PSA firms getting closer Sage Intacct

Sage Intacct launches its annual conference this week in Nashville. With several thousand attendees the conference is a magnet for business leaders, especially finance leaders from across the US. There are few details about what the company will announce this week but its ecosystem has already made several announcements.

This article focuses on the two Professional Services Automation firms that have made announcements over the last few days. The first, Kimble, has announced a comprehensive integration with Sage Intacct. The second, KeyedIn, announced some enhancements to its integration that it first launched in 2013. One might have expected another company, Mavenlink to be present having launched their integration in 2015, but they are absent and that partnership seems to have fallen away in recent months.

Kimble delivers Kimble-Intacct Connector

If you are going to write an integration, do it right first time. Wise words and ones that Kimble has taken to heart with a connector that appears comprehensive. The connector is also now listed on the Intacct Marketplace having received technical approval from Sage Intacct.

This is not just an import/export option but a connector that delivers bi-directional data flows to benefit both solutions. Companies that utilise the Kimble PSA product will find that Sage Intacct provides a comprehensive accounting product to meet their needs. The integration includes the transfer of data relating to projects, accounts receivable, accounts payable and revenue.

Importantly the system will transfer information about contacts and employees to Intacct when appropriate. There is also a feedback loop for contacts. When a new account is created within Salesforce and Kimble the information is passed directly to Sage Intacct to create the accounting profile for the client. This eliminates rekeying and means that there is a compliant data flow from sales, through operations to accounting.

The integration for billing revenue recognition is especially strong. Kimble passes timesheets and time entry as approved timesheet data direct into the Sage Intacct timesheet system. Project milestones likewise update the Sage Intacct SODocuments. From within the project summary in Sage Intacct it is able to pass back the actual revenues against the project back to Kimble. This allows Kimble PSA to carry out more accurate performance analysis as it can draw in costs that would not have been present in the operational system. Revenue recognition can now occur within Sage Intacct with all the correct information to hand.

Has Kimble found the right partner

This move may signal a shift of primary accounting partner from Sage Live to Sage Intacct for Kimble. While Sage Live was native to Salesforce it does not compete equally with Sage Intacct, one of the first cloud accounting systems on the market. Daniel Keating, Kimble US President commented: “We believe this combination – best of breed PSA tightly connected with best of breed financials – sets a new high bar. This bi-directional integration unifies project and finance data more completely and continuously than even the best-known cloud ERP suites.”

Analysts agree, David Hofferberth, Managing Director of Service Performance Insight – the leading research and benchmarking organization dedicated to professional services, said: “Integration between project financial data and corporate financial data has always been important for professional services organizations, but what Kimble has achieved with Intacct goes further than usual. The other crucial integration is PSA with CRM, which is a strength for Kimble given that it’s native to the Salesforce platform. I think this partnership looks very promising.”

There are some added bonuses here. If Sage Intacct is about to launch an international version on the marketplace, that will be good news for Kimble. It was founded in the UK and is growing fast in both the UK and Germany as well as the US. It also means that it now has a partnership that will enable it to compete in larger deals against NetSuite and FinancialForce. Though it will need to deliver some marque customers to prove the integration and benefits of both solutions.

Kimble is a silver sponsor at the Sage Intacct Advantage conference this week in Nashville and will demonstrate the integration there.

KeyedIn renews partnership

KeyedIn has improved its three way integration between Salesforce, Sage Intacct and KeyedIn. What isn’t clear from the release is what enhancements the new integration delivers. The press release merely states:

• “Enables Professional Services Organizations to Automate the Bid-to Bill Workflow for Service Delivery”
• “Provides Complete Visibility into Key Analytics for Revenue Recognition, Utilization, Margins and More”

Enterprise Times spoke to KeyedIn at the event who confirmed the the changes in this release were iterative rather than adding new functionality. The integration is already comprehensive but needs updating as and when the API’s are updated on either side.

Both connectors have been available for at least four years and KeyedIn already has customers leveraging them. Vincent DiRaddo, Director of Finance & Administration for Prairie Capital Advisors commented: “Being a seamlessly integrated, Sage Intacct-recommended solution, that also supports Salesforce makes KeyedIn Projects well-suited for us. Our substantial growth posed operational challenges that we believed Cloud-based automation could overcome. Significant to our success has been having our most capable consultant’s expertise on corresponding client projects. We needed to prevent resource bottlenecks and have the ability to track project progression and financial status in real-time, which the KeyedIn solution provides.”

The KeyedIn connector for Sage Intacct is listed on the marketplace here. Unlike Kimble which is native on the Salesforce platform, or Mavenlink which has native Salesforce connectors, KeyedIn took a different approach, It uses Jitterbit, a third party integration platform to create the connections between Salesforce, Sage Intacct and KeyedIn. This also enables them to connect to other third party solutions such as Oracle as well.

Matt Muldoon, VP of Product for KeyedIn commented: “Our enhanced Connectors make it easy to integrate CRM data, like sales opportunities, with service delivery timelines and time and expense reporting, and then on to the Accounting software for timely and accurate billing and invoicing. The result is a completely automated workflow for any professional services team, which extends from the initial bid to the assignment of resources and an execution plan to collecting cash and recognizing revenue.”

What does this mean

If Kimble or KeyedIn thought they would have a clear run at the several thousand attendees at Sage Intacct advantage they will be disappointed. However, that KeyedIn has demonstrated the strategy is successful validates the Kimble decision to integrate to the solution. Mavenlink is absent from the event but is working closer with other accounting vendors including NetSuite.

For Sage Intacct this is good news, with two serious software vendors looking to add kudos to its marketplace it demonstrates they are heading in the right direction. Though the loss of Mavenlink is regretful. Sage Intacct has performed well over the last year since its acquisition. A fact that was recognized by Sage by appointing Rob Reid to the executive committee. While Sage may have problems Sage Intacct looks to be the jewel in its crown.