Latest Sage Intacct release leverages AI to fully automate key financial processes, shifting Time from manual processing to higher-value tasks 

]Sage, the leader in accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses, today announced the availability of Sage Intacct 2022 Release 1 (Release 1). The latest release provides businesses with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools that support finance leaders to make the best use of digitalized data to help identify anomalies and automate key processes. 

Connected to the Sage Digital Network, Sage Intacct allows work, information, and money to flow smoothly between Sage customers, and the suppliers, banks, and government bodies they do business with. The enhanced flow of trusted information and digitalized data provided by Release 1 enables AI to extract insights and patterns across key financial processes. This supports customers to better understand friction points, identify patterns, and review anomalies from across their business - all without the user or the data leaving Sage Intacct. 

“Sage Intacct customers are highly digitally determined, with over 70 percent of their financial workflows already automated. More than ever before, Sage is committed to building platforms and systems that empower customers to run smarter, more digital organizations,” said Dan Miller, EVP of Sage Intacct. “We’ve listened to our customers and understand their drive towards digital transformation, this release is yet another example of Sage delivering on those needs.” 

Accounts Payable Automation 

• Automated AP processing all within Sage Intacct - Reducing the need for the user, or the data to leave Sage Intacct, enabling a smoother user experience, and a lowered, single system cost for customers 
  • New scanning and vendor payments capabilities enable an automated end-to-end AP workflow from receive, process, pay, and reconciliation without leaving Sage Intacct -including bill creation, paperless approvals, payment processing, reconciliation, and reporting. 
  • Additionally, bills and payments for multiple business entities can be processed from within Sage Intacct.  
• Manual tasks managed by AI - shifting focus from data entry to higher value, strategic work. 
  • Customers can access an intelligent digital assistant, to scan vendor bills, match them to the right vendor, and create a draft bill record  
  • Use AI to identify duplicate and erroneous bills. Bills that require manual intervention are highlighted to empower users to quickly identify and address exceptions. 
  • Run daily reconciliation in minutes with automated bank downloads and auto-matching between payments and bank statements, all while eliminating manual data reconciliations between systems. 
  • Digitally connect to banks, vendors, and payment processors using Vendor Payments powered by Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI) to automate payments for U.S. and multi-national companies paying U.S. vendors  

“We’re thrilled about this strategic partnership, which combines CSI’s advanced payments processing technology with market leader Sage Intacct’s financial management solution,” said David Disque, President of Corporate Spending Innovations. “CSI’s fully embedded integration will leverage CSI’s robust API library and result in a frictionless user experience. Accounts payable teams will have a complete solution of secure payment workflow and efficient digitization of all B2B payments without having to leave the product." 

Miller goes on to say, “We know that AP teams still enter invoice details manually. This end-to-end automation means customers can receive, process, pay, and reconcile a bill without leaving Sage Intacct. This removes friction from their business and the risk of fraud from the process. Our customers have a more accurate view of their cash flow, and the supplier gets paid quicker. This is digital transformation in action.” 

Outlier Detection for General Ledger  

Following the launch last year of Outlier Detection for General Ledger, Sage is the first and only mid-market cloud accounting solution to use AI to increase confidence in the accuracy of general ledger transactions. Auto-generated flags appear for entries that don’t match past transaction patterns, enabling errors to be caught before making their way into financial reporting and reaching stakeholders. 

Release 1 updates to this feature include customizable approval routing to send outliers back to the originator to be fixed. This routing enables the GL Outlier Assistant to be used by more Sage Intacct users, not just those who route to journal entry approvers. For those that do route to an approver, entries can now be sent back to the originator first.  

Contract renewal 

Sage Intacct provides deep capabilities for software and SaaS companies to scale their accounting, subscription billing, and revenue recognition while providing crucial visibility into SaaS metrics.  

Release 1 updates to this feature include: 

• Contract renewal forecasting provides customers with forward-looking visibility and a more complete forecast for recurring revenue. Customers can analyze billings, revenues, and payments for upcoming contract renewals, and decision-makers can see what is booked and what is expected to be booked.  
• Customers can use Sage Intacct Custom Report Writer, Interactive Customer Report Writer, as well as Interactive Visual Explorer, to report, slice and dice, as well as visualize forecasted contract renewal information for greater data-driven insights. 

Availability 

Bill scanning is in the Early Adopter phase in the US, with additional regions coming in March.  

Vendor Payments is Generally Available in the US, with more regions to come.  

Outlier Detection for General Ledger and Contract Renewal is available for all Sage Intacct geographies.