Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online Comparison: Choose the Right Accounting Software

Selecting the right accounting software is crucial for businesses as it can greatly impact their financial management and efficiency. In today’s digital age, there are numerous options available, making the decision-making process overwhelming. Therefore, conducting a comprehensive comparison between different accounting software solutions is essential.

In this analysis, we will focus on two popular accounting software options: Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online. By comparing their features, functionalities, and pricing structures, we aim to provide you with a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of each software. This will enable you to make an informed decision that aligns with your business’s unique needs and requirements.

By carefully evaluating the features, functionalities, and pricing structures of Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online, you will be able to make an informed decision that optimizes your business’s financial management. Remember, choosing the right accounting software is a crucial step toward ensuring the success and growth of your business.

What is Sage Intacct?

Sage Intacct is a comprehensive cloud-based financial management platform. It’s particularly suited for mid-sized to large businesses and excels in handling complex financial transactions and multi-entity management.

Sage Intacct is known for its robust financial management capabilities, offering advanced features such as automated billing, revenue recognition, and advanced financial reporting. It is designed to cater to the needs of mid-sized and large businesses, providing them with the tools to streamline their accounting processes and gain valuable insights into their financial performance.

What is QuickBooks Online?

QuickBooks Online is a user-friendly bookkeeping solution for small to medium-sized businesses. It offers robust project accounting capabilities and is known for its ease of use and accessibility.

On the other hand, QuickBooks Online is a widely used accounting software that caters to small and medium-sized businesses. It offers a user-friendly interface, making it easy for non-accounting professionals to navigate and manage their finances. QuickBooks Online provides essential features like expense tracking, invoicing, and basic financial reporting, making it a suitable option for businesses with simpler accounting needs.

Differences between Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online

While Sage Intacct is designed to cater to the needs of larger, more complex businesses, QuickBooks Online is a user-friendly accounting software that is ideal for smaller businesses and freelancers. QuickBooks Online emphasizes user-friendliness and affordability, making it a suitable choice for those with simpler accounting needs.

Table: G2 rating of QuickBooks Online vs Sage Intacct.

With its robust features and functionalities, Sage Intacct provides advanced capabilities for mid-sized to large businesses, allowing them to handle complex financial transactions and multi-entity management effectively. Both software options offer unique advantages based on the size and complexity of the business, ensuring that users can find an accounting solution that suits their specific requirements.

Table: Overview of Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Target Users of Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Sage Intacct is a cloud-based financial management platform specifically designed for mid-sized to large businesses with complex accounting needs. It offers advanced features and functionalities such as automated billing, revenue recognition, and multi-entity management.

On the other hand, QuickBooks Online caters to smaller businesses and freelancers, emphasizing user-friendliness and affordability. With its straightforward solution, QuickBooks Online provides essential features like expense tracking and basic financial reporting.

Both Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online serve different target audiences based on the size and complexity of their businesses, ensuring that users can find a suitable accounting solution.

Table: Target Users Comparison

Pricing – Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Sage Intacct’s pricing is customized to business needs, reflecting its advanced capabilities. QuickBooks Online offers more straightforward, tiered pricing suitable for various business sizes.

Table: pricing comparison between Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online

Feature Comparison between Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Firstly, in terms of accessibility, both software options can be accessed through a web browser. However, Sage Intacct offers more robust multi-currency support compared to QuickBooks Online, which has limited multi-currency capabilities.

And Sage Intacct provides project accounting functionality, making it suitable for businesses that require strong project management features.

But QuickBooks Online offers strong project accounting capabilities as well, catering to the needs of smaller businesses. These differences in features can play a crucial role in determining which software is the best fit for your business.

Table: G2 ratings for general ledger and accounting features

Financial Reporting Comparison

Sage Intacct offers robust financial reporting and dashboard features, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions with customizable dashboards and reporting. This provides deep visibility into business financials.

Table: G2 ratings for reporting & analytics – QuickBooks Online vs Sage Intacct

Key features of reporting in Sage Intacct include

• Customizable Dashboards: Tailor reports and dashboards for quick insight and deep visibility.

• Best-in-Class Financial Dashboard: Offers agility and flexibility to quickly analyze details important to stakeholders.

• Innovative General Ledger: Includes 10 dimensions to capture the business context of transactions, operational measures, and budgets.

• Operational Data Tracking: Tracks both financial and operational data.

• Rich Financial Reports: Provides 150 built-in financial reports and custom report creation.

• Interactive Custom Report Writer: Allows creating real-time reports to address complex financial reporting needs.

QuickBooks Online provides key financial reports such as income statements, balance sheets, and statements of cash flows, allowing users to gain insights into their overall financial health. And it offers customer, vendor, sales, and expense reports to analyze different aspects of the business.

Users can also create management reports for specific stakeholders and generate payroll reports to break down expenses per employee. The software’s customizable reports, automation capabilities, and user-friendly interface make it easy for businesses to generate and customize reports according to their specific needs.

Key features of reporting in QuickBooks Online

• Key financial reports: You can access reports such as the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows to analyze the performance of your accounting software.

• Customer, Vendor, Sales, and Expense Reports: QuickBooks Online offers a variety of reports to analyze different aspects of a business. You have access to both summary and detail reports.

• Management reports: You can create specific management reports to send to the managerial team, shareholders, and financial institutions.

• Payroll reports: If you have a subscription to QuickBooks online payroll, then you can generate a variety of payroll reports to break down expenses per employee.

• Customizable Reports: Allows filtering to show specific accounts, customers, and formatting layouts.

• Automation and Management: Automates custom report generation and management.

• Flexibility and User-Friendly Interface: Known for its ease of use in generating and customizing reports.

Multi-entity /Consolidation

If multi-entity reporting and consolidation are essential for your business, then you must go with Sage Intacct.

Sage Intacct has been primarily designed for businesses with multiple subsidiaries, so it excels at multi-entity reporting and consolidation. In the realm of multi-entity and consolidation features, Sage Intacct and QuickBooks offer distinct capabilities tailored to different business needs:

Multi-entity/consolidation capabilities of Sage Intacct

• Sage Intacct is particularly well-suited for businesses operating multiple entities, such as holding companies. Its dashboard provides instant metrics for multiple companies and custom dashboards can be created for specific departments or roles, ensuring efficient information flow.

• Especially beneficial for mid-sized nonprofits with finance teams and venture capitalists, Sage Intacct’s global consolidation module is adept at quickly consolidating hundreds of entities. This makes it ideal for companies dealing with multiple currencies and subsidiaries.

• Sage Intacct aids in overcoming challenges associated with manual, time-consuming, and error-prone processes in global and domestic consolidations. It offers a multi-currency financial management platform that is both accurate and user-friendly, enabling real-time reporting insights at both local and organization-wide levels.

• This capability allows for a quicker closing process, easy incorporation and setup of new entities, and reduced errors through automated financial consolidation tools.

• QuickBooks Online provides a more cost-effective solution for multi-entity consolidation and multi-currency consolidation compared to Sage Intacct.

• Users can use QuickBooks

• QuickBooks Online is significantly less expensive than Sage Intacct.

In summary, Sage Intacct stands out for businesses requiring robust, global consolidation capabilities and those dealing with multiple currencies and entities. Its advanced features are particularly beneficial for larger organizations with complex financial needs. In contrast, QuickBooks Online offers a more affordable and flexible solution for businesses that need multi-entity consolidation but are more sensitive to software costs and are looking for a wide range of integrations.

A/R and A/P Automation – Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Sage Intacct provides comprehensive A/R and A/P automation, while QuickBooks Online’s capabilities are more suited to smaller-scale operations.

Table: G2 ratings for Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online

Here’s more information about A/R and A/P automation and how it can benefit your business.

A/R Automation

• Invoice Generation: Automatically creates and sends invoices to customers based on the terms of sale or service.

• Payment Tracking: Tracks payments received and updates accounts receivable records accordingly.

• Reminders and Collections: Sends automated reminders for unpaid invoices and assists in collections efforts.

• Reconciliation: Matches received payments to the appropriate invoices and reconciles accounts.

• Reporting and Analytics: Provides insights into outstanding receivables, aging reports, and customer payment behaviors.

A/P Automation

• Invoice Processing: Automates the capture and entry of invoice data into the accounting system.

• Approval Workflows: Establishes automated workflows for invoice approvals, ensuring that the right people review and approve expenses in a timely manner.

• Payment Processing: Manages the scheduling and processing of payments to suppliers, including electronic payments.

• Vendor Management: Keeps track of vendor details and manages relationships, including payment terms and conditions.

• Financial Reporting: Generates reports on payable accounts, cash flow forecasts, and expenditure analysis.

Because of its multi-entity focus, Sage Intacct is better suited for A/P and A/R automation if your business has subsidiaries in multiple countries. You’ll be able to set different automation workflows and rules based on location of the customer and the vendor.

Bookkeeping and Accounting Services – Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Sage Intacct recommends outsourcing financial services, whereas QuickBooks Online offers in-house solutions like QuickBooks Live.

As an app developed by Intuit, QuickBooks is much better suited to provide services related to bookkeeping because they already have a team dedicated to it. However, the services can be a bit limited depending on the size of your company. If you are already looking into Sage and Tact, then you may not want to go for QuickBooks Live as an option, but instead hire a team of bookkeepers and accountants for your company or hire an accounting firm and outsource your accounting to them.

QuickBooks Live offers a range of features and benefits to help small businesses maintain their books and prepare for tax time.

Here are some of the things that bookkeepers and CPAs at QuickBooks Live can do for your business:

• Get your financials up to speed: A super awesome QuickBooks-certified bookkeeper will update your existing financials to give you a fresh start.

• Keep your books in check: Once your financials are up to date, you’ll be matched with a virtual bookkeeper who will take care of your books and chat with you via video.

• Sort out transactions: Bookkeepers will categorize transactions to make sure your books are accurate and up to date.

• Balance your accounts: Bookkeepers will reconcile your accounts to ensure your books are accurate and up to date.

• Work together with you: You can easily collaborate with your QuickBooks Live Bookkeepers on your books.

• Provide important reports: Bookkeepers will give you essential reports to help you understand how your business is doing financially.

• Get tax-ready books: QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping guarantees precise books, so tax time is a breeze.

Platform – Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online

Both apps have a web application that you can access through an internet browser – Chrome, Firefox – but only QuickBooks has a mobile app, and that too for both android and iOS.

Web Application

Both Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online have comprehensive features to build workflows, customize dashboards, create templates, and manage user roles.

But QuickBooks Online is limited in these features. Especially when it comes to user management because QuickBooks has an upper limit of 40 users, and that too in its enterprise plan.

If different departments across multiple subsidiaries require access to the financial data, then QuickBooks simply isn’t going to cut it for your business. You’ll have to rely on Xero or Sage Intacct, both of which enable you to add unlimited users to the company.

Table: G2 Ratings for platform features of QuickBooks Online vs Sage Intacct