BTerrell Group Blog

BTerrell Group recognized for KloudGin Partnership 

Sage Intacct Advantage continues to provide an excellent forum through which all Sage Intacct stakeholders enrich themselves by building relationships, gaining product knowledge, learning best practices, and staying abreast of accounting software and technology development. Five professionals from BTerrell have just returned from the 2018 version of this well-regarded event, and the future for all Sage Intacct stakeholders has never looked brighter!

As always, Sage Intacct features information from and access to top Sage Intacct executives throughout the week-long event. Rob Reid, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, shared how Sage Intacct enjoys a 98% approval rating on G2 Crowd, the crowd-sourced end user review site that does not accept paid endorsements. BTerrell knows customers enjoy using Sage Intacct based on our own net promoter scores; however, the measurements collected and posted by G2 Crowd provide additional evidence both Sage Intacct and BTerrell are on the right track. In addition, Sage Intacct Advantage 2018 provided ample opportunity throughout the week for our group to sample informal, anecdotal evidence from others to back up Rob’s claims that customers are indeed happy.

Attendees always appreciate hearing from Aaron Harris at Sage Intacct events. This year, Aaron, who is Sage’s Senior Vice President and Head of Engineering and Technology, painted a future in which Sage Intacct promises to completely change the nature of financial audits. Audits continue to be projects summarizing financial history, which keep accounting professionals from lending strategic advice to their firms. How will Sage Intacct impact the future of attest and compliance work? According to Aaron, the addition of artificial intelligence and robotics to Sage Intacct’s always accessible cloud platform will create a continuous, proactive audit process greatly minimizing the amount of “looking back” required.

For BTerrell, we get excited when previewing new technology at Sage Intacct Advantage. This year, the Sage Intacct Interactive Custom Report Writer emerged from a year-long beta testing process as an included feature in the company’s upcoming November Quarterly Release. The new module creates a drag and drop powerhouse reporting tool that reorganizes and summarizes data with pivot tables and rich formatting tools. Over 800 attendees signed up for training on this highly anticipated module during the week-long event. In addition, Sage Intacct announced Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning to provide a collaborative planning tool that includes forecasting capabilities. Both of these products made a splash for everyone attending the conference.

Procure to pay, order to cash, record to report, controllership processes, finance transformation. Do these sound familiar? And do these processes involve predictable manual work, as well as large data to be processed and collected? As the answer is likely to be yes to both these questions, you are probably aware of the headaches they produce. As for the solution? Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is estimated to have a global potential of 44% in Finance and Accounting. With proven results for many front runner companies, RPA is guaranteed to smoothen the way business operations are managed.

Read More.

Back in April of 2010, the Financial Accounting Standards Board published new accounting guidance for calculating an often challenging method for recognizing payments on certain forms of revenue. Published as “ASU 2010-17: Revenue Recognition – Milestone Method (Topic 605)”, and discussed in draft abstract form in “EITF 08-9: Milestone Method of Revenue Recognition” on RevenueRecognition.com, the method allows vendors to recognize revenue at the time that a contractual obligation has been fulfilled, instead of applying revenues systematically throughout the term of the contract. However, because of the complexity of dealing with contractual incentives, such as bonuses, the milestone method outlines a few criteria that must be met.

One of the key points in this methodology is that a milestone must be an event for which there could be ‘substantive’ uncertainty for achieving this event at the time of contract signing. Although ‘substantive’ is a key word in this process, it still involves a matter of judgement considering either the vendor’s performance to achieve the milestone or the added value of the delivered item or service resulting from the achievement of the milestone. Most businesses may have some projects that may fit into this method of revenue recognition, and others that don’t. As such, an agile financial management solution that can manage variable revenue recognition models can help clarify and streamline these efforts. Contact BTerrell Group for more guidance with identifying and managing varying revenue recognition models. And, if you are concerned about the transition year difficulties imposed byASC 606 – Revenue from Contracts With Customers, we can help you get ahead of the game there, as well!

Robotic process automation (RPA) has the potential to to create major improvements in cost, quality, productivity, and speed of business operations, according to a recent report from The Hackett Group.

The technology—which analysts began studying about five years ago—offers the ability to deploy quickly, with reduced dependency on IT for implementation and support, according to the report. Some vendors have claimed to use RPA to deliver as much as 60-80% in savings. The automation technology can also reduce errors common in human-performed work, and allow companies to refocus their human talent on higher-value tasks, the report noted.

Read more.

ShipMonk, an ecommerce fulfilment provider, is no stranger to robotics and automation. It uses these technologies to reduce its picking and packing times and to drive revenues, CEO Jan Bednar said. The company is also no stranger to soothing employee fears about job losses due to the introduction of these technologies.

When ShipMonk deployed a robotics process automation application, “I told my employees that they would have nothing to fear due to automation for two reasons," Bednar said. "First, we have an environment that is very conducive to continued education. Employees who were interested in receiving training in the maintenance and operation of these robotics could absolutely receive it.” Second, he said: “I was very transparent with them that our investment in robotics would mean more growth and less hires — but not job cuts.”

Read more.