Transcard Eliminates 120 Hours of Manual Data Work as It Scales Its Global Payments Business
DAVID APPEL
December 07, 2022
3 min read
An on-premises Sage 50 accounting system had served Transcard well for years, but the need for speed, insights, and scalability increased as the company grew its customer base and international presence.
Adding new global locations forced the accounting team into manually consolidating multi-entity financials at Transcard, a world leader in payments technology solutions used by more than 550 financial institutions, technology companies, and businesses.
“Dumping data into spreadsheets and doing all the consolidation manually was a major hurdle,” says John Haddock, CFO at the 15-year-old company. “A big tipping point was manually doing foreign currency conversions for our global locations — that became a really big burden.”
Wanting to modernize to the cloud, the Chattanooga-based firm evaluated Oracle NetSuite and other solutions before deciding to remain in the Sage family with its selection of Sage Intacct.
“We have used NetSuite in the past so we evaluated their solution but our Intacct sales rep focused on our needs and goals of the upgrade and customized the process to focus on solving those issues,” Haddock says. “Sage Intacct was the leader out of the pack and gave us no reason to look elsewhere. We know that Sage Intacct can grow with us, and we won’t have to replace the platform anytime soon.”
Eliminating the Pains of Multi-Entity Consolidation
With Sage Intacct, Transcard has new scalability to handle rapid revenue growth and a 1,500% increase in recent years in transaction volumes processed for its customers. It’s racked up an impressive set of gains since going live with implementation by Cargas, a Sage Intacct partner:
- Cut close time 33%, down to two weeks
- Eliminated 120 hours a month of manual data work in travel and expense (T&E) management
- Cut days sales outstanding (DSO) by 25%
- Accelerated cash flow by $500,000
- Improved accounts payable (AP) efficiency by 20%
- Boosted cash flow variance accuracy by 20%
Transcard quickly leapt the hurdle of labor-intensive multi-entity consolidations that had bedeviled the accounting team.
“The consolidation process was our biggest pain point, and now we can do it in three clicks with Sage Intacct,” the CFO notes. “The simplicity of the automation is real game changer. We definitely have more timely, more accurate information across the business.”
Transcard is seeing huge gains in other areas, too. For example, using the Sage Intacct Time & Expense module is saving 60 IT developers about 120 hours a month in manual data work of assigning time spent on projects for specific clients. As a result, developers can better focus on continuing to innovate Transcard solutions.
“And it’s saving the manager four or five hours a month, and the headache of pinging developers to figure out what they did last month,” Haddock says. “Now it’s all automated and is a huge bonus that helps us move forward.”
20% Gains in AP Efficiency and Cash Flow Accuracy
Meanwhile, Transcard’s AP function is 20% more efficient with automated processes, contributing to a 20% improvement in cash flow variance accuracy.
“We do a cash flow forecast for our owner several times a month, and our controller is saving five or six hours because all the data is in one place,” Haddock says. “It’s a lot easier to reconcile accounts and run transactions out across many different cash accounts.”
AP automation has also helped Transcard more closely track and control spending. Simple drill-down from the Sage Intacct general ledger to detailed PDF invoices lets Haddock’s team and budget owners quickly answer any questions about spend variance.
“You can just click through and drill down to the actual invoice — it’s fantastic,” Haddock says.
‘Take Reporting to a Whole New Level’
And Transcard is just getting started. The company is taking advantage of Sage Intacct’s open and straightforward APIs to connect the Transcard payment processing platform to Sage Intacct.
“The Sage Intacct API set is phenomenal,” Haddock says. “Having the capabilities to build APIs and get data from our payments platform into Sage Intacct is a very big win.”
Once complete, the API-based integration will let Transcard utilize Sage Intacct’s slice-and-dice dimensional reporting for analytics on metrics such as revenue by client. And though Transcard has already reduced its monthly close time by 33% with Sage Intacct, Haddock says a three- or four-day close should be achievable.
The result: Leadership will have richer insights, faster, to make informed data-driven decisions that drive continued growth.
“Once we have the API feed set up between the Transcard platform and Sage Intacct, we’ll be able to take reporting to a whole new level,” Haddock says.
Learn More
Transcard is one of a growing number of SaaS companies to adopt Sage Intacct, making us the #1 solution of choice for software companies outgrowing QuickBooks or migrating from a legacy system, according to studies by The SaaS CFO.
Find out what Sage Intacct can offer your SaaS company at www.sageintacct.com/easyclimb, packed with resources on topics such as reporting, revenue recognition, subscription billing, SaaS metrics and more.
