{"id":7381,"date":"2020-12-18T11:09:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/?p=7381"},"modified":"2026-01-16T06:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T11:50:15","slug":"sage-intacct-helps-multi-entity-pedalheads-scale-smoothly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/sage-intacct-helps-multi-entity-pedalheads-scale-smoothly\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Intacct helps multi-entity Pedalheads scale smoothly"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMoney Matters<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSage Intacct helps multi-entity Pedalheads scale smoothly\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\tOwen Sweeney<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cReducing the admin gives the finance team more opportunities to add value and carry out duties that are more aligned with the strategy of the business.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pedalheads<\/a> is an organization that provides confidence, development, and independence programs for children in the areas of cycling, swimming, and sport. In other words, the company is an incredible resource for parents that want to give their children a great start in learning how to do these activities. In 2020, the company made the switch to Sage Intacct<\/a> in order to reduce manual entry of accounting processes, manage multi-entity reporting in different countries and to extract more actionable data. During a recent webcast, Geoff Grover, Director of Operations at Pedalheads, shares the organization’s implementation journey with Sage Advice.<\/p>\n

Evolving from entrepreneurial roots<\/h2>\n

Pedalheads\u2019 journey started as many startup ideas do \u2013 focusing almost exclusively on product developments. While developing the best experience for customers, it\u2019s understandable that operational processes often get put on the back burner, however, the risk is that during a period of rapid growth they are never optimized or improved, and work gets backlogged.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deal with 50,000 kids a year; that\u2019s 50, 000 transactions, credits, refunds, orders, changes etc. \u00a0It\u2019s a big strain on our customer care and accounting and finance group. These are the broad challenges we face. Our rapid growth is a great thing for the company but it also presents a significant challenge in keeping up sustainability. We have been expanding at 20% a year for 5-6 years. This doesn\u2019t allow us much time to jump off the hamster wheel and take on projects,\u201d explained Geoff.<\/p>\n

Working with an implementation partner<\/h2>\n

Rapidly growing across Canada, while developing a cross border presence in the US, Pedalheads experienced the exciting opportunities and challenges that are to be expected when running a multi-entity organization. One of these is dealing with different tax regimes and different reporting regulations across multiple territories. Pedalheads’ software search would reveal that this was one area that cloud-based financial management software could take care of, but the leadership needed some guidance to ensure some of the other challenges the business was facing could be solved with Sage Intacct.<\/p>\n

Geoff recently oversaw the businesses transition to Sage Intacct from Sage 50<\/a> and worked with The Answer Company<\/a> to ensure the software solution would be able to integrate seamlessly with Pedalheads\u2019 back end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believed our needs were unique and we wanted to know how we could get Sage Intacct to best fit with our business. We worked with The Answer Company in Vancouver in the spring of 2020. They were very easy to talk to and we did a lot of whiteboarding with them. They really took the time to get to know the business and I\u2019m confident they could probably sell a Pedalheads camp at this point,\u201d said Geoff. Pedalheads has now removed 90% of its manual entry work since the implementation.<\/p>\n

Conquering peaks and valleys with efficiency<\/h2>\n

Due to the seasonal nature of the Pedalheads\u2019 business, one of the ongoing challenges is the large volume of seasonal staff that the business takes on to meet demand in the busy periods of the year. The business had no choice but to take on more accounting clerks just to help process the manual data entry that was required to process payroll and customers transactions. Even with the added staff to support these operations, there was no opportunity to extract real-time data in a current season, leaving room for error and missed opportunities for optimizing business performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hire 2000 instructors every year for the summer. We have a giant labour expense suddenly. Now\u2026[our] revenue can get in faster and our main expense, labour, is being inputted in real-time. We can now see if there are any anomalies or anything out of place across all the locations. With Intacct we can also do that dashboarding piece that was missing, taking advantage of that real-time feedback and see any red flags,\u201d said Geoff.<\/p>\n

Making use of better data<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s one thing to gather data, it\u2019s another to make effective use of it. One of the key strategic decisions Pedalheads made in this regard was to bring on a financial controller.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know with Sage Intacct we\u2019re going to have better data and we wanted someone who can take that and really use it from a financial perspective,\u201d said Geoff.<\/p>\n

During the manual entry days, everything was delayed 3-4 months, and the business couldn\u2019t make decisions as fast as it needed to. Also, because of the company\u2019s entrepreneurial beginnings, Pedalheads was used to making a lot of decisions based on gut feelings, but as it grows the business must work harder to beat the competition for \u2018share of wallet\u2019 for educational programs and timely financial insight, or to put another way, \u2018better data\u2019 can help achieve this.<\/p>\n

\u201cReducing the admin gives the finance team more opportunities to add value and carry out duties that are more aligned with the strategy of the business,\u201d said Geoff.<\/p>\n

Implementation timeline<\/h2>\n

Sage Intacct first came on the company\u2019s radar in December 2019, with discussions starting with the answer company in spring 2020. COVID-19 would interrupt the journey momentarily and the Pedalheads busy season would arrive soon after, meaning things were picked back up in the fall of 2020. This timing worked well for the business as it lets the organization put its strongest foot forward for busy season in 2021. For now, test runs of processes and dashboard building is underway to help discover new efficiencies and opportunities for the new year.<\/p>\n

Following his journey to find a solution that picked up where Sage 50 left off, Geoff had some parting advice for other businesses that are considering upgrading to Sage Intacct.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had to give one piece of advice to another business rethinking their finance set up, it would be not to waste time trying to develop better spreadsheets and just make the move. We spent a fair amount of time trying to redo excels and pivot tables, but we should have just gone on and make the change. We didn\u2019t have to change much on our back end. So, spend the time more effectively,\u201d explained Geoff.<\/p>\n\n

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Discover Sage Intacct <\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Our cloud financial management platform delivers deep accounting capabilities across multiple industries designed with a single aim\u2014to accelerate your success.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLearn more about Sage Intacct<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The quotes in this article were extracted from a Sage webcast ‘The Approach to Moving Toward Financial Management Modernization\u2014The Future is Now’. Watch the full recording here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you are a growing business thinking about graduating from Sage 50 to a cloud-based financial management system, we’ve put some resources together for you here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Discover Sage Intacct<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Our cloud financial management platform delivers deep accounting capabilities across multiple industries designed with a single aim\u2014to accelerate your success.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLearn more about Sage Intacct<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Get a roundup of our best business advice in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cReducing the admin gives the finance team more opportunities to add value and carry out duties that are more aligned with the strategy of the business.\u201d Pedalheads is an organization that provides confidence, development, and independence programs for children in the areas of cycling, swimming, and sport. In other words, the company is an incredible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":267,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"sage_hide_published_date":false,"sage_hide_read_time":false,"sage_hide_share_buttons":false,"_pwl_sage_podcast_buzzsprout_src":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"business_type":[99],"lilypad":[],"context":[],"industry":[127],"persona":[100],"imagine_tag":[],"coauthors":[310],"class_list":["post-7381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-money-matters","business_type-medium-business","industry-financial-services"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-ca","author_name":"Owen Sweeney","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2019\/01\/GettyImages-614715418.jpg","imagine_tags":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice Canada English","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}