'Night of the Living Spreadsheets': Why lumbering manual processes could doom your reporting

What is the weirdest Halloween costume you have ever seen? A comedian once joked on Twitter that he wanted to go to a party dressed up as "the national deficit," which would seemingly be a huge pile of money owed to the nation's various creditors. However, it is more likely that this odd "costume" would just be a bunch of numbers entered into some spreadsheets – and sorting through all of them would be a nightmare appropriate for the season.

This type of manual drudgery is the reality for many SMB finance teams today, though. It is not so much "Night of the Living Spreadsheets" as it is "Month's End of the Living Spreadsheets," since accountants often struggle to create, verify, and distribute reports to all of their stakeholders while relying on limited tools such as Excel and QuickBooks:

• Like a pumpkin being carved into a jack-o-lantern, Excel sheets require extensive and careful manual manipulation, which increases the chances of even a single data entry error ruining an entire set of calculations and causing costly delays.
• Like ghouls and zombies lurching through a city, spreadsheets tend to arrive in large numbers and prove difficult to subsequently whittle down, meaning it is tough to reconcile all of the different versions of the truth across the organization.

• Like vampires catching their victims unaware, manual spreadsheet-driven processes can drain the precious energy that you would like to channel toward productive tasks, such as creating forecasts or requesting an upgrade to your IT infrastructure.

To see how these spooky limitations affect your organization's productivity, consider taking on some of the emerging challenges in any growing business using only your spreadsheets. You would have to account for multiple business structures and entities as well as the transition to new revenue recognition guidelines, all while being one botched formula or missing sheet away from significant trouble.

Eradicating the spreadsheet problem with cloud accounting solutions

To avoid re-enacting a classic horror film for the Halloween season or starting up a marketing campaign for a client, your company needs a modern accounting platform such as Sage Intacct. This cloud software frees you from your stiff, zombie-like Excel sheets in several decisive ways.

Unified, real-time insights
Instead of having your most important data points separated from each other in their own haunted silos, Sage Intacct gives you an intuitive web-based interface for tracking all of your sites and operations. You can finally get a single version of the truth about your finances.

Integrations galore
Best-in-class tools such as Adaptive Insights, Salesforce.com, AvidXchange, and Concur can be seamlessly integrated with Sage Intacct. This synergy saves you tons of time over the long run since you don't have to worry about the error-prone manual transfer of data between your apps.

Are your spreadsheets haunting your productivity?

True automation
Sage Intacct has automation at the heart of its design. Processes such as revenue recognition can be automated in accordance with custom schedules and milestones. This efficiency is crucial as guidelines such as ASC 606 and IFRS 15 evolve in the coming years, making traditional spreadsheet-based approaches unsustainable.

An experienced implementation partner
By working with RKL eSolutions, you can maximize your benefits from upgrading to Sage Intacct. RKL has years of experience in multiple industries and can help you map out your transition to cloud software, all the way from initial planning to ongoing education and maintenance. You can get a modern solution that at last frees you from reliving "Night of the Living Spreadsheets" with your accounting workflows.