Cloud accounting software for financial services companies

Integra, switched to AccountsIQ to consolidate their 10 entities on one user-friendly Cloud accounting platform

Integra Technical Services is an insurance loss adjuster, resolving complex claims in sectors as diverse as mining, marine, energy and cyber security. They’re global players with local offices across the UK, US, Middle East, and Asia Pacific.

Before switching to AccountsIQ, Integra’s UK business was using two different accounting systems in EMEA and North America.   Finding one platform that would work well across the whole group was a big driver for change. 

“We have 10 active entities on our AccountsIQ platform,” explains Integra’s CFO, Mark Hunter. “That includes our risk management business, which we’ve added recently. We’ll be adding another entity soon.”

Integra also had other key criteria they felt could only be met by AccountsIQ, as Mark explains:

“The new finance system had to be Cloud-based. We also felt we needed more functionality than our existing systems were offering.”

“With AccountsIQ, we have the ability to consolidate on one platform. We’d been using Excel for consolidation, and we wanted something quicker and more reliable.”

As one of the main finance system users, Financial Controller, Sue Evans, was keen to ensure useability was included in the software evaluation process.  In fact, the whole team was impressed by AccountsIQ’s easy, logical layout.

The inter-company accounting and FX features are major time-savers

Sue finds that the inter-company accounting features in AccountsIQ make her life much easier.

“We have a lot of inter-company trading and resource transfer,” she says. “The process of re-charging costs and invoices across different entities is really smooth with AccountsIQ.  It’s a big improvement from what we were using previously because I no longer have to log in and out to look at different entities.” Sue Evans, Financial Controller, Integra.

Another important time-saver for Sue is AccountsIQ’s foreign exchange functionality.

“It’s easy to map through and check you’re using the right FX,” she says. “Previously, it was complicated, and we spent a lot of time working out variances.

“With AccountsIQ, you just know it aligns. In fact, we only need to do our FX updates monthly rather than daily. It’s so much better.”

What’s next for Integra and AccountsIQ?

One year on from implementing AccountsIQ, Mark and Sue have big plans for making the system work even harder for them.

“We’re a relatively small finance team,” says Mark. “The plan with this project was always to get the system bedded down and make sure everyone is comfortable with it and using it efficiently. Now, we’re looking at what more it can do.”

One of Integra’s projects for the year ahead, is to look at how they can work with AccountsIQ, and our software integration partners, to improve their budgeting, reporting and forecasting capabilities.

“The reporting available in the system is good,” says Mark. “Our consolidated management reports now take around 25% less time than they did in Excel, for example.”

These time savings are so encouraging, Integra is now thinking how they can further refine their reports and make best use of the multi-dimensional financial Business Intelligence coding structure to really delve into the data.

“There’s a lot more we can do with the system,” concludes Mark. “What I really like about AccountsIQ is they have a good understanding of the needs of SMEs. We get great technical support from AccountsIQ. This collaborative approach is very different to some of the larger providers.”

AES International uses AccountsIQ to help manage growth

AES International is a UK-registered financial advisory company with a branch in Dubai which pioneered the use of emerging evidence-based technologies to provide better advice to clients. AES has seen rapid growth over the last decade and in 2012, they were the 4th fastest growing financial services firm in the UK.

Having built success on their ground-breaking use of technology, AES was aware that such an approach would also benefit their internal processes. When Wayne Copeland joined AES as Head of Finance in 2017, he knew immediately that there were big efficiencies to be made in the company’s accounting practices. At the time, the company had been using Quickbooks, a starter accounting package that couldn’t handle AES’s rapid growth and multi-national accounting requirements. It was clear that the company had outgrown this system and required an alternative solution that could handle their reporting and consolidation requirements more easily.

AES selected AccountsIQ as it could easily consolidate their multiple entities, multiple bank accounts and myriad of currency transactions, and because it is easy to produce bespoke management reporting packs.

Nothing else like AccountsIQ for consolidation

Wayne Copeland, Head of Finance, AES International

Consolidation was crucial for AES International, which has multiple entities and currencies to manage. Quickbooks only allowed consolidation in sterling, requiring the cumbersome use of spreadsheets and manual effort to consolidate the accounts. AccountsIQ does this automatically. Wayne’s team can easily run a consolidation of six companies and convert the data to any currency they need.

I don’t know of any other system that can do consolidation the way AccountsIQ can. It takes a lot of complexity out of everything and that saves us a lot of time. It used to take two weeks to do our accounts; with AccountsIQ and other improvements, we now get our accounts out in five working days,” says Wayne.

Quantifiable Management Information (MI) for more efficient decision-making

While AccountsIQ’s consolidation features take away the legwork, its bespoke reporting tools make it easier for AES’s management team to interpret and action the results. AES has built on AccountsIQ’s standard reports by using API connectors to create custom reports to suit their specific needs.

With AccountsIQ we get good, accurate data coming out of a well trusted system. We are confident we have chosen the right system for our current and future growth needs.”

A digital approach that saves time and money

The move to AccountsIQ marks a change to a totally digital approach to accounting that ultimately saves AES both time and money.

When I joined AES, I took the opportunity to make accounting cloud-based. Quickbooks was server-based – we once lost a week’s worth of work when the system went down. I knew that the new system had to be cloud-based, backed up, everything stored online.”

With AccountsIQ, AES now has a cloud-based solution that makes data loss a non-issue.

In addition to its consolidation capabilities, AccountsIQ has other features that offer substantial time savings for AES. For example, the Fixed Asset Register’s auto-depreciation feature helps automate processes that would otherwise be done manually. “The fixed asset register is a great addition,” says Wayne.

“For SMEs, it’s a perfect bit of software.”

Cloud-based, with financial consolidation software a key feature, AccountsIQ provides exceptional value for AES, saving valuable time for this growing business. “For SME’s, AccountsIQ is a perfect bit of software,” says Wayne.

AccountsIQ is ideal for our complex accounting requirements. We were delighted to find a solution that is intuitive to use and enables us to report on our group structure easily, all at an affordable price.”

Salamanca Group Chooses AccountsIQ over NetSuite for Consolidation and Reporting

Privately-held merchant banking business Salamanca Group comprises approximately 80 businesses. Formerly using Sage Line 50, the group’s Finance Director Lee Camp and his team would spend weeks each month producing consolidated accounts and management reporting packs using a complex process run from spreadsheets.

Today, using AccountsIQ, Lee spends no more than five minutes a month creating reports:

Our decision to move away from Sage Line 50 was driven by inefficiencies which Sage couldn’t address; it took two people in my team one week each to update various schedules in Excel and then I would spend many hours compiling a reporting pack. AccountsIQ allows me to produce a custom reporting pack in just minutes.”

Lee Camp, Finance Director, Salamanca Group

The Selection Process: AccountsIQ vs. NetSuite

Knowing they had outgrown Sage, Lee began the search for a replacement Cloud-based application. With quite complex accounting requirements, Lee initially looked at NetSuite, Oracle’s enterprise Cloud solution.

While NetSuite looked like it could answer some of our needs, we really couldn’t justify the cost and it still couldn’t provide the kind of customisable reporting pack we needed.  Our two main requirements, consolidation and custom reporting, were both weak in NetSuite.”

Advised to look at AccountsIQ by a friend, Lee realised that complex accounting needn’t come at such a high price.  Not only could AccountsIQ make day-to-day processes more efficient through automation, it could also solve their reporting and consolidation issues better than NetSuite.

We were genuinely shocked to see that AccountsIQ solved more of our reporting problems than NetSuite.  It also comes at a fraction of NetSuite’s cost.”

Consolidating Over 80 Sets of Accounts in one Click

Merchant banking group Salamanca manages over 80 sets of accounts.  The group’s consolidation needs are complex and management reports need to be precise and timely.  AccountsIQ developed a custom reporting pack for the finance team which links to live data and therefore provides continuous consolidation.

AccountsIQ produces a consolidated balance sheet as well as departmental P&Ls at the touch of a button.  We have a bespoke management reporting pack that works in real time in the system. As far as we could see, NetSuite couldn’t do that for us.”

Making Complex Reporting Simple

Salamanca’s finance team already knew exactly how the monthly management reports should look and what data needed to be included for analysis.  This meant that Lee Camp and his team were well-prepared to implement a new system in a very short time, with much of the configuration already documented.  All they had to do was find a system which could extract the data that they needed.

Many of the products we looked at had quite sophisticated-looking charts and graphs.  Almost all had customisable dashboards of some kind but AccountsIQ was the only Cloud accounting application we saw that could actually extract the data that we wanted to see and present it in a meaningful way.  It really is reporting made simple.”

Future Plans to Find More Efficiencies

Already enjoying the benefits of automated processes around purchase order approval as well as automated consolidation and reporting, Salamanca intends to explore further opportunities to improve working processes using AccountsIQ.  Future projects include implementing an expense module which will automate the process of managing and reporting expenses as well as integrating payroll.

AccountsIQ’s main success for us has been the efficiency it has brought to the business.  The product is a good fit for our pretty complex accounting requirements and AccountsIQ gives us real value for money.  We are looking forward to finding even more ways to use the system to improve the way in which we work.

I’ve spent 20 years in finance and AccountsIQ is by far the best solution I’ve come across. Hands down beats the major players and has more functionality at a cost effective price. Wish I found this years ago.”