How to Choose a Sage Intacct VAR

By Hugh O. Stewart

Choosing a Sage Intacct Value Added Reseller (VAR) is one of the most important decisions you can make during a digital transformation project. VARs are third-party organizations that handle implementation, customization, integrations, and support for new Sage Intacct customers. The decisions you make with your VAR will shape your accounting workflows for years to come and influence how efficiently your team works and what insights you can draw from your financial data.

As data migration experts who specialize in moving historical accounting data from legacy systems into Sage Intacct, we’ve been involved in Sage Intacct implementations for nearly 3,000 entities. We’ve seen the whole spectrum from amazing collaborations to unfortunate mismatches that led to frustration on all sides.

To help you choose the right VAR, here are seven questions to ask before signing a contract.

How Many Implementations Have You Done for Companies Like Mine?

Your VAR needs to have expertise in your specific industry. Without deep experience in your industry, your VAR may not understand the workflows, reporting requirements, and regulatory constraints that shape your accounting processes, leading to a configuration that doesn’t support how your business actually operates. If you’re in construction, for example, you don’t want to teach your implementation specialist what a WIP (Work in Progress) report is during your configuration planning meetings.

Your VAR should be able to share at least three references for companies in your niche. At Platform Transition, we have worked with more than 40 VARs and we have ongoing working relationships with more than 10 across many industry niches. Alliance Solutions Group and Accordant Company excel at leading construction companies through Sage Intacct migrations. CrossCounty Consulting has a strong track record in implementing Sage Intacct for family offices. In home services and field services, Baker Tilly has become a household name. We can also make tailored recommendations for other industries.

It’s also a good idea to check the Net Promoter Score of your VAR to see how many of their past customers would recommend them.

What Are Your Data Migration Options?

If you want to be able to run granular multi-year analyses, support an audit, explain historical variances, or investigate prior-period activity, you will need to migrate transaction-level historical data during your Sage Intacct implementation.

However, many VAR contracts state explicitly that historical data extraction, cleanup, mapping, and transformation are the client’s responsibility, where the VAR will be responsible for loading the data and helping with some client-supported error resolution.

And in fact, some VARs will actively discourage you from migrating anything more than Trial Balances. If migrating your historical accounting data is important to you, that kind of an attitude should immediately disqualify a potential VAR.

If your VAR doesn’t offer data migration, look for one that has a good working relationship with a data migration specialist like Platform Transition. A successful migration of historical accounting data requires collaboration between the data migrator, the implementation team, and your accounting team, so it’s important that all three parties are aligned on the importance of your historical data.

What Does Your Go-Live Process Look Like?

Every implementation team has a different approach to the go-live (cutover) process in terms of how long they expect it to take, what steps (like data migration) must happen before the cutover, and how much downtime your accounting team will have to endure.

Some implementation teams recommend a lengthy blackout window during cutover, where accounting teams can’t work in either the legacy or target system—sometimes for as long as two weeks. Others attempt a cutover with zero downtime.

In practice, a more balanced and tailored approach usually works best. Your VAR should evaluate your workflows and identify which activities can continue in the legacy system, as well as when specific processes can begin in the new system as different parts of the migration are completed.

Which Modules and Reports are In-Scope?

A lot of Sage Intacct implementations fail because of bad assumptions. Don’t assume that anything not discussed with your VAR is in scope, and don’t assume that just because you didn’t need a certain module in QuickBooks that you won’t need it in Sage Intacct.

A good place to start the conversation is with a list of the reports you want to be able to run in Sage Intacct. Make sure that all of those reports, with all of the details and functionalities you need in those reports, are included in your scope.

We frequently see situations when bad assumptions about Sage Intacct cause critical modules to be left out of the initial configuration, leading to costly rework. For example, many companies tell their VAR they don’t need Sage Intacct’s Order Entry module because they didn’t have an equivalent module in their previous system. But when we go to map their historical accounting data in preparation for a migration, we find “Items” attached to invoices—product or service descriptions with quantities and unit prices.

In Sage Intacct, invoices that include Items can only be created through the Order Entry module. If your current invoices include quantities and unit prices, you need to make sure that the Order Entry module is included in your implementation scope. Bringing clear reporting goals to your VAR will help you avoid these mistakes.

How Long Does Implementation Take from Start to Finish?

Getting an estimate for the duration of the project will help prepare your team for what to expect and help you compare proposals from different VARs. For many new Sage Intacct implementations, a reasonable timeline is anywhere between two and four months.

What Kind of Training Do You Provide?

Most VARs provide a few hours of staff training throughout the project to ensure your team can follow the workflows they’ve set up. Depending on your team’s familiarity with dimensional accounting systems, you might need more hours than they typically provide. Compare the training hours offered by everyone on your shortlist, and don’t be afraid to negotiate for more hours.

What Kind of Support Do You Provide After Go-Live?

Most implementations run into challenges after go-live that require additional support, whether it’s troubleshooting reporting errors or customizing integrations. Make sure you know how much post go-live support is included in your VAR’s scope to avoid reporting delays after go-live.

How to Prepare Your Team For a Successful Implementation

The final piece of a successful Sage Intacct implementation is your ability to explain what you want out of your new system. The most experienced, reputable, and talented VAR can’t make up for your fundamental lack of understanding of Sage Intacct’s capabilities.

Sage Intacct comes with a significant learning curve for accounting teams who are only familiar with legacy accounting systems. If you don’t fully understand what Sage Intacct is capable of doing or how dimensional accounting works, you won’t give clear directions to your VAR and you won’t be able to evaluate their scope of work effectively to make sure it’s aligned with your needs.

Educating yourself before you begin interviewing Sage Intacct implementation partners is critical to a successful implementation. We have some resources that may help you:

If your implementation will include migrating historical accounting data, engage a migration specialist such as Platform Transition as early as possible. One of our first steps in our 10-step accounting data migration process is transactional data mapping, which analyzes your historical transactions to identify the data structures you actually used in your legacy system. This creates a validated map of the fields, records, and relationships your new system can be designed to support. When your implementation partners have that map early in the project, they can design a configuration that supports your future workflows without leaving behind important historical data.

Schedule a meeting or request a quote to start planning your data migration to Sage Intacct today.