Sage Intacct Release 1 of 2019
A new year, and the first of four Sage Intacct releases! You might be curious, what kind of new and improved features are we in for? Fasten your seat belts, hold onto your kids, pets, and purses because today’s post will share the top three features that grabbed our attention.
As an aside, to not promote jealousy amongst the other release highlights, follow this link to catch them all.
AP Bill Approvals
This release brings with it an addition high on many wish-lists: bill approvals to the Accounts Payable module. Previously, the only approvals available within the AP module were on disbursements/payments. In order to have approvals on expenses you needed to subscribe to the Purchasing module. You didn’t need an entire purchasing workflow, however you did need a single step transaction in order to take advantage of approvals.
Approval Types
You might wonder, what types of approvals can I choose from? Below are available options per the release notes.
| Approval Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Value Approval (non-progressive) | Approval requests are sent out based on the total bill amount. Create different levels of approvers and approvals based on bill amounts. Requires permissions to AP Bills Approval Levels (1-5) for the appropriate level. |
| Value Approval – Transaction Department | Approval requests are sent out based on the department selected in the transaction and the transaction amount. Requires permissions to AP Bills Approval Levels (1-5) for the appropriate level. Only 1 department can be selected per transaction. |
| Named User | Approvals are routed to a specific user. Named users are required to be either a Business User or Employee user type with permission to Approve Bills (List). |
User Types
Will I need more business users to use this functionality? Nope! You DO NOT need to be a business user in order to approve AP bills, employee users can also approve AP bills.
Watch the overview video!
Workflow Change
You might then say, I think I might be interested in this new feature, what exactly does AP expense approval mean in terms of workflow change? When AP approvals are turned on, your new workflow might follow these steps:
Step 1: AP Bill Submission
A business user enters an AP bill for $10,000
Step 2: Approval Emails are triggered
- An employee user receives a notification of required approval because the bill is above $9,999.99.
- Then a second named approver also receives a notification of this new bill to verify the coding is correct.
Step 3: Review Bills for Approval
Both users follow the link in their respective emails (email notifications being an optional preference) to view the bill(s). They review the bills and approve/decline along with any helpful comments.
Step 4: Approve/Decline
AP Bill is Declined:
The submitter, the user who entered the original AP Bill, makes the requested changes and re-submits for approval.
AP Bill is Approved:
The bill payment process continues as normal with the user selecting the bill for payment and any payment approvals and printing of checks follow.
Bulk Actions for Journal Entries
Previously, duplicating, reversing, and posting journal entries was done on an individual journal entry basis. This release introduces bulk actions to the journal entries list screen.
- Duplicate: You can now duplicate multiple journal entries at once, making for a more efficient month end. When duplicating, you can select the new date of posting, journal, and optional reversal date. All other fields on individual journal entries, to include state (posted, drafted, submitted – with the exclusion of approved) and attachments, are copied to the new journal entries.
- Post: You can draft multiple entries and later select to post in bulk.
- Reverse: You can reverse a selected list of journal entries at once.
New Bank Reconciliation
New Look
- The new bank reconciliation features some notable user interface appearance changes.
- The Checks/Debits and Deposits/Credits are no longer on a single page with 2 separate sections to scroll through (endlessly). A filter picklist has been added to choose to display one or the other or both! Important to note that the filters must be applied via a button click.
- You can choose to browse through pages or display all transactions on the same page. Display all by clicking: More Actions > Table Size > All Rows
New Filters
- A few common filters you’re already used to are still available, as expected, however you can now add additional fields for filtering (voided transactions for example or transactions on a specified date). You can even choose to show only unmatched transactions.
Column Header Sorting
- You can now sort any of your columns by their header to order the data.
What’s Next?
In all the excitement around the release, do you feel as if the seat belt came loose and you lost your pet, purse, or child? Let’s hope none of those are true, but if you need a bit more information, reach out to your CLA Intacct team!
Kathy Jastrzebski is a manager with CLA’s Intacct team. CLA is an Intacct Premier Partner with a partnership that spans over 20 years and more than 1,000 successful implementations. Kathy brings five years of accounting experience along with seven years of Sage Intacct implementation experience. Along with her accounting experience, she has a passion for leveraging technology to lead finance teams worldwide through system implementations with a mission of increasing department efficiency through business process improvements.
Thanks for posting this information! Your summary is very helpful to understand what the important changes to Intacct are. The addition of Bill Approval at the EMPLOYEE user level will certainly be welcomed by organizations that don’t use the purchasing module but want more streamlined and automated control of A/P.