RSMUS.comThe family office ecosystem has grown significantly in recent years as new offices open and more wealth flows to these specialized money managers. Future growth, however, will be even bigger.
An estimated 8,030 family offices currently manage over $3 trillion in assets. Yet by 2030, there are projected to be 10,720 family offices managing $5.4 trillion in assets, eclipsing the entire global hedge fund industry.
More family offices means more competition for clients. More assets under management also means more obligations and responsibilities. Rapid growth in the sector comes as good news in many ways, but with it comes rising expectations and risks.
Family offices can capitalize on the opportunities ahead while minimizing the challenges by putting the right software tools in place sooner rather than later. Sage Intacct has become a popular replacement for outdated, underpowered, or insufficient financial management software. That’s happened for many reasons, but one in particular speaks volumes about why family offices prefer Sage Intacct.
Dimensions in Sage Intacct
From the cloud platform that allows for anytime, anywhere access to anything, to the extensive use of automation to save time and maximize productivity, Sage Intacct offers much for family offices to like. That includes many thoughtful details that go above and beyond to help users get everything right as easily as possible.
Dimensions are a prime example. Sage Intacct revolutionized the chart of accounts by replacing traditional transaction coding with tags known as “Dimensions” that identify: Location, Department, Project, Customer, Vendor, Employee, Item, or Class. Users can also create custom Dimensions.
Picking Dimensions to apply to transactions rather than coding them by hand comes with countless benefits, from saving time to increasing accuracy and improving reporting. Sage Intacct also capitalizes on Dimensions to streamline the user experience and, as a result, improve results for clients.
Using Dimensional Relationships
It’s often the case that certain Dimensions have a defined relationship with one another. For instance, certain employees are associated with certain locations or specific items come from a particular vendor.
Sage Intacct streamlines and simplifies these Dimension relationships with a clever approach. Depending on how a record is configured, each entry has a drop down menu of acceptable Dimensions to choose from. In the past, individual judgment would guide how a transaction was coded or even which Dimensions were applied, leading to confusion and inconsistency. Not anymore now that users are limited to a smaller number of Dimensions.
They can even be limited to one Dimension, in which case the form would be pre-filled, ensuring accuracy while accelerating and automating workflows. To the same end, Sage Intacct will filter the Dimensions included in the drop-down based on the first dimension selected on a line item. For instance, picking an owner will bring up a list of investments/funds related to that owner. Multiple Dimension relationships can even be used to auto-populate numerous subsequent Dimensions, making it faster to complete the chart of accounts while also improving the quality and consistency of the results.
For family offices, Dimension relationships are a tool to help with rising scale, complexity, and expectations. Rather than spending more time entering data or finding and fixing errors, they can rely on the smart tools in Sage Intacct to automate and expedite essential tasks, then apply the saved time and energy to more productive pursuits.
Sage Intacct has plenty of advanced features and sophisticated capabilities. But it also has many practical and user-friendly functions, like Dimension relationships, that prove the most impactful parts of software are sometimes the simplest.
RSM – A Partner to Family Offices
Dimension relationships are one of many ways to save time, increase outputs, avoid errors, and improve consistency with Sage Intacct. Most important of all, by helping to refine processes and automate operations, Sage Intacct helps family offices perform at a higher level at a time when it matters most.
Take full advantage of all that Sage Intacct can do with the help of RSM: a partner with equal expertise serving family offices and optimizing Sage Intacct deployments. Contact our team for more information.
