Online Accounting: What You Need To Know About Sage Intacct

Social Good Fund uses an online fund accounting platform called Sage Intacct (Sage). (Blackbaud is our former accounting platform and Sage has replaced Blackbaud for all of Social Good Fund as of January 1, 2023.) Unlike Blackbaud, Project Directors and team members do not log directly into Sage. Instead, a full report package is generated automatically and daily from Sage for each fiscally sponsored project.

Please note, it is your responsibility to monitor your project’s finances, understand the account reports and notify the SGF Accounts Team if you have questions or concerns.

Follow the steps below to ensure that you are able to carry out this responsibility and get the most out of the Sage reports for your purposes including providing information to stakeholders and making sound business decisions.

Step 1. Access your project’s report package

Sage reports are accessed by logging onto the Members Portal and navigating to the “Sage Financial Reports” button on your homepage. Sage Financial Reports are visible to Project Directors and previously designated “Primary Contacts.” Project Directors can adjust access to the Sage Financial Reports for other project team members by clicking on the “User Management” button, clicking on the name of the person whose access you want to adjust and making sure either “Enable Access to All Capabilities” or the “Access Finance Data” checkbox is checked if the person should be able to see Sage reports (uncheck both of those boxes if they should not see Sage reports but need access to other parts of the portal). New projects will not see reports on the Members Portal until you have transactions.

Step 2: Understand the different reports available from Sage

The standard Sage reporting package consists of a single Excel file with multiple tabs and/or a single Pdf file with multiple pages. It includes the following reports:

• Fund Balance Report - This report provides an at-a-glance view of your Sproject’s available funds (subject to adjustments and unposted transactions).

• Balance Sheet - 12 Months - Generally, balance sheets show all the Assets (things you own) and all the Liabilities (things you owe) you have or had as of a certain date. This report has a column for each month of the current year.

• Income Statement - 12 Months - An Income Statement is a standard Financial Statement. Also known as a “Profit and Loss” or “Statement of Activities,” these reports show all the Income/Revenue or money coming in, and all the Expenses or money that went out (bills that were paid, etc.) in summary and over a certain period of time. It also shows the fund balance or what was left at the end of the time period. This particular report has a column showing the Income Statement for each month of the current year, and a year-to-date column.

• Balance Sheet - By Year - This report has columns showing the balance sheet for each year that your project was an active project with SGF, including the current year as of the current date.

• Income Statement - By Year - This report has columns showing the income statement for each year that your project was an active project with SGF, including the current year with year-to-date numbers.

• GL Detail - Current - GL Detail reports (similar to “Transaction Lists” in Blackbaud) provide the detail of each and every transaction for your project, over a period of time. The GL Detail - Current report provides a list of all the transactions for your project during the current calendar year.

• GL Detail - Prior Year - This report will show you all the transactions for your project for last year.

Step 3. Review your financials at least monthly

Sage reports are generated daily, and you can look at them as often as you like, but we do request that you look through them carefully at least monthly. A good time to do this is around the 20th of each month. Look at each report for the previous month. Pay special attention to the Project detail (Transaction) reports. Does everything look right? Does it look complete? Contact the Accounts Team if you have questions or concerns.

Step 4. Understand the importance of timing when assessing your financial position and available funds

• It is good to understand that while Sage provides daily access to project financial information, activity can’t always translate that into immediate action. Checks still need time to clear before funds can be made available for payments. Contributions need time to post. For these reasons, it can take several days for items to be posted in Sage.

• A reconciliation of each month takes place by the 20th of the following month. Accordingly, actual entries and balances may change after a month is reconciled against the actual bank statements. Until that time, please understand that though we work hard not to, humans can make manual data entry errors that need to be corrected.

• Any errors will be corrected once we reconcile your project funds (by the 20th of the following month). However, we can still correct things at this point. Should you notice any errors, please notify: [e-mail].

• Generally speaking, if the funds have been posted to Sage, then the funds are available for use, subject to admin costs.

Still have questions about Sage? Please contact [e-mail].