Cybersecurity SaaS vendor RiskIQ cuts rev rec time from two days to 30 minutes

Contracts are the lifeblood for any software as a service (SaaS) vendor. Yet as the business grows, so does its challenge in managing revenue from complex contracts that can vary in duration and terms.

That was the case at RiskIQ, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity vendor that offers a digital threat management platform to defend against phishing, ransomware, malware, and other attacks. Rapid growth and international expansion several years ago left RiskIQ’s accounting team struggling to keep up with QuickBooks and Excel.

“We couldn’t continue using QuickBooks — we were growing too fast,” as Controller Masha Murphy says in our RiskIQ customer success story. “We had basically nothing to manage our SaaS revenue. I couldn’t do consolidation in any meaningful way on QuickBooks, so I had a giant Excel file to consolidate everything once a month.”

An upgrade to Sage Intacct and its Contracts module in 2016 solved those challenges for the 11-year-old company, automating what were labor-intensive manual processes and delivering much-needed visibility into financials. Since the switch, Risk IQ has:

• Shortened its monthly close from 20 days to just six
• Cut time for revenue recognition from two days to 30 minutes
• Reduced board reporting time from up to five days to 45 minutes
• Nearly doubled revenue and grew its customer base 250%

“The Sage Intacct Contracts module has been awesome for us — it’s so much simpler and easier, and with much better reporting,” Murphy said. “Just to post revenue used to take two days with an Excel file at month-end, and now it takes 30 minutes. I just push a button to post revenue and extract the report.”

‘Pretty Amazing’ Capabilities for ASC 606 Compliance

What’s more, RiskIQ is utilizing Sage Intacct’s built-in ASC 606 capabilities to speed its compliance with the new revenue recognition standard. Unlike other companies, Murphy notes, RiskIQ doesn’t need a specialized ASC 606 solution or an expensive consulting engagement.

“We’re going through ASC 606 conversion now and I’m able to use the systems I already have to accommodate it,” Murphy said. “I don’t have to change my legacy numbers and unwind everything. I just have to post the new numbers under the 606 books. That’s pretty amazing.”

RiskIQ has seen transformational benefits in other areas as well. For instance, what were difficult manual processes around complex sales commissions have been greatly streamlined with Sage Intacct Contracts.

“Running commissions automatically on contracts as the transaction happens is just magical,” Murphy said. “I don’t know of any other system that can do that.” More gains are in the pipeline once RiskIQ integrates Sage Intacct with an Xactly sales commission app that has enabled the company to eliminate a $25,000 monthly consulting fee.

Always ‘Data Ready’ with Sage Intacct

Other integrations between Sage Intacct and best-of-breed cloud applications are already paying off with time savings of roughly 20 hours a month. RiskIQ has:

• Reduced monthly close review time from up to three hours to 10 minutes by connecting a FloQast close management app with Sage Intacct
• Eliminated three hours a week of expense reporting time with SAP Concur and Sage Intacct
• Cut out up to five hours of manual collections work each month with a YayPay receivables app and Sage Intacct

Streamlined receivables have also reduced days sales outstanding (DSO). That’s accelerating cash flow that RiskIQ can invest in innovation and growing its base of more than 300 customers, including enterprises such as Amazon, Facebook, Disney, American Express, and Toyota.

With new efficiencies, Murphy’s team is spending less time on routine accounting and more time on analytics. Timely, accurate financial data and robust multidimensional reporting in Sage Intacct combine for new insights that help guide business growth.

“One of our biggest wins is that we’re always ‘data ready’ with Sage Intacct,” Murphy said. “That’s huge because we don’t have to manually collect and assemble information anymore. Sage Intacct reporting makes it so easy to slice and dice data any way you need it, and management can be confident that the data is accurate.”

Check out the RiskIQ customer success story to learn more about how the company has streamlined financial management with its upgrade to Sage Intacct.