{"id":9913,"date":"2021-10-21T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/?p=9913"},"modified":"2026-02-12T04:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T09:34:51","slug":"finance-modernization-helps-cpa-firm-accommodate-growth-and-eliminate-100-hours-from-budget-creation-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/finance-modernization-helps-cpa-firm-accommodate-growth-and-eliminate-100-hours-from-budget-creation-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance modernization helps CPA firm accommodate growth and eliminate 100 hours from budget creation process"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFinance modernization helps CPA firm accommodate growth and eliminate 100 hours from budget creation process\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\"Brian\t\t\t\tBrian Siefkes<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In a recent blog, we shared how HoganTaylor LLP increased overall accounting efficiency 90% and eliminated $200,000 in administrative overhead with Sage Intacct, along with other benefits to their internal financial management.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since going live in early 2018, Sage Intacct has helped HoganTaylor streamline acquisitions and expand its advisory offerings. But as the company  grew into one of the largest business advisory and public accounting firms in Oklahoma and Arkansas, annual budgeting in Excel grew more and more time-consuming and painful.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exercise involved over 15 budget owners updating numbers in spreadsheets, and the finance team rolling those into a master Excel file with roughly 40 tabs, each with 40 rows and 12 columns. The team struggled to ensure accurate linkages as draft budgets were revised, with each iteration increasing the risk of broken formulas and version control miscues.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe knew we had outgrown our budgeting process \u2014 it just wasn\u2019t efficient,\u201d as Controller Mandy Brown recalls in our HoganTaylor <\/a><\/span>customer success story<\/span><\/a>. \u201cWe needed a solution that was more efficient and sophisticated than Excel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning proved to be an ideal solution for HoganTaylor, a 350-person firm with four offices named in 2019 to Accounting Today\u2019s Top 100 Firms list for the first time.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HoganTaylor deployed Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning<\/a> after first upgrading its accounting platform from Sage MAS 90 to Sage Intacct. The two-phase finance modernization has given the firm the efficiency and scale it needed after a 2018 merger with JPMS Cox added 75 employees, and another acquisition that launched a new IT services division.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSage Intacct Budgeting and Planning has definitely improved our whole budgeting process,\u201d Brown said. \u2018It saved us so much time in 2020 and gave everyone real-time visibility as the budget was created.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliminating a Week of Manual Excel Work<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Building the 2021 budget in Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning proved faster and simpler than Excel. Budgeting efficiency for the finance team rose 50%, Brown estimated, while a week\u2019s worth of back-end manual work has been eliminated.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across both the finance team and budget owners who head service lines, locations, and departments, time saved is in the range of 100 hours. \u201cIt will save even more time next year now that we\u2019ve got experience with the system,\u201d Brown said.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HoganTaylor\u2019s finance team budgeteers are happy to be done with the painstaking manual manipulations needed with Excel-based budgeting, opening new time for more valuable tasks such as analysis and reporting.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no more tabbing back and forth between different Excel files,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAs soon as a budget owner enters their numbers in Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning, we can see it in real time with no combining files. And when you go to the top of the budget tree, your totals are right there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visibility and process controls give the finance team new assurance that budgeting is done correctly and accurately, without the headaches of tracking status by emails and spreadsheets.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSage Intacct Budgeting and Planning has helped facilitate the flow of information and give us more visibility into what budget owners are doing, and there\u2019s no more chance of using a wrong budget version,\u201d Brown said.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Budget Owners Quickly Embrace the New System<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

HoganTaylor opted to have budget owners enter data into Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning when the solution was first used for budget creation, in fall 2020, rather than continue using Excel. Brown\u2019s team was gratified to see that budget owners embraced the new system with barely a hiccup.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt actually went better than I expected,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get any real pushback on it, or even that many questions \u2014 everyone was for the most part able to use the system without any issues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it came time to present draft budgets to the CEO, COO, and other executives, the finance team easily created a budget dashboard through Sage Intacct. That proved faster and easier than sharing a spreadsheet, with drill-down into detail to address any questions.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, native integration between Sage Intacct budgeting and accounting components \u2014 a key differentiator when the firm evaluated several budgeting packages \u2014 is proving especially useful.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGetting the budget into Sage Intacct is super simple. All you do is click a button, and that\u2019s really helpful,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThe ability to set up budgets to exactly match our financials in Sage Intacct, and synching back and forth, was a big plus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next Up: Forecasting and Budget vs. Actual Reporting<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With one yearly budget built, HoganTaylor\u2019s next step with Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning is to utilize capabilities for forecasting and scenario modeling, and more frequent and timely budget vs. actuals reporting.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously, HoganTaylor had some budget vs. actuals tracking available through dashboards, but it was used on an ad hoc basis and not regularly updated. Going forward, the finance team expects to make detailed budget vs. actuals available by synching Sage Intacct\u2019s dual budgeting and accounting components.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that, the firm will be able to reforecast financials throughout the year as conditions change, with insights to guide decisions on cost reduction, new hiring, resource allocations, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cForecasting and budget vs. actuals reporting through Sage Intacct will help everyone know where we are at a given point in time, and if we could spend more in one area or cut in another,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019re excited about the system\u2019s capabilities and know that we can use it to do so much more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing the Books in Half the Time \u2014 for 4x More Entities<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Improvements on the budgeting side extend the value that HoganTaylor is <\/span>realizing with Sage Intacct<\/span>, with accounting processes 90% more efficient since the firm upgraded from MAS 90. For example, the central finance team has taken on accounting for four subsidiaries, which was previously done by subsidiary-level personnel in QuickBooks, without adding headcount.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That eliminates roughly $200,000 a year in administrative overhead while subsidiary staff can focus on more valuable client-facing initiatives. Despite the increased workload, the finance team has cut monthly close time from five to seven business days down to just two or three.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConsolidation across multiple entities would have been a nightmare in our previous environment,” said Wes Gilliam, chief accounting officer. \u201cAs the firm has grown with acquisitions and new entities, Sage Intacct has enabled the finance team to handle exponential growth in volume and deliver more timely reporting while maintaining our headcount to a minimum.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See our <\/span>HoganTaylor customer success story<\/span><\/a> to learn more about how the firm has eliminated its Excel budgeting pains with Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Get our latest business advice delivered directly to your inbox.<\/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\"Working\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent blog, we shared how HoganTaylor LLP increased overall accounting efficiency 90% and eliminated $200,000 in administrative overhead with Sage Intacct, along with other benefits to their internal financial management. Since going live in early 2018, Sage Intacct has helped HoganTaylor streamline acquisitions and expand its advisory offerings. But as the company  grew into one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1464,"featured_media":9084,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158,348,46,48],"tags":[2,420,153],"business_type":[312,41],"lilypad":[],"context":[418,429],"industry":[55,450],"persona":[150,100],"imagine_tag":[222,209,435,436,443,444,434,233],"coauthors":[851],"class_list":["post-9913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accountants","category-free-guides-templates","category-growth-customers","category-technology-innovation","tag-accountants","tag-cloud-financial-management","tag-growing-a-business","business_type-accountants","business_type-growing-business","industry-professional-services","industry-software-saas"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-us","author_name":"Brian Siefkes","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-1057253610.jpg","imagine_tags":{"222":"Accountants","209":"Accounting","435":"Intacct Accountants","436":"Intacct Accounting","443":"Intacct Large Business","444":"Intacct Medium Business","434":"Large Business","233":"Medium Businesses"}},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice US","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34824,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9913\/revisions\/34824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/9084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=9913"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}