Preparing for an Audit with Sage Intacct
Few things strike angst in a CFOs heart like the word “audit.” You know your books are in order, that’s not the issue. It’s the time and effort involved in preparing for an audit — time that takes away from practical and strategic work you’re doing. You’ve selected Sage Intacct as your accounting software, which was an excellent choice. The application not only has the seal of approval from the AICPA, but it also has built-in capabilities that speed and simplify audit preparation. Here are a few of the ways Sage Intacct can help de-stress the audit process.
Deep Visibility
A successful audit relies on your auditor’s ability to easily trace all transactions from the original transaction and supporting documentation through the business processes and up through the financial statements. Sage Intacct is purpose-built to manage and demonstrate the accounting path providing deep visibility into your business framework.
The role-based dashboards in Sage Intacct are a great way to gather together the reports and metrics an auditor will be concerned about in one convenient spot. You and your auditor can click on any figure in the financial statement and drill all the way down to the general and sub-ledgers, reports, and original transactions—exactly what’s needed to test and investigate key accounting processes.
Audit Logs
Maintaining a record and timeline for key activities is an integral part of SOX compliance. Sage Intacct keeps a continuous audit trail of transactions. The audit trail shows what a field value was before, what it was changed to, when it was changed, and who changed it. This effectively eliminates speculation and keeps your organization GAAP compliant.
Sage Intacct includes another feature that works hand-in-hand with the audit log to provide important context-sensitive information during an audit. It’s called Sage Intacct Collaborate, and it’s an internal messaging app. Messages created with Collaborate get permanently stored in the context of the record the message relates to. Later, during an audit, if clarification is needed, you can pull up the transaction along with the permanently stored conversation (plus any attachments). In this way, you can answer an auditor’s questions about not only what was done and when it was done, but why it was done.
User and Role-Based Access Permissions
Access permissions play a key part in establishing a separation of duties in your organization. Sage Intacct provides for both user and role-based permissions. For added flexibility, a user can be assigned multiple roles.
Good accounting practice (and SOX compliance) dictates that you frequently review user access. In addition, periodic reviews are smart as people leave the company, change roles, or internal processes change. You can view an individual user’s permissions and roles at any time, but we can also create a custom report that consolidates all users and permissions. Let us know if you would like assistance creating the custom report so that you can review all users and permissions on one report.
Sage Intacct is a robust financial management solution that provides the tools and insight you need to sail through any audit. Have questions about Sage Intacct? We would love to talk with you. Please do hesitate to Contact us any time.
