort and filter to find the information you need. There are 8 Dimensions you can assign, which are named:

·      Location

·      Department

·      Vendor

·      Customer

·      Employee

·      Project

·      Item

·      Class

If those categories don’t work for your business, fear not: They can be renamed to fit your needs.

Intacct has laser-focus on what it does best: accounting. That is not to say it ignores other important business management features. It has well-developed Human Resources, Payroll, and Time Tracking features, as well as other tools to support a broad customer base. However, wherever it may be lacking in industry-specific functionality, it boasts of a thriving community of add-on developers who provide solutions that integrate with Intacct to accomplish most anything you need. It also has integrations with leading software solutions such as Salesforce CRM. They also offer solutions tailored for industry needs, such as Construction and Real Estate, Financial Services, Healthcare, Hospitality, Nonprofits, Professional Services, Retail, Subscription and SaaS, Wholesale Distribution, and more.

Intacct is built for future growth. It has full support for global operations with multi-entity and multi-currency capabilities. It also automates consolidation of entities (like subsidiaries), properly accounts for partial or minority ownership, and automates inter-company transaction eliminations in the consolidation process.

Intacct, being a best-of-breed solution, also comes with a lower price tag. Licensing and implementation costs are significantly lower than NetSuite’s, making it a viable option for small and growing enterprises.

NetSuite: One Solution to Rule Them All

NetSuite is a complete solution for the needs of most any business. It can do a great deal of what Intacct does, but then goes beyond that to manage every aspect of medium or large-scale organizations. Its various modules cover a broad range of areas, such as:

·      ERP

·      Accounting software

·      Global business management

·      CRM

·      Human capital management

·      Professional services automation (PSA)

·      Omnichannel commerce

·      Analytics and Reporting, including Business intelligence

In each category, NetSuite has a diverse set of components that fill most any need. Expounding upon all of NetSuite’s modules is outside the scope of this article, but it’s safe to say that NetSuite is a powerful solution that more than 30,000 companies depend on to manage their daily operations around the world.

Clearly, as a robust ERP solution, NetSuite comes with a more complex and costly implementation process and higher license fees. However, its capabilities can be worth the extra cost for larger, more complex organizations.

Comparison Chart

Here’s a glance at the basic differences:

Which One is Right for You?

Both solutions are aimed at the mid-market. Both provide extensive functionality. Some businesses will find Intacct’s emphasis on accounting just what they need to achieve the financial visibility they desire and might be content to integrate other needed features via third-party add-ons.

Larger organizations with complex business requirements may be searching for a single solution to manage every aspect of their operations, including CRM, human resources, Warehouse and Inventory Management, and more. NetSuite, in certain cases, might be the better fit for them.

Would you like to know more about leading ERP solutions and how to select the best one for your needs? Contact our experts today to find out how we can help you increase organizational efficiency and profitability with a solution tailored to your needs.

By Chandra Subramanian, CogentNext Technologies