Intacct vs Microsoft Dynamics SL

If you provide professional services, you must consider how you bill your clients. Is your billing based on payroll hours that drive both employee payroll and revenue from billings?

If so, then you will need an ERP system that can handle the timekeeping and billing aspects through ops reporting.

You will be a poor choice for sales people if you do not have your requirements strongly defined based on process needs.

QuickBooks does not handle timekeeping well, and many other systems also do not handle timekeeping through billing well.

You will need to fully understand how payroll will integrate with A/R in order to accomplish billing your clients if your revenue is based on professional time incurred.

Vet the payroll/timekeeping/billing aspects of your current vs future system, then in round 2 evaluate your short list for all the other requirements and meet with the sales people again.

Well said Valerie. BTW, there are lots of possible systems not cited above. But unless you've done your needs assessment homework, you haven't created a RFQ/RFI that will solve your issues.

Here's a question Noel -

Why you just didn't call NetSuite and request someone else? I'm sure the NetSuite leaders who read these Q&A's aren't too happy with your experience.

I can't speak to your specific question, only to mention my observation in the general ERP marketplace that both Intaact and Netsuite are considered "newer generation" cloud ERP players and are thus taking away market share from the likes of Microsoft. You can find several examples citing data in a variety of industry reports.

Our company has implemented and supported Dynamics SL for 15 years. We have also been an Intacct partner for the last 3 years. We specialize in project-driven organizations including many marketing firms.
If you are deciding on a new project- and financial-accounting solution in 2014 (versus 1999), my recommendation is to go with the one that has the best functionality for your industry AND is modern technology, such as Intacct is with their true SaaS approach.
While Dynamics SL has extensive functionality, it is old software - and we don't know what Microsoft is going to do with it going forward. Conversely, Intacct is very state of the art and has a long future ahead of it.
The only reason to consider SL is if there is some huge functionality gap between what you need and what Intacct can provide - and even then, it is worth doing some customization with Intacct so you are guaranteed a very long future.
If you do end up leaning towards Dynamics SL, be sure to check out DataBasics in lieu of Unanet.

Since you looking at professional billing ask your accountants and attorney's what they use; they need that kind of software. Many industries have their own specialized software for front end and ERP systems (like Deltek for construction) so check out your industry.

And I agree with everyone else, stay away from Dynamics SL. It is old and frustrating, though it does work and has good support. However, it must have been developed just after the punch card era; it even calls some data groups "cards".

Noel
If I may ask a preliminary set of questions....this may help folk frame answers for you.

How well formed (documented) are your critical requirements for a new system?
Why are you changing? growth, acquisitions, business model change....etc.
Critical functional needs-what do you need as an organization to run your business in the future?
Key technical needs-what do you need as an organization - integration with other systems, high level of remote users accessing the system
Budget-what do you think you'll spend on this system over the next 5 years? Software, implementation

f you want to look at this link, it may help you plan your approach so that you can qualify software vendors better and also evaluate their software's level of fit with your needs.
https://www.proformative.com/resources/erp-selection-critical-factors-your-company.

Best regards
Len

Noel,

A few additional thoughts for you:
1) It would be helpful to confirm - for professional services - that you are not Aerospace & Defense as well. Deltek really made their name in that space (mostly their CostPoint product line). I'm not sure the lineage of Vision - is it the old Harper and Shuman system they purchased? If you are an Aerospace & Defense firm, you realistically are looking at “build it yourself” or use Deltek - no other vendor really does the government cost accounting that will fly with the DCAA out of the box.

2) There is a category of software called Professional Services Automation (PSA) that may be more important than changing your ERP system. If your transaction volume and complexity is around your services (and not much else) you might be able to move just the important needed functionality to a new system.

3) NetSuite does have a PSA system (purchased from OpenAir) that they sell as part of their professional services offering. There are solutions that link to financial systems, solutions that link to CRM solutions (see the Saleforce.com platform for this), and solutions that stand alone.

4) There are also time & billing systems out there (low end to high end) if you don't need resource management and some of the other more advanced PSA functions.

5) There are people on this site who help with system evaluations (such as Len Green who’s posted here already) - at times there is value in getting help to fully define your requirements.

6) There are reasons to move beyond QuickBooks. Usually they relate to scaling your financial team (more people), scaling your enterprise (more locations), scaling your platform (ability to integrate and extend the core application), and scaling your controls (audit compliance, internal controls). The trade-offs are more cost and complexity that come with mid-market and higher tier solutions.

To the points on this thread about cloud providers and Microsoft and others - I'll start another thread. In fact, Microsoft added significantly more new customers last year than NetSuite. If you look at the Product Reviews here at Proformative, Dynamics NAV is rated just as highly as NetSuite or Intacct. At the same time I am a huge believer in the Cloud model and Cloud deployments. Lately I have been thinking that the marketing messaging and the reality of the ‘benefits’ or ‘what’s new’ for Cloud ERP have been conflated.

Bob Scarborough
www.tensoft.com