Cloud accounting software providers like market leader Sage Intacct are turning the general ledger on its head. Sage Intacct is a cloud accounting solution with an architecture and features that will blow the reversing journal entries off your existing general ledger.

And here’s another little secret. Sage Intacct’s been around for more than 20 years. So you can’t even say it’s brand new anymore. (Just new to accountants who’ve been too busy updating their existing general ledgers to notice.) Sage Intacct is a mature cloud product and the only financial management solution endorsed by the AICPA.

What’s so great about it?

Intercompany. Sage Intacct handles multiple entities with ease. Automating consolidations and getting rid of the time-consuming intercompany paperwork and transactions between your different businesses.

In Scrooge’s day, intercompany meant dragging a bag of coins down the street to settle the books at your other business. Now it’s automated, so you can close your books early and make your accountants as happy as Bob Cratchit on Christmas day.

Dimensions. Instead of a massive static chart of accounts, Sage Intacct uses a flexible dimensional structure. You can set up new dimensions and post to them whenever you want without creating the endless list of account combinations ahead of time.

This is so much better for a dynamic environment where people continually ask for new reports. You can easily adapt your financial reports as needed and still have plenty of time to argue with the VP of Sales about his monthly expenses.

Visibility. Sage Intacct is cloud-based software with a web interface. That means anyone in your company can open a web browser (on any device), log in, and see the reports they have permission to access (from anywhere).

Accountants can create, modify, and publish financials, dashboards, charts, and graphs right in the software. No programming required, and no need to involve the IT department. (Not that you don’t want to involve the IT department.)

Collaboration. Visibility leads to collaboration. Sage Intacct has built-in social tools so your team can collaborate right in the software. Chat back and forth about financials or individual transactions. The conversations are stored in the system where you can find them later (instead of on a sticky note in Cheryl’s cube that will be lost by next Tuesday).

Automation. Sage Intacct helps accountants automate mundane tasks so they can spend more time doing more valuable things. Like coming up with new ways to analyze and present information. Or finally shredding all the green bar paper they have accumulated in their offices.

Integration. Because Sage Intacct is cloud-based, it has its very own app store. Filled with other useful software applications that it integrates to. (Salesforce for CRM, Stripe for POS, ADP for payroll, the list goes on.)

While old general ledgers often stand alone, like an angry bullfrog in the middle of a mucky pond of manual journal entries, Sage Intacct is a social butterfly. Making friends with the most popular software applications on the market so you can be friends with them too.

Evolution. The magic of cloud software is that it evolves and gets better without a painful upgrade process on your end. Sage Intacct releases new features quarterly. They just…appear… in the software, and you start using them. It’s a beautiful, non-disruptive cycle of constant improvement that you never have to think about. Pure accounting bliss.

The moral of this story?

It’s time to send your old-style general ledger back from whence it came. Back to Scrooge and his cold, poorly lit office.

But then again, even Scrooge turned over a new leaf in the end. At the end of An Accountant’s Christmas Carol, he’d probably end up buying Sage Intacct for Bob Cratchit instead of that Christmas goose.

And to that I say, “God bless us. Every accountant.”