Moving off of QuickBooks: Internal Controls in a Mobile World

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COVID and the shift to cloud-based technology has changed the way we all work. The change has been sudden and potentially permanent. A PwC survey finds that 83% of employers say moving away from systems like QuickBooks and shifting to remote work has been successful for their companies.

Unfortunately, in the rush to adapt, the importance of good internal controls was largely overlooked. When it comes to accounting systems, however, Sage Intacct offers great options to get on track. Especially in this new mobile first world.

Audit Trails for the Win!

Shocking, but true: QuickBooks will allow a user to print a vendor check made out to themselves, and then delete the transaction. QuickBooks was created to solve the problem of a small business owner lacking any accounting training who just needs to slap together a system to do the basics. In that light, why not allow that owner the ability to delete a transaction? It’s their company, after all, and a non-accountant will likely make mistakes. Once organizations start adding staff to their accounting – particularly when we have a remote workforce – the opportunity for fraud goes up exponentially.

Sage Intacct, in contrast, allows easy audit-ready financials where audit trails are constantly maintained in the background. Changes to master records or individual transactions can be spotted easily, giving piece of mind to growing business owners. The tracking is Sage Intacct is so sophisticated that enabling Advanced Audit Trails can even make Sage Intacct HIPAA-Compliant. This is something platforms like QuickBooks can’t even touch.

Online Bill and Purchase Approvals

With Sage Intacct, we can:

  • Enable an online purchase approval process. Sage Intacct can route requisitions to the appropriate approver based on any number of criteria (department, dollar amount, manager, and more…) for a paperless process. Mobile approvals and processes get easier without sacrificing control.
  • Build an approval process that scales. Smaller organizations might need only one or two steps to take a request to an invoice. Other organizations need robust three-way-matching with different flows based on countless factors. A system that is both simple and powerful is here for the taking.
  • Know where we are! With just a click we can see whether a transaction has been paid, who approved it, what changes have evolved along the way, and more. In a hectic and fast paced world, it’s easy to lose sight of transactions. Has anything fallen through the cracks? All these questions are easily answered.

Managing your Spend

With a mobile workforce, it’s good that we can have great budget (video link) to plan our way to a successful future. But once your budget is in place, shouldn’t the system make it easy to follow?

Sage Intacct’s Spend Management Module (video link) does just that. We can:

  • Have dashboards that tell department or location managers real-time budget vs. actual performance.
  • Check a box to track commitments so that approved purchase orders allocate budget dollars even before the invoice arrives. Without this ability, multiple users might inadvertently double-spend their budget.
  • Spend Management can warn users or block transactions that will exceed budget.

What’s Next?

Wherever you are in your mobile workforce evolution, you owe it to yourself to build in controls early to leverage all that technology has to offer.

Give us a call at 855.913.3228 or send us an email at info@altavistatech.com. You can even fill out our easy web form for and have a conversation with our team to discuss all your options.