Sage Intacct Bank Feeds—Continuous Visibility Into Cash Flow
Everyone has that one dreaded task. For some, it’s mowing the lawn or vacuuming. Brilliantly resourceful companies recognized our pain and invented robot lawnmowers and robot vacuums to automate those tasks. For others, the dreaded task is reconciling our bank accounts. Fortunately, our whines and sighs didn’t go unnoticed by Sage Intacct. Sage Intacct’s Bank Feeds feature takes the pain out of bank rec by automating it.
Since its introduction in 2019, we’ve talked about Bank Feeds in articles and webinars, but are often surprised to learn that many Sage Intacct users aren’t aware of its value. So, this round, we want to highlight how it works and what your organization has to gain by implementing Sage Intacct Bank Feeds.
If you’re not yet taking advantage of Sage Intacct Bank Feeds, we encourage you to begin. It’s completely free, and the capability is built in, just waiting for you. There’s nothing you need to do except perform the initial bank setup.
How does it work?
Without diving into the specific configuration steps (which are very simple), Sage Intacct Bank Feeds works by connecting your bank and credit card accounts to Sage Intacct. Once connected, you’ve created an automated feed. The feed allows data to regularly be transmitted from your accounts into Sage Intacct. Bank Feeds then automatically matches those payments and credit card transactions to your invoices and purchases.
Bank Feeds checks for new transactions throughout the day, bringing them to keep Sage Intacct updated in near real time. The configuration process is simple, but we’re happy to guide you through it or answer any questions you may have.
Sage claims it can connect with over 10,000 banks and credit card companies, so it’s likely yours are on the list.
Simplify the customer payment process
Increasingly, customers are paying invoices electronically. Bank Feeds grabs that payment transaction data and automatically matches it to the correct invoice. If for some reason, Bank Feeds doesn’t have the confidence to perform an auto-match, you can easily apply the payment to the right invoice. Regardless, you still benefit from the direct feed of payment data into Sage Intacct.
With Bank Feeds, transactions flow directly into the reconciliation function, where they are auto-matched. Any unmatched deposits automatically flow to the Bank Transactions page where you can quickly and efficiently receive customer payments. Bank Feeds then automatically matches them for reconciliation, further streamlining your month-end process.
Streamline the credit card transaction process
Credit card statement reconciliation often feels like a more painful task than bank reconciliation. Sage Intacct Bank Feeds streamlines this task too. You’ll no longer have to wait for the credit card statement to arrive to begin reconciling. Instead, credit card feeds create credit card transactions directly from the transaction feed.
Filter transactions
You can filter the transactions by date or account type, for example, or to identify just unmatched transactions.
What we find particularly useful is that information, including statement date, last reconciliation date, and last bank feed date, is displayed on the screen to give you additional insight into what you’re working with.
Moving toward a continuous close
In addition to saving time and effort, one of the direct advantages of Bank Feeds is that it fits into a continuous close process. A continuous close in accounting refers to a process where your organization’s accounting system is kept open throughout the year rather than closing the books at the end of each reporting period.
The benefit of a continuous close is that you can access up-to-date financial information to make informed business decisions. It can also help identify potential errors or issues more quickly, so you can take prompt corrective action.
The continuous close process requires a robust and accurate accounting system — like Sage Intacct — and efficient procedures for recording and reconciling financial transactions — like Bank Feeds. It also requires strong internal controls to prevent errors or fraud — you and Sage Intacct have this covered too.
Sage Intacct Bank Feeds takes much of the drudgery out of bank reconciliation while providing you real-time insights into your organization’s cash flow throughout the month. Another task automated.
Watch our on-demand webinar our to learn more about Sage Intacct Bank Feeds. If you have questions, contact our Sage Intacct consulting team. We’d love to hear from you!