Warning signs: How to tell if you’ve outgrown your finance software

“Many years ago, Sage 50 was the platform of choice, so many businesses just picked that up, started and ran with it,” he said – but as the businesses grew, they came to “kind of accept mediocrity”. 

“They accept problems, they accept pain points, they accept manual workarounds,” he added. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Russell was joined by Matt Lewns, Partner Manager at iplicit, for the webinar, called Have You Outgrown Your Current Finance Function?  

The top reasons for changing your accounting system 

A straw poll among the guests at the webinar – 43% of whom had reviewed their finance software in the past 12 months – identified some of the top reasons for considering a change: 

• 83% cited the pain of using manual workarounds for their processes;
• 33% were frustrated by speed issues with their current system; and
• 17% cited lack of functionality in their current software. 

Some key reasons in detail 

Russell and Matt went into some detail about the most common triggers they see for changing systems. 

Slow/lagging systems  

Russell has witnessed some extreme examples of the speed problems that bothered a third of the poll respondents. He said speed was “always an issue” when finance teams relied upon on-premises software. 

“Having to run reports at lunch or after five o’clock because if there are more than four users on the system, it doesn't run a report – I’ve heard that far too many times. Coming in at weekends to run your reports as well – that was also a thing,” he said. 

Manual data entry 

Expanding businesses need to handle a lot of data. 

Russell said: “As your business is growing and scaling, there will be lots of different data entry points into your business – and as they start to become more and more manual and you find you're having to work around them, it's a massive indicator for change.” 

He added: “It shouldn't be this hard. Just to get data into or out of your system nowadays should be very straightforward.” 

Permission limitations 

“Having different people within your business permitted to access only certain areas of the platform is really key,” said Russell. 

“As you're growing and scaling, you may not want a purchase ledger clerk to access the bank account and see the nominal ledger and all other areas of the software.” 

iplicit's Matt Lewns said this was one of the first things many customers ask about. 

This was among the features that cloud software designed for small businesses could not provide. 

“The permissions, especially on some of the entry level products, are lacking,” he said. 

“And no matter how many apps you plug into those products, you can't resolve that. So having something that is permission-led, completely bespoke and customisable is huge for a lot of our clients.” 

Limited insights 

As they grow bigger or more complex, organisations need to be able to “slice and dice” their data in a variety of ways. 

“Businesses of the size that we work with typically want in-depth analysis of their business,” said Matt.  

“The entry-level products typically have something like two tracking categories or dimensions. iplicit offers unlimited dimensions. You can have as many as you want across individual chart of account codes.” 

 Lack of third party integration  

Growing organisations will commonly want to integrate their finance system with other core software, often through an API (application programming interface). That’s a major drawback with on-premises software.  

Russell said this was often a source of frustration. 

“You know there’s something you could bolt on quite easily – you could just tick a box and then you’ve got two products you could rely on quite easily,” he said.  

Overreliance on third-party applications 

While some finance teams are frustrated at not being able to integrate the accounting software with other systems, others have the opposite problem: their finance system is connected to an increasingly unstable stack of applications. That can be a particular problem for those using entry-level products like Xero. 

Russell sees clients using third party software for tasks such as approval workflows, inventory, more complex reporting and multi-entity consolidation. 

“There is just this plethora of apps out there, which is so unwieldy,” he said. 

“I've spent years recommending third-party add-ons for a large number of clients. But there does come a tipping point where you create this kind of Frankenstein system, where everything's bolted together and eventually the system itself can become unmanageable.” 

Matt added that there comes a point where you need to ask: “How many apps is too many?” 

“How easy is it to manage all of those apps in one place?” he said. 

“Let’s take a five-entity business. You’re going to have five versions of Xero, five versions of Dext, different places to log in and out. That’s a lot of passwords, it’s a lot of different users to maintain and manage and you can’t just apply global permissions and global changes across all these products – and that’s if all these products are actually working well together!”  

How things could get better 

The session also listed the “key identifiers for change” – the powerful functionality that teams probably aren’t getting from a system they’ve outgrown. 

Those included: 

• Consolidated reporting for multi-entity organisations
• Unlimited dimensions for sophisticated reporting  
• Group VAT, partial VAT or foreign tax reporting
• Project and job costing analysis
• Ability to handle irregular accounting periods 
• Stock and inventory management
• End-to-end sales and purchase order processing
• Ability to handle high transaction volumes
• A more coherent digital landscape, with fewer systems and apps
• A reduction in time-consuming manual postings  
• Configurable user roles and access. 

Russell suggested evaluating the features of different software and splitting the essential ones from the “nice to haves” and the “not needed”. 

But it’s possible your criteria might change as you get into the process. 

He said: “You tend to start off with ‘I don’t need that’, but then all of a sudden you think ‘Actually, that would be quite nice to have’ – and then it might become part of the process, so you think ‘Actually, I can’t live without that now’.” 

Starting with a ‘blank sheet of paper mindset’ 

Russell’s key advice to selecting a new system was to review all your processes with a “blank sheet of paper mindset”. 

“Don’t just try and replicate what you do today in a newer, modern world,” he said. 

“Always look at the future – and not just 12 months. Look and understand the future aspirations of the business. Do you want to grow into more territories? Do you want to increase your number of entities?” 

He concluded: “Don’t be hamstrung by the vision of the business of 10-15 years ago.” 

Find out more

For more about outgrowing your finance system – and how to go about choosing a new one – you can watch the full webinar produced by Gravita. Or get in touch for a demonstration of iplicit.