In South Africa, the hot topic in ERP software is Sage Intacct. The flagship native cloud offering from Sage, but what makes this different from Sage’s existing ERP system Sage 200 Evolution? What is the difference?

Both Sage products have won awards and are market leading ERP software solutions in their own right, however, there are differences between Sage Intacct and Sage 200 Evolution.

Cloud versus on Premise (or hosted):

The main difference is that Intacct is native cloud and Evolution is a desktop product. Yes, we can host Evolution in the cloud, but it still requires the renting or purchase of the IT equipment, adding additional yearly costs, but these costs are added to the costs of the subscription fee of Sage Intacct, so currently, the cost portion is negated between the two, and its mainly the responsibility side of having to look after the IT infrastructure, even if it’s via a third party.

I will go over some points to highlight some of the differences between Sage Intacct and Sage 200 Evolution.

Single Login:

Intacct has a single login to all your companies, and once logged on, you can work on all companies you are authorised to. All procurement and financial workflows that require authorisation can be done from one login no matter that multiple companies are the source of the requests. Evolution requires you to logout and login to each company.

Consolidation and reporting:

Evolution has tools to report, using data from multiple databases, but not to the level of granularity of Intacct. Intacct uses dimensions to allow what we termed segments, in Evolution. The flexibility of setting up what dimensions are required, at what levels, gives reporting a totally new level of expertise that makes it easier to handle. An example is that a report that would have taken me 2-3 days to create in Evolution, took me less than a day, and that was including my initial inexperience. Intacct has intercompany consolidation, even if the companies are using different currencies, as well as creation of automated journals between companies to assist with this. Also, the changes of screen layouts that are possible in Intacct but not in Evolution, use of smart events and smart rules inherent in the product which you cannot do with Evolution.

Manufacturing:

This is still an area that Evolution is stronger in, and we will continue pushing this product in terms of its functionality.

Inventory:

Evolution is the stronger product in terms of inventory, but Intacct is close behind and has some features that Evolution does not have, like FIFO costing, as well as the ability to redistribute landed costs after the original GRV’s and COS have already been posted. These differences would need to be assessed according to each business’s individual requirements.

Data access:

A one direction data flow for reporting purposes is similar in its capabilities, but a request to change the COA, or merge master records into one, as well as other data changes and or fixes cannot be done in Intacct.

Cash Book and Bank Manager:

These options are not yet available in Intacct. Receipts and payments are separate journals versus how we have got used to using a cashbook. Even though Intacct has bank feeds, these are for bank reconciliations only. There are some decent work arounds, but Evolution definitely trumps Intacct on this front.

Process Flows and approvals:

Intacct takes this functionality to a new level and considering that you have one login for all companies, each user can view all approvals via this one login. Not only is the process flow powerful, but also multi-level. Evolution has all the above, but the setup process, the approvals, having to login and logoff between companies makes this functionality cumbersome. This is one area that Intacct has done so well in that even though Evolution’s functionality is good, it makes it look cumbersome.

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