RSMUS.comSigning a contract often marks the satisfying start to a new working relationship, but successful contract management can prove to be a challenge no matter what size your company is. Sage Intacct’s cloud-based accounting system can help your business manage even the most complex contracts while offering financial insights and compliance with reporting standards.
The last two releases of 2019 included additions and updates that make Sage Intacct Contracts even more useful. For example, when you generate invoices related to a contract, you can now create separate invoices for each associated project, which is really significant. Previously, you could only generate invoices that covered the entire contract.
Add Flexibility to Your Workflow
If your business is not quite ready to post a contract, you can now add it to the system, but save it as a “draft.” You can also add contract lines and expenses as “draft.” Any item with a “draft” status won’t affect the general ledger or the contracts sub-ledger, but can still be seen and reviewed as needed by billing and revenue managers.
Contracts saved as “draft” can be used in forecast and renewal plans. When the status of “draft” contracts is updated to “in progress,” Sage Intacct will automatically create all related journal entries in the general ledger.
As part of ASC 606 compliance, your business may need to take another look at the estimates for a Time and Material project’s variable considerations, from discounts and refunds to penalties and performance bonuses. As part of 2019 Release 4, Sage Intacct introduced a workflow to automate the process of reassessing a project’s variable considerations.
When you use this Revalue Estimate function, Sage Intacct will add a new contract project timeline, using the new numbers for the unbilled values, and will cancel any revenue and billing schedules that remain from the original timeline.
If your business uses multiple-element arrangements (MEAs), you can now include estimated revenue for MEA allocations schemes. When you do this, Sage Intacct will automatically allocate the total bundle contract value between the participating contract lines, calculations you will no longer have to do manually. The MEA allocation process can be run more than once, with different effective dates that don’t affect previously posted balances.
Save Time with Contract Report Packages
To meet the needs of your business, you can easily customize the new standard Contracts packaged reports, which were introduced as part of Sage Intacct Release 3. The available packages are Contract Forecast Reports, Contract Management Reports and Contract Subledger Reports. Before these report packages were offered, users with Contracts subscriptions had to build their own reports in a time-consuming process.
If your company is a new Contracts user, or if your business has acquired another company, you may need to build up your past contract balances in Sage Intacct for reporting purposes. Tasks like posting billing, revenue and expense schedules into the Contracts sub-ledger can now be automated instead of added manually. This process bypasses the general ledger, but when you’ve had a chance to check the data and make sure everything is correct, you can post the entries to the general ledger.
Updates to Sage Intacct can help your business manage all its contracts more effectively. To find out more, schedule some time to talk with one of the experts at RSM.
