5 signals family offices have outgrown their accounting system

As family offices grow with increased transaction volume and evolving investment strategies, financial processes and requirements inherently become more complex. With this increasing complexity, existing accounting solutions become outdated and unable to meet new demands in several key areas.

Below are five critical areas where outdated accounting systems start to fall short of a growing family office’s expanding financial requirements, and how a more comprehensive Sage Intacct enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform can meet today’s needs and seamlessly scale with future demand.  

1. Inadequate visibility within reporting

Legacy systems: Older accounting or ERP systems often lack real-time reporting capabilities, and users typically cannot drill into reporting for deeper insights into metrics and data. These solutions also tend to offer very little, if any, dimensionality reporting, limiting the potential for advanced analytics.

Sage Intacct: As a built-in functionality, Intacct offers robust real-time reporting capabilities, enabling users to drill down into source transactions for increased insights into trends and opportunities. Additionally, Sage Intacct gives you the ability to slice and dice data for any view needed, enabling more thorough and detailed data analysis.

2. Manual processes

Legacy systems: In older accounting and ERP solutions, intercompany transactions and consolidations for reporting are often manual and time-consuming. Approvals also require significant effort, as they are usually performed outside of the system.

Sage Intacct: With Intacct, intercompany transactions are automated within the system, allowing for efficient consolidations and auto-eliminations with the click of a button. Any necessary approvals are now digital, with routing performed automatically.

3. Information silos

Legacy systems: Antiquated accounting and ERP systems often don’t connect seamlessly to other key systems, requiring manual data input into the system and limiting overall visibility.

Sage Intacct: The Intacct platform features an open API that allows for custom-built integrations and vendor-built integrations available through the Sage Intacct marketplace. For example, Salesforce Foundations can be seamlessly integrated into Intacct, as well as important investment data. Intacct also provides the ability to use reporting books that can be combined with accrual/cash books for specific reporting, such as tax reporting.

4. Difficulty providing family member financials

Legacy systems: With older ERP and accounting systems, providing family member financials can be a cumbersome, manual process, with reporting often done in spreadsheets outside of the system.

Sage Intacct: With Intacct, family members can access all key data directly within the system with the convenience and detail of real-time dashboards.

5. Restricted growth

Legacy systems: With outdated accounting and ERP solutions, setting up a new environment requires extensive work and often results in chart of accounts inconsistencies.

Sage Intacct: Intacct offers a more conducive environment for growth, featuring a scalable architecture and simplifying the chart of accounts using dimensions. In addition, Intacct supports multiple entities with a shared chart of accounts and dimensions, as well as very few additional setup requirements after adding an entity.