Has your company recently converted to a more sophisticated accounting system? Are you unhappy with the way the implementation company left your books, and now your team is struggling to understand your financials and work in the new system correctly? Sentinel Finance Group can fix the information in the new accounting system, provide clear financials, and re-establish your regular monthly financial processes.
Companies that are growing quickly in size or complexity often recognize an accounting need that can’t be met by entry-level accounting software (such as QuickBooks). It then becomes necessary to upgrade to an industry-specific or more sophisticated system that can handle subsystems or specialized processes (such as NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xledger, or Trimble Spectrum). However, companies often struggle during the implementation of a new accounting system, and their financial systems are often left in a mess.
Typically, the accounting system companies offer implementation teams that promise a clean transition from your existing accounting system to their system. However, the implementation team just uses whatever information your company gives them, without taking any responsibility for whether that is the correct information and whether it makes sense from a logical big-picture accounting perspective. Your company might have a knowledgeable accounting team, but they lack the expertise to correctly tie the big-picture financial information to the new accounting system. Essentially, there’s a gap between expertise in the new software and knowledge about your company’s specific finances.
Once the implementation is claimed to be “complete,” your accounting team doesn’t feel confident that the data is correct or that they were trained appropriately to use the new system. The accounting system company’s solution to this is to direct you to an external third party. These are typically specialists in the software, but don’t understand your company’s specific financial data and processes, so they’re unable to correctly translate the information from your company to the accounting software. On top of this, these third party consultants are often extremely expensive. As more time passes, the financial information gets more and more inaccurate and the issue gets more complex to solve.
Some of the most common issues I have encountered are duplication errors during import of historical data, sub-ledgers such as AR and AP not matching the general ledger, and incorrect balance sheets. Many of these errors are not easily fixed because the accounting systems do not allow simple deletion of the data. Instead, a series of complicated journal entries need to be booked to correct the mistakes and to align the various subsystems with the general ledger. This requires an understanding of the accounting software and how different accounting functions work together.
Sentinel Finance Group provides the big-picture oversight needed to ensure your company’s financial information is reflected accurately in the new accounting system. Whether you are about to transition to a new accounting software and want to ensure it is done correctly from the start, or your company financials are now unclear due to an ineffective implementation, we provide the expertise in both of those situations. Sentinel Finance Group brings together knowledge of accounting softwares, general accounting expertise, and understanding of a company’s specific finances in order to make sure everything makes sense and is accurate and correct in the new accounting system.
We have experience successfully working through these situations for multiple clients and have provided the technical expertise to fix the software implementation for various accounting systems. We work closely with our clients’ teams to implement correct procedures and systems to establish clear financials, use the new system correctly, and set up proper close and month end procedures. We understand our clients often need financial information quickly, so we keep the process moving and get the biggest issues corrected first. After all the information is accurate in the new system, we provide regular oversight and financial reporting to help our clients’ leadership teams make data-informed decisions for their companies.
Sentinel Finance Group is a fractional CFO firm in Kansas City and provides outsourced CFO services and controller services to local businesses.
