Blue Mountain Resort Elevates Efficiency & Reduces Labor Costs with Sage Intacct Accounting Software

CHALLENGES

Time-Consuming Manual Accounting Processes that Stood in the Way of Timely Business Intelligence

Blue Mountain Resort, an award-winning outdoor adventure destination and event venue, has much to offer visitors to the Pocono Mountains. With skiing, snowboarding, snow tubing, mountain biking, camping, ziplining, laser tag, summer camps, weddings, team building events, and more, the Resort provides an outstanding visitor experience.

Conversely, up until two years ago, the accounting software the company used to manage the financials of its diverse divisions fell short of the Resort’s accounting department’s needs.

According to CFO David Deal and Controller John Jaques, their four-person accounting team had struggled with a system that required a lot of manual entry to prepare financial reports for managers. The software was dated, without any simplified or automated way to integrate data from other systems that the company was using to manage its business lines.

“We were spending a lot of hours inputting our point of sale data into our accounting system,” explained Deal. “We had to copy and paste our data into Excel sheets in order to create the financial updates we wanted to send to managers. If the data didn’t balance or there were other discrepancies, it was a tremendous effort to troubleshoot and fix errors before issuing the reports via email.”

Jaques shared that the manual effort made the process of getting financial insights extremely slow. “Managers were only getting financial reports bi-weekly. You can’t be proactive with business decisions when your data is from two weeks ago.”

He also said that the system had zero drill-down capabilities. The accounting team and management couldn’t dig deep into the data to get a more granular picture of financial performance.

In 2018, Deal and Jaques knew it was time to replace their outdated accounting system with a solution that could automate tasks and provide better business intelligence.

SOLUTIONS

Sage Intacct and Custom-Built Integrations with Other Operational Systems

“We were looking for a cloud solution with a strong API for integrations with our other systems,” said Deal. “We wanted to take advantage of the new technologies that have been developed without constantly maintaining the software or a server. Also, we were looking for a solution that offered reporting features that were easy to use and would seamlessly deliver information to profit loss center managers.”

After reviewing several options, they decided that Sage Intacct had the capabilities Blue Mountain Resort needed. They met with Cargas Systems for an initial demo.

“We felt comfortable with the Cargas team and how they described the process. In checking references, we found that everyone spoke highly of Cargas,” shared Deal.

The implementation launched in June 2018 and was up and running by August 1^st.

“It was a two-month process, which may sound like a long time, but there were a lot of moving parts,” explained Jaques. “That time allowed us to learn the system. Cargas didn’t just implement it and leave us to figure it out for ourselves. They taught us how to use the solution so that when it was live, we could take advantage of its benefits immediately.”

The Sage Intacct solution implemented by Cargas gives the Blue Mountain Resort:

• Mobile access from anywhere and anytime (laptop, tablet, smartphone)
• Automated generation and delivery of reports to managers of the Resort’s profit/loss centers (e.g., retail, food and beverage, outdoor activities, tubing, weddings)
• Streamlined GL processes
• Integrations with Point of Sale systems
  • MICROS POS – For the resort’s 6 bars and full-time restaurant
  • Intouch POS – For the resort’s ski operations
• Integration with Kronos payroll solution

“Cargas’s level of professionalism is now the bar that we set going into any implementation that we do. I’ve personally been a part of between six to eight implementations, and no other software partner has come close to matching the quality of the Cargas experience”

~ John Jaques, Controller, Blue Mountain Resort

RESULTS

Saved Time, Reduced Labor Costs, Improved Decision-Making

According to Jaques, “Our accounting team saves at least 8 to 10 hours a week because the solution automates the exchange of data from our point of sales systems into Sage Intacct. With our old system, it was painstaking to produce financial reports. We had to batch everything before posting an entry. Then we had to extract data into a CSV file and copy and paste it into Excel worksheets set up with formulas to calculate income statements for our different departments.”

The integration with the Resort’s payroll system delivers efficiencies, as well.

“It allows us to pay closer attention to labor expenses,” explained Jaques. “For example, we can get metrics about hours worked by employees by the number of visitors on any day, which helps managers schedule their staff more effectively and cost-efficiently.”

With Sage Intacct, Blue Mountain Resort’s profit/loss center managers can view financial reports in near real-time. Every day they can see up-to-date insight about their department’s financial performance through user-friendly, custom dashboards.

Thanks to the Sage Intacct solution, Blue Mountain Resort’s accounting team has been able to switch from posting manual entries to more value-added work and financial analyses.

“Sage Intacct allows us to focus more on internal controls to streamline operations and improve profitability,” Deal said. “We can analyze more metrics than ever before and make better business decisions.”

Blue Mountain Resort has also found great benefit in working with a true cloud-based solution. Sage Intacct enables the Resort’s staff to stay on top of company financials when they need to work remotely (such as during the COVID-19 crisis, bad weather, or when flexible scheduling is needed).

“When the coronavirus stay-at-home order came, our team could transition seamlessly to working from home and function the same way that we did in the office,” shared Jaques.

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