In our competitive and data-driven world, your accounting software shouldn’t be the reason your business can’t scale. Yet many high-growth companies still rely on outdated accounting systems - juggling spreadsheets, patching integrations, and waiting days (or weeks) for usable reports. Whether you’re at a pre-Series A funding stage or preparing for a merger or acquisition, your accounting systems should be an accelerator, not a drag, on your business.
Let’s be clear: legacy financial systems are no longer just a minor inconvenience, they’re a bottleneck to strategic growth, investor confidence, and operational efficiency. In this article, we’ll explore the true cost of doing nothing, explain how modern solutions are built for current realities, and walk through a transformation roadmap tailored to the software and subscription economy (in this article I’ll use Sage Intacct as a reference, but it’s not alone in the mid-market space).
Legacy accounting systems might “work” on the surface, but they are no longer able to meet the evolving challenges and demands of sophisticated businesses. Today’s reporting and data management challenges include dealing with growing data volumes, complex recurring revenue rules, several revenue streams, deferred revenue schedules, multiple entities and currencies, and real-time KPIs.
Finance teams must now deliver forward-looking insights, not just standard historical reports. Legacy tools and processes can’t keep up. They falter under the pressure of large volumes, evolving compliance needs and increasingly sophisticated metrics.
Here’s what you’re likely sacrificing by sticking with outdated tools:
- Lost productivity: many hours wasted on manual processes like importing and exporting spreadsheets (with the accompanying version control headaches), consolidations, revenue recognition, and cost allocations.
- Delayed reporting cycles: when updates and reports take days or weeks to prepare, leadership loses timely insight and the agility to respond quickly to take advantage of opportunities and overcome challenges.
- Compliance risks: New responsibilities resulting from expanding into multiple provinces, states, or countries include complex tax rules and statutory filings. Outdated systems struggle to stay compliant.
- Lack of visibility: Without advanced and real time financial dashboards, management is behind, unable to see consolidated analysis and performance metrics such as customer lifetime value, churn, MRR & ARR.
The actual cost isn’t just short term or operational, it’s strategic. The further you delay modernizing your financial stack and process, the more opportunities you risk losing.
Doing nothing is often the most expensive choice. CFOs are always busy. But when they delay financial stack and process upgrades, they often underestimate the compounding costs of inefficiencies.
Here’s what “doing nothing” is costing many companies today:
- Revenue leakage: Delayed billing cycles, missed renewals, and inaccurate contract updates are causing real dollar losses and are a burden on cash flow management.
- Lost opportunities: When it takes your finance team several days or weeks to produce requested due diligence reports, your investors and partners lose faith in your credibility. Some deals will probably not wait.
- Team burnout and high turnover: Frustrated and burned-out finance teams would rather spend their time producing and analyzing accurate and timely reports, not entering data manually and fixing disorganized integrations. Lengthy and inconsistent closing cycles weaken morale and increase attrition.
- Growth and scaling friction: Each new location, project or financing milestone adds new complexities. Without efficient and scalable systems, these new opportunities will create headaches rather than momentum. The appropriate fix is not one that will just solve a temporary problem, it is rather the one that improves overall workflow and the ability to scale efficiently.
One of our current SaaS clients, operating in North America and multiple other jurisdictions, delayed migrating off QuickBooks for over two years. During that time, missed currency conversions and consolidation errors cost them over $200,000 in write-offs and potentially much more in lost investor confidence.
Companies need reporting that goes far beyond the general ledger and standard reports. Today’s finance leaders need financial tools that work and integrate well together, and they need to track MRR and ARR, churn rate, CAC, revenue by stream and location, deferred revenue waterfalls, profitability and return on capital, realized and unrealized gains ideally in real time. Also, today’s economic challenges call for careful and advanced what-if analysis and scenario modelling.
Proper process upgrades and modern platforms like Sage Intacct offer:
- Automation: Accounting automation is key when dealing with large volumes and fast-growing needs.
- Subscription-specific reporting and metrics: Relevant metrics can be tracked accurately and timely across departments and locations.
- Consolidations: Multi-entity and multi-currency reporting at the click of a button.
- Real-time financial dashboards: Relevant and custom reports that can be sliced by product, location, or segment.
- Appropriate integration capabilities: It is not about buying the most advanced software, it’s about efficient integrations, and customizing and building proper workflows that fit the teams’ needs and potential.
- Scalability: The well-functioning tech stack is one that enables efficient business growth.
Modern reporting isn’t simply about dumping and compressing raw data—it’s about delivering relevant and timely insights. Custom dashboards can give your CFO, COO, and board the exact metrics they need to make fast, confident decisions. Department heads and supervisors can have their own custom dashboards too.
For example:
- CFO dashboard: Budget vs actual and variances, Cash runway, burn rate, MRR/ARR trends.
- Controller dashboard: Close calendar, account balances and reconciliations, deferred revenue, account and department specific financial and statistical metrics.
- Board package: Forecast vs. actuals, KPI scorecards, charts that auto-refresh and multiple customized reports.
- Marketing dashboard: Marketing budget, current spend actuals vs plan, CAC, market and industry insights.
Accounting automation transforms your team into strategic enablers as they will be able to spend less time entering numbers and more time interpreting them. Instead of losing time typing numbers, reconciling balances, and chasing after approvals, your team should focus on analyzing data, advising management and identifying opportunities for improvement.
In technology, SaaS or multi-entity organizations, automation achieves speed and precision. It substantially reduces the risk of human errors, shortens closing cycles, and enables leadership to have a clear, real-time view of the organization’s performance. When accounting and finance processes are properly automated, the finance function becomes more reliable, scalable and efficient.
Here are some examples of how automation can enhance your financial and operational workflows:
- Automated billing tied to contract terms to ensure invoices are created accurately and timely, and revenue recognition rules applied properly to satisfy reporting standards.
- Workflow automation for accruals, approvals and reporting to remove inefficiencies by sourcing tasks automatically to the right personnel with the right data, speeding up periodical closes.
- Automated allocation of shared costs across multiple departmental budgets and projects to save hours of manual calculations.
- Efficient integrations between systems (CRM, payroll, sales tax) to eliminate duplicate entries, which in turn saves time and effort.
- Real-time alerts and exception reports that highlight anomalies and potential risks, allowing your team to focus attention on investigation and action instead of manual comparisons.
While an upgrade requires effort, the long-term ROI is clear:
- Faster monthly closes (often by 40–70%).
- Reduced audit prep time and fees.
- Higher team morale due to less manual cleanup.
- Long-term savings.
- Real-time financial clarity for faster and more confident decisions.
- Custom reports that answer the most relevant questions.
We’re not just accountants - we’re tech-savvy finance specialists, reporting architects, trusted advisers and strategic partners. We don’t just recommend software or upgrades, we help firms at every stage of growth to better implement, customize, and scale modern accounting systems and processes. We are an imbedded, ongoing financial management resource. We design the most efficient workflows that fit your team’s needs and potential.
Our services include:
- Needs assessment and gap analysis.
- Assistance with metric configuration.
- Dashboard design and financial reporting automation.
- System integrations (CRM, payments, payroll, sales tax, etc.)
- Ongoing advisory and support.
A client recently told us:
“I’ve never had such support and clarity from my accountants. You are really helping us save time and stay focused on data that matters”.
Don’t let outdated accounting systems and inefficient processes drag your company down. Contact us for a free consultation or system assessment today.
Nart Makhsida, CPA is a partner at Forbes Andersen LLP and President of Forbes Andersen Technology Inc. If you would like additional information about accounting solutions, dashboards, or industry best practices, Nart can be reached at nart.makhsida@fa.ca or 416-947-0464 ext 253.
