Cloud accounting software for technology companies

Continuum Commerce Adopts AccountsIQ's Cloud Accounting Software for Real Time Management Information

Continuum Commerce CEO, Eamonn O’Shea, states,

I would have no hesitation in recommending AccountsIQ to anyone that conducts business in multiple locations. It can significantly simplify your management reporting process, while at the same time significantly improving its output. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing means we have a full accounting and business analysis system for a fraction of what I would have expected to pay to implement an on-premise solution.

The Challenge

Continuum Commerce was founded in 2000 (formerly known as GCX – Global Currency Exchange) as an independent online payments solution provider.  Based in Ireland, Continuum also has operations in mainland Europe, the UK and the Asia-pacific region and has a management team that spends much of its time abroad. Remote board meetings and management updates were previously handled by sending spreadsheets created by re-keying information from their previous accounting package to participants by fax or e-mail. This information was therefore often out of date before the meeting had begun and decisions were being made based on inaccurate information.

Gerard O’Brien, the CFO of Continuum Commerce says,

We evaluated many alternatives and found AccountsIQ offered the most compelling solution. While it provided all the functionality we needed and is available over the web at any time, its reporting capability and especially its Digital Dashboard has proven to be the ‘killer app’ for GCX. There is a wealth of standard reports, and I was able to customise a couple of key reports that I use on a daily basis. The senior team can log on at any time to review our performance metrics. It has really streamlined our business planning and measurement.

The Solution

Continuum Commerce adopted AccountsIQ for all its financial requirements consisting of:

• AccountsIQ online accounting platform
• Full multi-currency processing throughout
• Integration with Continuum’s billing engine
• Customised management information dashboards with specific KPIs

Results

Gerard O’Brien told us that benefits to Continuum include that AccountsIQ represents incredible value for money with no upfront capital cost. They find that reporting is a key strength – with them rarely needing to export to Excel or re-key anything. The digital dashboard capability significantly improves the management information available to them and a key benefit is that AccountsIQ has extensive functionality which can scale with them as they grow their business. With AccountsIQ’s open API, it was easy to integrate Continuum’s billing engine directly to AccountsIQ which has streamlined their processes and brought considerable efficiency advantages.

Asavie Adopts AccountsIQ to Support Growth

As the Internet of Things (IoT) booms, the requirement for Irish-based connectivity provider Asavie gained demand. The Internet of Things is the next wave of internet evolution; IoT systems facilitate the remote control of electronic devices across a secure exchange. Asavie provides highly-secure middleware which enables the growing numbers of IoD devices in use to connect with the Cloud. At this time, the opportunity in the telecoms sector alone fuelled a year-on-year growth rate which, at its peak, consistently topped 100%. As the business developed further revenue streams and began working in multiple currencies, its accounting needs became more complex.

Outgrown Sage

Having outgrown an early iteration of Sage, Asavie’s accounts team led the way in finding a new business system which would tick boxes on consolidation; currency handling; Fixed Assets and workflow. Financial Controller Emma Whelan began the search which included more recent versions of Sage and FinancialForce. Describing her reaction to proposals from both vendors Emma said,

Neither product was comparable to AccountsIQ from a performance or price perspective.  We didn’t need the likes of SAP or Oracle but we have some fairly complex accounting needs.  AccountsIQ fits us perfectly.”

A “Successful and Collaborative” Relationship

In 2016, Emma began to work with the support team at AccountsIQ to plan the implementation which addressed needs in the short, medium and longer term. This plan still evolves today and is proactively evaluated by AccountsIQ’s Customer Success team on a two-weekly basis as the software is continuously tuned to meet changing needs. She says,

The best thing about AccountsIQ is the successful and collaborative relationship we have with the support team; we have completed a number of projects with them and they never seem to tire of listening to us and working with us to adapt the software for our own and for every other user’s benefit.  It almost feels like we are all part of the same development team.”

She adds, “Having qualified accountants at the end of AccountsIQ’s support line is priceless; they instantly understand the accounting problems we are trying to solve and this allows us to arrive at a technical solution quickly.”

Improving functionality across the business

Other projects on which Emma has worked closely with the support team have included an integration with Concur’s automated expense management and processing system; and the introduction of AccountsIQ’s Purchase Order Approval which uses workflow technology to enable more efficient processes, engaging budget holders across the business. Future plans include integrating AccountsIQ with the business’s preferred BI reporting app which will create a seamless data exchange between the accounts and the management reporting pack in a format which is already familiar to the business. Summing up, Emma says,

AccountsIQ solves so many problems for businesses like ours; it can be configured to tackle quite complex accounting issues but without the overheads and ongoing costs associated with some of the vendors at the higher end of the market.”

The TAS Group (now Altify) Moves Group-Wide Accounts Online to AccountsIQ

Executive Chairman of Altify, Donal Daly, explains,

We needed an accounting platform that allowed us to manage our global business with local and central access. AccountsIQ has been a huge improvement on our previous systems, giving our management team instant access to the latest information from all locations. AccountsIQ’s SaaS pricing model meant no upfront capital investment was required to put our group accounting systems in place.

Altify (previously known as the TAS group) was formed in 2006 following the merger of sales software company Select Selling with Siebel’s training arm to create sales effectiveness training and software solutions for large sales organisations internationally.

The Challenge

Altify had grown to a stage where it had subsidiaries in the US, Europe and the UK to deliver training and consulting services to a wide range of international customers, as well as a software development subsidiary in Ireland. Their existing systems were struggling to cope with increased volumes and the multi-jurisdiction aspect of the business provided challenges for the finance team in terms of monitoring its activities across different timezones and processing transactions in multiple currencies. They needed a platform that allowed them to manage the business across multiple geographies and currencies with access both locally and centrally.

Financial Controller, Dan Murphy, explains,

Our team evaluated a number of online solutions, and selected AccountsIQ, mainly because it handled all our complex multi-currency issues very well. We also wanted a solution we could later integrate with Salesforce to allow confirmed orders to be automatically transferred, and that integration was already in place.

The AccountsIQ team was able to convert all our historical data and was even able to facilitate us changing year ends after the first year, including re-aligning prior year values for comparative purposes.

The Solution

Altify decided an online accounting solution would complement its use of Salesforce and evaluated a number of solutions before choosing AccountsIQ. The solution included the full version of AccountsIQ with all its accounting modules and product-based sales invoicing and pricing. They also implemented the consolidation module to allow group-wide results to be produced including customer sales analysis.

Results

• World-wide access for subsidiary companies in US, Europe, UK & Ireland.
• Easy roll-out giving everyone an up-to-date view of company results at anytime.
• Handles multi-jurisdiction, multi-currency transactions with ease
• Visibility of group results and group sales analysis at the touch of a button
• Retained a full transaction history and facilitated altering the group year-end easily.