Release Notes and New Features: Navigating Sage Intacct Updates

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Doug Lewis: So most people don't know that about this. This specific podcast is every time we record something, it's like 4 or 5 hours of raw footage and they have to cut it down so much because there's just just countless hours of us just so much terrible stuff. People. Yeah, just oh, just really just crazy out there stuff. Yeah.

Emily Madere: Let's be clear. It's it's normally Doug and and Matt just, like, ripping [00:00:30] into each other.

Karen Penhallegon: I was gonna say, where's Matt at today?

Doug Lewis: Well, I thank God we don't have to deal with him. Let's let's just put it that way. Let's let's put it that way. No, this is this is the A team. We brought the A team today. And that's that's why of course, Karen, we we excited to have you back because as everyone has just been there like we need more release notes. Tell us about the release notes. Let's talk about the release notes. That's all we get from everybody, right. Because it's the most exciting thing out there in the world. Uh, so naturally, we thought that we needed Karen [00:01:00] back here, because one of us has to legitimately understand something about these rules notes and what they mean, why they're important can decipher a little bit about them here and there. So thank you for joining us again.

Karen Penhallegon: I'm honored that I am the release note guru here.

Emily Madere: Honored our expert correspondent. I, if you will.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, yeah. Real like a recurring role kind of thing.

Karen Penhallegon: I like that I got a promotion. I'm good with that.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, well, there you go. That's all you need? Yeah. We don't pay well, but it's it's [00:01:30] okay. It's. It doesn't matter. So the release notes just came out. Um, we've done one of these already, so this will this will be the second time around. And again, it went a lot smoother when when you kind of walked us through these, Karen. So if I'm not mistaken, I'm going to throw it out there as everybody is used to. The release notes on Sage tech came out and they focused on the the core areas again. So the strength and financials, automation capabilities, platform scalability, and then of course the industry insights, and there's a million subcategories [00:02:00] under each one of them. All of that fun stuff. But just for anyone who didn't catch some earlier release notes, conversations new to the Sage ecosystem, all that fun stuff. Emily, do you want to maybe just give like a quick elevator pitch? What are the release notes? Why are they important? Why should anybody care about them?

Emily Madere: Yeah. No. Sage releases Sage Intacct releases for main feature function releases a year. So each quarter they're doing releases, and in these releases they cover different things. Sometimes it's, um, [00:02:30] it's items that customers want it to be pushed out. Sometimes it's bug fixes, sometimes it's it's completely new functionality. But each time Sage Intacct really, um, lifts the bar for what they did the previous time. And I think, you know, this release, I think I think was good. I think we got a lot of new capabilities that we didn't have before. And I know Karen, Karen and I definitely have some favorites when we were going down this list, so I'm excited to talk about them.

Doug Lewis: I'm also excited about something [00:03:00] because before we started recording here, I was warned that Karen had a surprise for everybody here today, so I don't know when that's going to come up. I haven't I have a guess, but we'll see. Um, I'm sure it's release notes related, of course, because again, that's what everybody wants to hear. But um, to kind of kick it off, um, do you want to take these maybe just like section by section in the release notes, is that the best, the cleanest way to do it? Because I'm sure we could spend a ton of time just on each one of these different sections. But to kick it off in strength and financials, [00:03:30] anything that's really standing out to you, Karen, from that section.

Karen Penhallegon: So there's definitely a couple of things, I think a big one that's going to be great for international or multi-currency clients is they have some updates to how fun transfers can work when you're using multi-currency. So it's really great. It's actually, um, additional support for something that couldn't be done before. Now you can actually do exchanges between different currencies that are not your base currency. You no longer have to select [00:04:00] an exchange rate, so the system is going to automatically pull the exchange rate for you. And on top of that, it even is going to create the any rounding entries, right. So if you have any foreign exchange amounts that end up needing to be rounded, it will automatically create those rounding entries.

Doug Lewis: Do you think there's going to be any discrepancy in that? If it's more of an automated process from this standpoint, as opposed to going back and doing a little bit more manual before in terms of the exchange rate, or is this something that, you know, how could any of that be solved if there is a court [00:04:30] challenge?

Karen Penhallegon: So there's definitely still the option to go back and do it the way you were doing it before. If you want more control over your exchange rates and tax treatment of exchange rates is actually really great because you can use a couple of different automated rates as well as just enter your own exchange rates if you're using something different. I think it's more of a benefit to use the automated rates personally. They're pulling, um, into the system, you know, of course, Automatically. Um, you don't have to try to remember what exchange rate you used. You don't have to go back and look things up. It's going [00:05:00] to look at the date of the transfer, look at the exchange rates for all the different currencies that are in the transaction and just calculate it for you. So I think that's a big benefit. It may be doing things a little differently than people have done manually, but I think it's better to have it more automated. It's less chance for a mistake.

Emily Madere: Um, and I just I just wanted to say so this specific functionality is in early adopter. So if you're a Sage Intacct listener, reach out to your partner or reach out to whoever, um, you know, you work with for Sage Intacct and they can get you into [00:05:30] one of these programs.

Doug Lewis: Emily. So with the the early adopter functionalities, you know, in a lot of these features and releases, is there any thing that would prevent somebody from being able to access them, whether it's a certain size account, certain industries they work in, certain features they already have, or can anybody gain access to these?

Emily Madere: I think maybe the only key thing is that of course you have to have a need for the functionality, but you would need to reach out to your, um, whoever your account manager is early enough [00:06:00] to get into these programs because it's my understanding that they fill up pretty quickly.

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah, I'll add they definitely are limited. You need to be a good fit for the functionality. Um, clients also need to understand that there is there are requirements to being an early adopter, primarily that you're meeting with the product management team because they're going to be asking for your feedback much more than they do during a normal release. So it's a little bit more of a lift on the client side because you're testing functionality that's not fully released yet. And so they're going to ask for more feedback from you.

Doug Lewis: And [00:06:30] how long do features generally hang out in that early adopter stage before they're actually rolled out?

Karen Penhallegon: It definitely varies. I think the average is probably 3 to 6 months. They'll sit in early adopter. We've seen some things though that really large changes that have stayed in early adopter. We're going to talk about one in just a minute. That's in GA now that was an early adopter I think for a year or more. So sometimes they'll stay longer if they're complex functionality. On average, I would say 3 to 6 months.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. That's interesting. I'm curious. Now you kind of you jumped [00:07:00] ahead a little bit, which is exciting because you said that was a little bit of a longer early adopter stage in that 3 to 6 month zone. So moving into the automation capabilities portion of the notes, you know, um, do you want to just take it from there, Karen, instead of kicking it back over to Emily? Because you seem excited about this one. This is my favorite one.

Karen Penhallegon: My favorite one.

Emily Madere: For those who can't see our video, you're obviously watching this on a podcast. Karen is literally dancing. She is so excited to talk about this next one.

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah, this one is huge. Um, I am I'm really excited. So if you don't if you haven't heard previous the previous podcast, I'm definitely [00:07:30] an accounting nerd when it comes to software. Um, and this one ticks all the boxes for me. It's AP automation now works with purchasing. So this has been an early adopter for a long time. I don't know the exact amount of time, but it was probably a year. Um, it is GA or general access with this release, which means that now everyone has access to it. Um, it is incredibly exciting. So AP Build automation was a huge release for Intacct, a really great win. Its downside was that [00:08:00] it only worked with AP, so any companies that were really heavy into purchasing really was not functionality they could use because they needed to continue closing out POS and entering AP bills doesn't close out a Po, so really was not useful for probably, you know, half of our clients. At least it was not even an option. So it was very, very exciting. Now that this is going to be an option for everyone to be able to use this great technology, um, it's still going to work very similar. It's still AI based. It uses machine learning. [00:08:30] Now though, when users go to look at their transactions, they're going to go to a single screen.

Karen Penhallegon: That's going to be a mixture of both AP transactions and purchasing transactions. So I think, again, it's an improvement because often your AP team is working on both types of transactions. And previously they're going to two different places trying to figure out where they need to enter or review transactions. Now they're going to go to one. They can review everything from a single screen. They also have flexibility in, you know, the system may have created [00:09:00] that transaction as a AP bill, but they can say no instead. This actually was from a Po. But maybe the vendor didn't put the Po number on the on the invoice. And so the system couldn't figure out that it belonged to a Po. It gives the flexibility that they can flip back and forth between the different types of transactions. And it also works with the purchasing workflow that is built into Intacct. So you can determine how it works with your workflows. So it doesn't have to be a standardized process. It always has to be. A receiver turns into an invoice. You customize it to your workflow. [00:09:30] So it's been an early adopter for a long time because of that, because there's all these complexities. But now I am so excited that we're going to get to use it with everyone.

Doug Lewis: Now, do you think do you think that was in early adopter for so long, because there were so many tweaks and changes made along the way? Or is it just such a complex, you know. Rollout that it just needed a little more time for people to really wrap their heads around it?

Karen Penhallegon: It's hard to say, because we don't get to see into the background of what's really going on. The [00:10:00] the key with really purchasing and in a lot of other areas of purchasing is a big one, is there's a lot of different processes out there and a lot of unique requirements. And so I think that's probably what a lot of it was. As it's going through early adopter, you know, they're realizing things that are going to be major issues that they need to address and won't release it until all those are addressed. So I suspect that's probably mostly it's it's just due to the complexity of the process and all the different ways that people are doing it out in the world.

Doug Lewis: So and now it's just it's flawless. [00:10:30] They'll never have to change anything again about it or update it. Right. That's just that's just how software works.

Karen Penhallegon: That's exactly how it works. Uh, yeah.

Doug Lewis: Once it's once it's there. It's good.

Karen Penhallegon: I would expect even now, the first, you know, the first release of something. While it's really exciting, it may still have a few little things going on with it. So clients that want to dip their toe in it. It's a great opportunity to give it a try, but be aware that there's probably going to continue being major changes to it for at least a few releases.

Emily Madere: So, but you know, clients who are using it, I think that's an important note. Make [00:11:00] sure to give your feedback so they can fix that.

Doug Lewis: I'm curious. Just wild speculation. Now Karen, I want to throw this into your court. Um, you know, with the AP automation, with purchasing how? It's a tough question, but I'm going to I'm going to ask it poorly, but I'm gonna let you run with it if you could. How much time could this potentially save? You know, an organization.

Karen Penhallegon: Oh,

Doug Lewis: You know, like what?We understand the benefit. But like, if you had to be like, I don't know, we could cut down 20% [00:11:30] of our, you know, manual process. You know what? Just wildly speculate what? This could save somebody.

Karen Penhallegon: That's a tough one. Um, maybe let me describe what the process was and what it will be, and kind of see what the difference is going to be previously, you know, a bill comes in, your AP person is looking at it right. And they're going to say, okay, was this related to a Po. I've got to go find that Po. Now I've got to find if the Po was received, I've got to go convert the receiver to the invoice. I've got to make sure everything [00:12:00] is correct. I've got to check it myself. I've got to do all of this. And then I've got to post it and send it through. So I mean, how long does that take? Right. It might take what, ten, 15 minutes for the process. That process is practically eliminated if it comes in and has a Po already on it, the system is automatically going to do all of that for you. It's going to highlight if there are differences, it's going to pull them up for you. You just go in and look at the problems. So I think that's it depends on your your volume of course. But if you look at a time savings of every single time a bill comes in, you're saving ten minutes. [00:12:30] I mean, that can be huge. I mean, we're talking 50% savings. You know, if you're really heavy into that industry.

Emily Madere: I think the time piece of it, Karen, is important, right? I think we all want to save time. But what I think is even more important is the reduction of error. Yes, your AP person is checking all these these paper things. And when, uh, you know, you use this automation process, then, I mean, everything's in the system. It's alerting you to discrepancies.

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah. [00:13:00] And this is I mean, that's real money when you get down to the end of the day, because if somebody's not checking things closely, you could be paying bills that you haven't received the goods for or paying incorrectly and incorrect amounts if that person is not catching everything. And that's where the system can come in and actually help you.

Doug Lewis: That's a secret. Actually my business. I just send invoices out to people and see what comes back.

Emily Madere: That's how you make your money.

Doug Lewis: So Sage is out to get me, I guess. It seems to be it. Um, moving into kind of the third focus area, the release notes, you know, the [00:13:30] the platform scalability components. Emily, any items that you think we should hit on here from a high level in that zone?

Emily Madere: Yeah, I definitely think the, the list views are are a piece we should talk about. So if if anyone listened to our last, um, episode talking about the release notes, then you know that Sage Intacct is releasing different list views for all different types of, um, of pages and intact. Well, now they're releasing even more list views. [00:14:00] And they are. They've changed the name. They're not in beta view anymore. They're enhanced views. So if your user in intact definitely take a look at the enhanced views. I think they're going to be a game changer for the way you consume list in intact. Um, but I know, Karen, you were super excited about these too.

Karen Penhallegon: I mean, this is one I've been passionate about for a while. It's another one that's been out there for a long time. Not exactly an early adopter, but not exactly available either. Um, so you're right. Now they technically are what they call general availability, [00:14:30] and but they're just essentially renamed the functionality to enhanced list views. So it is a new name on the screen. You still have the same option to flip back and forth between the new views and the old views. But I agree the new views are incredibly useful. Um, they are much more flexible, much more dynamic, much more user friendly than the old views. And I thought the old views were 100 times better than than the softwares I started using when I started working with the ERP systems. So these are even better, right? Um, they've [00:15:00] kind of gone off the scale in terms of how much better they are than, than the list views. Back in the day that I learned in Sage 100 or Sage 50.

Doug Lewis: So both Sage 15 Sage 100 glowing reviews throughout this, throughout this journey that we've had on this.

Emily Madere: Oh yeah. If Matt was here, I'm sure we'd have some lovely things to say about those two softwares.

Doug Lewis: Yes. Yeah. See, it's such a isn't it, such a positive environment. You know, that's not here. It's so great. We're just talking about fun, nerdy accounting things. And, uh, nobody's tearing down anybody [00:15:30] or making them cry quietly. That's that's.

Karen Penhallegon: Sage 50 and Sage.

Karen Penhallegon: 100 had their day. Golden age of ERPs.

Doug Lewis: Okay, so when was that day? Like, when is it? When did we finally say no more?In your opinion,

Karen Penhallegon: You know.

Karen Penhallegon: Early 2000. I think that time has passed now.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, I come.

Karen Penhallegon: Out 1999. That was when.

Doug Lewis: That was it. That was that's it's over with. Okay, I like that. Um, anything else in the, uh, platform scalability zone? Uh, Emily, that we should probably touch on from a real [00:16:00] high level.

Emily Madere: So there's, I think, open conversation. Sage released an item called webhooks, and it's potentially going to be replacing Smart Events. I think webhooks is a really cool name, but I was hoping Karen could tell us a little bit more about it.

Karen Penhallegon: I may not be the best person, um, to talk about this one, but I'll give you what I know. The reason is.

Karen Penhallegon: This is related to even more.

Doug Lewis: You are the best person here.

Karen Penhallegon: In the room.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, let's be very clear about that.

Karen Penhallegon: We [00:16:30] might need, like, you know, an an Aaron Harris or someone to explain this because this is getting into the development side of things, but I will put on my having talked with our developers hat and and tell you what I know. So, um, what webhooks are is a basically a new way to call out of intact to other solutions. So if you are a developer who's writing solutions that integrate with intact, this is where it's very important. Previously, what you would need to do to call [00:17:00] your software would be to create a smart event. And so that smart event, of course, intact smart events are not all encompassing. There are things that they can't do, and they have to have an action happening intact for those to initiate. So you have to do something. You have to save a sales order or do something, create a customer, whatever it may be. Then it would kick off a smart event which would call out to a website. Now what you're able to do is use in text platform triggers instead, which are more flexible, have more functionality. [00:17:30] They can now call out to your external website to.

Karen Penhallegon: Kick off a process, so it seems like a subtle change. But in the development world, it's a very big deal because it's going to allow for better integrations in the long run. So it's part of kind of the overall integration strategy of intact, these, these small improvements you're seeing to things like, you know, Rest API, the webhooks, those various releases that you're seeing.

Doug Lewis: So for someone who claimed to not really understand it well, [00:18:00] you seemed pretty, pretty clear about what it could be or what what's happening behind the scenes, which I like. Um, because God knows, I have no clue. Um, it sounds interesting. And Emily, you I think you alluded to this could be replacing smart events. You know, is that is that a is that just rumor mill? You know, what is what are we looking at there?

Emily Madere: Yeah, I think like Karen said, I think this is a real potential. Webhooks could definitely replace smart events. And I'm sorry, I just have to say an intrusive thought. When I [00:18:30] say when I think say the word webhooks, I think of Spider-Man as a pirate. And I'm done. I'm done.

Doug Lewis: Okay. Hold on. Just processing that.

Karen Penhallegon: I was thinking more like Sherman.

Karen Penhallegon: But you know.

Emily Madere: Okay.

Doug Lewis: Wait, you mean he has, like, the web turned into hooks? Is that. And now? Now he's moving around.

Emily Madere: Spider-man is definitely on a pirate ship with an eye patch and a hook in his hand.

Doug Lewis: Huh?

Doug Lewis: Okay. [00:19:00] Off topic.

Karen Penhallegon: That's some fanfic that Emily needs to write there.

Doug Lewis: Geez, that's a real peek. A real peek into behind the scenes of Emily's brain there. It was an.

Emily Madere: Intrusive thought, and I just had to share it. To all the people listening on this release notes podcast.

Doug Lewis: That's that was good. Uh, cutting edge stuff here, folks. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Um, well, that was, uh, I'm not gonna say a good segue into, you know, into the the last focus area of the release notes, [00:19:30] the industry insights, which might be the meatiest. Uh, I'll kind of call it. So, Karen, I'll toss this one over to you first on the Industry insights, uh, focus area of the release notes. Anything standing out to you that we need to talk about?

Karen Penhallegon: Absolutely. Um, I one that I really love, that I've heard a lot of requests for, um, it's specifically for healthcare. It is Sage Intacct clinical e-procurement solution. Now, it is technically not [00:20:00] yet available. This is like a little pre-announcement that they put out there. It's going to be available in March is the current date. But what this is going to offer that I think is different than other solutions is punch out capabilities for purchasing. And that's really important in the healthcare industry. So if you're not aware of what Punch Out is, it's essentially the ability to take the vendor's website and their purchasing site and kind of pull it into your own site. So for example, for healthcare, [00:20:30] they often have very detailed contracts with their suppliers, with certain prices that they have negotiated, certain products they've negotiated. So rather than their procurement team or anyone having to go out and research and go to the vendor's website and remember which products are the right ones and what the right price should be. Instead, they can have that and what they call a punch out of that site, all within their their single access. Um, one of my number one requests from healthcare larger healthcare organizations [00:21:00] is punch out. So it's a very, very big topic. Um, it's going to be a really, really great user friendliness because you can punch out from multiple vendors. So basically it's building your own purchasing catalog, um, right within the solution. And this is something that's offered by really large purchasing vendors like Coupa. And so previously if you wanted this, this type of functionality, you would have to go to a third party and and integrate them into intact. Now it's something that they're going to be looking at actually integrating directly within the software.

Doug Lewis: Now the [00:21:30] the clinical e-procurement is that was that an acquisition? Was this build, you know, internally as, as a native function? Because obviously, you know, in Sage ecosystem and every software world, a lot of it is acquisition of, uh, entities that already do this specialty.

Karen Penhallegon: I'm not quite sure yet. It's not very clear from the release notes. Um, and they haven't had any, um, they usually have what they call enablement calls for partners and others to be able to be introduced to new functionality. They haven't had that [00:22:00] yet, so I'm not 100% sure. If I had to guess, I would say it's an acquisition. Um, there's lots of software that already does this out there, and Sage is great at saying, why reinvent the wheel when we can go buy the wheel from someone else? So if I had to guess and speculate, I would say it's an acquisition that they're integrating in.

Doug Lewis: This podcast was built on speculation. Karen.

Emily Madere: That's why we're Unofficial.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, that's why we're unofficial. That's all we do is speculate. We don't have any real [00:22:30] insider information. Uh, you know, we just wildly speculate and then come up with weird things like, uh, Spider-Man wearing hooks or what was it I forget already? What? It was so strange that I lost it.

Doug Lewis: Pirates! Pirates.

Emily Madere: Spider-man.

Karen Penhallegon: AI generate that, please. I can have an image.

Karen Penhallegon: They can?

Doug Lewis: Yes.

Doug Lewis: We've already trademarked that somehow. I don't know. I don't know. Uh, so the clinical procurement was one of the most exciting, um, portions of the industry [00:23:00] insights for you, Karen. Emily. Anything on your end that, you know, you think is notable to bring up outside of that?

Emily Madere: Um, yeah, I think Sage Intacct we just had this conversation, but maybe procured some more functionality around lending management. So anyone who is producing loans Sage Intacct can now handle the full life cycle of loans and have that integrated with GL cash management at AP. And the really great thing is intact will automatically calculate the loan [00:23:30] statements and the interest. So I think it's going to be huge for a lot of customers who are generating loans. I know Karen and I are, um, having a special I, and I think we're hopeful that this module will will go well. So we're looking for feedback.

Karen Penhallegon: And this one is also an early adopter I'll point out as well.

Doug Lewis: Oh it is. Okay. So this could be a three month or a four year, uh, phase. We don't know yet.

Karen Penhallegon: It's a journey. It's a journey.

Doug Lewis: It's a.Journey. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's it's it's different [00:24:00] for every functionality. Um, the lending management component that you just briefly hit on there. Emily, I'm curious if either one of you have any insight how big of a segment that is inside the Sage Intacct ecosystem?

Emily Madere: That is hard because I haven't seen recently the breakdown of Sage's customers. I know probably majority of Sage Intacct customer base is nonprofit and then probably follow it up by healthcare. I think they're doing a large push for construction, [00:24:30] but lending specifically. I'm not sure.

Karen Penhallegon: It might even be a little bit bigger than we might think. So of course, financial institutions would fall in this, but I think something that might be missed sometimes is a lot of not for profits are actually lending institutions. So whether it's financial loans, um, habitats for humanity, a lot of those organizations actually will will do lending and mortgages for their their clients are subsidized. So there's probably a [00:25:00] good bit of crossover, I would say, in the nonprofit industry with this one as well. Um, TBD for sure. It's a little hard to tell at this point. I don't think financial institutions as a whole is a huge focus for for Sage, but I think this also bleeds into nonprofit, which is obviously probably their largest. You're right, it's over 30% of their of their base is nonprofit.

Doug Lewis: So that's interesting. Outside of the clinical e-procurement and the lending management. Again, this was probably the meatiest focus area of the of the release notes the industry insights [00:25:30] component. Anything else? Karen, you think we should hit from a high level or we can we can move on to more speculative conversations.

Karen Penhallegon: I think there's one other one that is definitely affecting a lot of my clients. They sort of called it construction, but I think it's more broad ranging than that, honestly. They are making and these these are not huge changes, but I think they're important some changes to the way that the projects views look. So the first thing here is they have a new section and they sort of snuck it [00:26:00] in there. So this is probably important for anybody who has projects in Intacct. There's a new section in the configuration that allows you to choose what your users are seeing. So whether there are certain tabs or certain sections on those tabs that you want to hide, you can actually do that now. And I think that's actually really important because projects is one of the most complex areas of Sage Intacct. Contact and if you are using everything, it is probably ten tabs. When you go into that screen that you're looking at, it's a lot of information. And so for clients who [00:26:30] maybe are a little more on the simple side of projects, it's very confusing for their users when we're going in to train them or talk with them about projects. And there's six tabs of information that they're never going to look at and never need to use. Um, now we can just get rid of those off the screen so they never have to see them. They only see exactly what they need. So I think it's a really great usability update in my opinion.

Doug Lewis: So is that is that kind of like a permissions.

Karen Penhallegon: Uh, it's it's overarching because it's.

Karen Penhallegon: Really to everyone. So it's a configuration [00:27:00] update if you will, that literally hides it from everyone. So it doesn't matter what your permissions are. If you turn off the view you won't see it at all.

Doug Lewis: Interesting. And obviously it's being rolled out or kind of marketed as construction, but you think that's a bit of a, you know, a.

Karen Penhallegon: Bit of a misnomer.

Karen Penhallegon: Because it actually applies to everyone who has projects. So if you have projects, even if you don't have construction and you're suddenly missing tabs, which has happened to a couple of our clients, this is why they kind of snuck it in there. And in some [00:27:30] cases, you had to go in and actually turn it back on. So.

Doug Lewis: Oh, really? So it was automatically ah, okay. Got it. That's that's a that is sneaky a little sneaky.

Karen Penhallegon: Um, most of the major tabs are still there. They also I mean they made a few they rearranged some things on these screens as well so that just they're easier to, to read and you don't have to click around as much. So that's just a small usability update. But if you're a heavy user, I mean saving 10s of time on something you do 100 times a day adds up.So.

Doug Lewis: Sure. [00:28:00]No, no, that that makes sense. We're trying to put people out of jobs, right? That's that's the ultimate goal here, right? Ai is coming for us all, you know. Yeah. No. Nobody's safe I hate that, by the way, when people say that these people, these doomsday, you know, predictors out there, they go oh artificial intelligence automation. It's going to replace, you know, all accounting professionals. That's absurd. You're crazy! Get out of here!

Karen Penhallegon: Irobot's coming. You know.

Doug Lewis: Yeah.

Doug Lewis: Great movie. Don't get me wrong. Um, but, yeah, I don't. I don't think we're quite there yet. Give [00:28:30] us maybe 4 to 5 years. Uh, then we'll all just be outrunning robots on the highway. Um, Emily, I'll kick it back to you. Last chance on industry insights. Anything that we missed that people just need to know about. Because it's just so, so important.

Emily Madere: I think I'm good. I'm excited to talk about the next topic.

Karen Penhallegon: Well, I have a couple more. I'm just going to mention very quickly.

Karen Penhallegon: I'm sorry.

Emily Madere: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Karen Penhallegon: I think these are really important, but they're not flashy. So I probably [00:29:00] should have led with these because they're not as fun. We have a great topic coming up next though, but I think there's two really important. I'd call them more compliance updates. Again, they're back to being nerdy here. One of them is native file formats. So for those of you who do ACH files out of Intacct, this is a big, big hitter. They are making big updates to improve the ability to generate different formats of ACH files to meet more bank standards. Not the sexiest topic, but very important because I have a number of clients who have not been able to use ACH [00:29:30] and Intac because their bank would not accept the files. Um, so I think this is huge in that less check printing, um, for these clients. So less paper out in the world. The other big one, I think, is they have made a pretty big enhancement to the options for AP bill approval. So sort of, I guess ties into our previous conversation with AP Bill automation. You can now have vendor based AP bill approval, meaning that you can have a certain person review a certain vendor's bills. So another [00:30:00] one that I've had requested many, many times from clients and customers. So I think it's just something to point out, is now going to be available for all those that you've asked for it. And all you have to do is go out there and turn it on.

Doug Lewis: Was that a you said that was a pretty widely, I'll call it, you know, asked for uh, feature. Or is that something that just people were like, why isn't this here? You know what?

Karen Penhallegon: I've had I would say 10 to 15 clients asked for this feature of having specific reasons that they wanted [00:30:30] certain vendors to be reviewed by certain people. So I would say it's a pretty good chunk of my my experience. People have needed this one.

Doug Lewis: Oh, interesting. And by the way, you can stop saying, oh, this is the nerdy part.

Doug Lewis: This entire podcast

Karen Penhallegon: everything is the nerdy part.

Doug Lewis: It is just it's nothing but nerdy. And that's the only reason people like it. Um, myself included.

Karen Penhallegon: Like I said, less flashy, but still important updates.

Doug Lewis: There you go. Yeah.

Doug Lewis: Overarching disclaimer everything we talk about is going to be we're talking about Sage Intacct. We're talking about counting. [00:31:00] We're talking about technology. It's all coming together. I think it's I think it's a given. No, no one's listening to this, you know, to get their, uh, their Hollywood entertainment. Um, but I guess maybe they are. We don't know. All right. So, Emily, I want to move into kind of the final, final portion here. All right. Let's talk about copilot and a lot of buzz around it. There's been some early adopters. There's been people testing it out. What is going on with copilot?

Emily Madere: So I think with copilot in this release, [00:31:30] we are seeing a lot of, um, promises being fulfilled by Aaron Harris, by the Sage Intacct development team when it comes to AI. So there was really three main categories, and I'll list them out here search, help, variants, analysis and Close assist. In each of these different functionalities are are really reflecting back to what Aaron Harris said in his many, many speeches about AI, about helping accountants making the [00:32:00] clothes faster, um, letting AI help you understand your data and letting AI inside of Intacct really become a ChatGPT. So, Karen, which one of these was your favorite?

Karen Penhallegon: It's a tough one, actually. Um, I think I would have to probably have to go and search. Help. Um, I, I joke often with my clients, my team, that in tax help is one of the few helps. That's helpful. Um, a lot of times when you get software help, it's not really that useful. [00:32:30] In tax is really great. And I think it's very underutilized. And I love that people are going to get better access to it. And the beauty of this is it's going to be really designed for natural language. That's the great thing about AI, right, is that it's designed to take a natural language question. You don't have to have special search terms or wild cards or any of that. Um, it's going to give better access to those help files, which means people can better use the software. I think that's really amazing. Um, I [00:33:00] will say my understanding on the variance analysis is that one is what they call general availability, but you need to sort of opt in to it. It's a phase, um, rollout. So they're not rolling it out just to everyone all at once. I think it's going to be really fantastic for doing deeper analysis more quickly, but if you want it right away, there's a form you have to fill out to go request it. So just be aware. You're going to have to do a little something extra for that one.

Karen Penhallegon: Now, I'm also [00:33:30] though really excited about Copilot Close Assistant because this is one of the areas I can see it actually being used. So a lot of times I it's, you know, flowery when you talk about how great it's going to be and all the things it's going to do, but then you really have to get down to how are you actually going to use this in your day to day? And I think this is an excellent example. This one is early adopter, but what it is going to do for you is really give you a, a checklist, basically of your closed tasks that you need to do. So whether you need to go in and you [00:34:00] have AP and you've got draft bills that are still sitting out there, or you need to go run the variance analysis on your GL to see if there's any major variances in your GL from from the last few periods that you need to review, it's going to actually just give you a checklist with links of all those items. You just click on the thing that you need to do. It's going to take you right to what you need to complete, and it lets you close right there from that checklist as well. So in terms of actually helping a day to day process, I think that's going to be incredible.

Doug Lewis: I like how [00:34:30] you you kind of prefaced the whole thing with, you know, all all these different softwares are rolling out artificial intelligence features and they're pitched as, you know, the next best thing since sliced bread. But I personally find myself just turning off a lot of those features, um, across so many different programs because they don't really add anything. Uh, it's just kind of like another thing you have to deal with and sift through when you're using it. Um, so the fact that this is actually usable is refreshing to hear from your perspective. [00:35:00] You said one thing, though, about the search help component, which which got me thinking a little bit on my end. Uh, you've seen a lot of programs where the search help is, for lack of better terms, a dumpster fire. Just garbage. Just unusable. Can I tempt you to say what's the worst search functionality you use to search help you seen out there?

Karen Penhallegon: I mean i don't want to be Matt, apparently. Um, but I will call out my days from Sage 100. Whose help was absolutely [00:35:30] horrible. Um, and very, very unhelpful. Uh, that's probably the worst one that I've personally used. Um, if we're not going back to the days of the bouncing paperclip. Um.

Doug Lewis: Oh, Clippy. Yeah. I don't know what his real name is. I don't.

Karen Penhallegon: Know what his real name is either, but way back in.

Karen Penhallegon: The day, you know that. That's pretty terrible. But, um, in taxes is miles above both of those, so. Um, I do kind of go back to your previous point. I think that this is really proof that Sage is actually [00:36:00] focusing their eye on AI, on things that are not necessarily, you know, flash in the pan type of functionality, but real functionality that people can actually use day to day. Every one of these things that they've rolled out so far, you know, is something that I have been impressed by that I could actually use, you know, and that my clients could actually use, um, versus you may see, you know, like I said, other solutions will show you things like, well, that's great, but, you know, I'm not going to go into my AI assistant every day and ask them [00:36:30] to, you know, I don't know, show me. The top ten customers is a common one you see in demos, right? That's not a common question, but a common question would be, hey, where am I? Where do I have variances from in my financial reports that I need to review every single month?

Doug Lewis: Yeah.

Karen Penhallegon: Great example of one of the ways that AI is actually going to solve problems and not create them.

Karen Penhallegon: And not something to iRobot here. Yeah.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. They're not even a sponsor. Um, I, [00:37:00] I robot the movie I guess, isn't a sponsor, I don't know. Um, you know, that's that's interesting. You brought up. So should Sage Intacct adopt a mascot to rival what Clippy was, I think, is the question.

Emily Madere: Do Sage has tall people with tiny heads?

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah.

Doug Lewis: That's the official mascot name that tall people.

Karen Penhallegon: That's what I call them.

Karen Penhallegon: The tall people with tiny heads. Now, back in the day, for those of you who've been around Sage Intacct for a long time, um, Aaron Harris [00:37:30] used patchouli in his very first I interactions. That was kind of the fad. Was to give your assistant a name. Patchouli is the inventor of double entry accounting.

Doug Lewis: When? When was that? Uh, Karen?

Karen Penhallegon: You're asking me? It's probably been 20. When did that start doing intact? 2020? Maybe 2020 ish? A little before then. So I had to ballpark it. But patchouli was a was a featured a couple of conferences back then.

Emily Madere: He still is I think every time Aaron Harris [00:38:00] talks he's bringing up patchouli. He's going to find a way.

Doug Lewis: I mean, maybe they should just really shell out and buy the rights to Spider-Man and then put little hooks on them or whatever, or your pirate Spider-Man just really just go like, that could be. That could be the copilot.

Emily Madere: That could be

Karen Penhallegon: Spider-Man, CPA.

Doug Lewis: I yeah. I don't know. They should have a contest or whatever. Like, hey, pitch your best mascot for copilot, but.

Emily Madere: Can you imagine Tom.Holland talking.About intact? I mean, I would so buy it if I saw Tom [00:38:30] in a pirate hat.

Doug Lewis: 100% on his hand. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you know, that would that would probably not be cheap, but hey, I we'll leave it up to them, I suppose. Um, Emily, any, uh, any thoughts on copilot from your end?

Emily Madere: No, I think we touched on everything that copilot did this release. I think we're going to continue to see more items pushed out by copilot. So excited to see those. Um, just an overall arching. You know, we're obviously talking about the release notes. Um, Sage Intacct releases [00:39:00] four main releases a year. The next one is May 9th. In the one after that is August 8th, 2025.

Doug Lewis: Beautiful. Beautiful. Now, Karen, I was told that at the at the top of this that you had a surprise for. For everybody. If I'm not mistaken. So usually when we when we end these bad boys, it's always with, uh, most of the time me telling just a horrific dad joke. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you might have a good one prepared today.

Karen Penhallegon: I came prepared with a dad joke [00:39:30] for you. I don't know how good it is. Um, so you can.

Doug Lewis: Be a mom joke.

Doug Lewis: It'll be a mom joke.

Karen Penhallegon: Mom joke. Here we go.

Karen Penhallegon: I love a good dad mom joke. So, um. So here we go. How did the hacker escape the FBI? He. Ransomware.

Doug Lewis: Oh, jeez. Are you kidding me?

Doug Lewis: Oh, I wasn't even close.

Doug Lewis: Okay, that was actually. That was good.

Doug Lewis: That was better than most of the ones I think I've ever put out into the world. So congratulations. [00:40:00] That was actually good. I'm going to steal that one and just say it's mine now.

Doug Lewis: That works for you.

Doug Lewis: That'll be perfect.

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah. I won't reveal my sources on where that one came from.

Doug Lewis: Well, I mean, it's a good source. Whatever it is, keep keep going back to that. Well. Um, I think that should do it. Like Emily alluded to. May 9th. Next release notes. So just saddle up. Look. Look forward to that. It's going to be exciting. Uh, Karen, maybe we can have you back. If you're if you're willing to grace us with your presence once more. Because, again, we need someone who can actually understand these things and knows what they're talking about. [00:40:30] Um, in the interim, thanks for joining it again. Emily or Emily? Uh, of course, you did a better job than Matt ever could on the release notes, so thank you for that, Karen. Of course you did the best job of anybody because you know what you're talking about, and that is fun. Thanks for joining us again, Karen. Uh, really excited. Hopefully we can have you back in the future.

Karen Penhallegon: Absolutely. Thanks, everyone.