MineralTree Partnership, AI Close Workspace & Enhanced Time Tracking

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

Doug Lewis: Just kind of roll with it and see where. Yeah, we go, let's roll.

Emily Madere: Let's make sure to build like banter at the top.

Doug Lewis: Oh, we have to banter. We must banter. We must coming down from from corporate. The unofficial, the unofficial corporate, uh, that exists for this podcast, uh, says we must banter. We must.

Emily Madere: We must also also, I got some feedback, [00:00:30] um, in from one of my colleagues who listens to this podcast, and she said to make sure to mention that folks who are listening can get CPE for this podcast.

Doug Lewis: They can, which is amazing. The world we live in that people can get CPE for listening to this.

Emily Madere: World in which we live. Um, yeah. So for folks who are listening and they want CPE, you have to go into earmark comm. Um, there is obviously this podcast, but a lot of other interesting accounting and finance podcast, and you listen and then you do a quiz after and [00:01:00] you get some free CPE.

Doug Lewis: Just amazing. Just amazing. And the fan favorite Karen is back. Joining us again because everyone knows it's release notes time. I mean, it's just that time again, we're here where everyone is excited to get through this. Karen. But I gotta ask you, since the last time we had you on what has been going on with you. Well, let's throw the professional world aside. What what monumental developments have we had in the life of Karen?

Karen Penhallegon: Living life? You know, I have. I have a four year old now and a soon to be two year old. So I had [00:01:30] a birthday since the last time we talked. That was fun.

Emily Madere: A dinosaur birthday dinosaur dinosaur.

Karen Penhallegon: Oh, he was one. Two, three. Roar! He's turning four. So, um. And my my two year old is, uh, going to be two wild. Um, we found a lot of two suites and that sort of thing, but that really does not fit her personality.

Doug Lewis: So okay, so now this is a good question. So you're you're in the thick of it right now. Um, I have I have a little guy that's approaching two And of course, everyone always touts [00:02:00] the terrible twos. You've lived through it once and you're a terrible, terrible, terrible.

Karen Penhallegon: Three.

Doug Lewis: Okay. All right. So we've evolved.

Karen Penhallegon: Three was so much worse than two on the first one.

Doug Lewis: Got it. Okay.

Karen Penhallegon: I'm just doomed on the second child. She's already, um. She's already crazy. So that. Just give it up on the second one. But for my first child, three was way worse than two.

Doug Lewis: And we have a boy and a girl. Correct?

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah.

Doug Lewis: Okay, so maybe you can either validate this or completely destroy [00:02:30] it, because everyone tells me that boys are significantly tougher when they're younger, and they get easier as they get older. Now, girls are almost the exact opposite from what I've been told. Again, all hearsay, pure speculation. What are your thoughts so far?

Karen Penhallegon: So far, I think they're too young to have reached that point yet. Um, because I think the teenage years is when it might get the worst for girls. Uh, having having been there myself, I won't say how long ago? A long time ago, and I don't think I'm to that point yet. We're still in diapers with [00:03:00] the little ones, so she's far more trouble okay than the older ones.

Doug Lewis: I really want to see if that is true, because that's what every single person tells me is, oh, you know. Yeah, the boys are just they're just they're impossible when they're younger, but they get so much easier.

Karen Penhallegon: And I will find out in another 10 to 15 years.

Doug Lewis: Well, you know, when.

Emily Madere: Your kids will come back to this podcast and be like, mom, like you. This is what you should have said.

Doug Lewis: That's right. You should just say something like Kabbage.

Karen Penhallegon: But you know.

Doug Lewis: They're going to they're going to come in a couple of [00:03:30] years and start start doing the release notes updates. But, you know, that's uh, that's beside the point, uh, I guess, what are you gonna do about it?

Emily Madere: Speaking of release notes, uh, I think the official date for it is, uh. Uh, what is it? Eighth. Karen.

Karen Penhallegon: That's Friday.

Emily Madere: Yeah, yeah.

Doug Lewis: Wow. Again, get just get excited because that that's what everyone comes here for. They want to know about the release notes. That being said, Karen, we got, you know, a couple couple sections to roll through. We're going to lean on you because you're the only expert on this on this discussion [00:04:00] here today. Uh, per usual, uh, it's always the guest is the expert because, you know, the three of us have no clue what we're doing whatsoever.

Emily Madere: We're just the commentary.

Doug Lewis: That's it, that's it. We're color commentary. You're you're the play by play. You're the meat and potatoes. We're just.

Karen Penhallegon: You keep it entertaining, you know?

Emily Madere: Yeah.

Doug Lewis: Well, you know, entertaining. Entertaining is very opinionated. But what are you going to do?

Emily Madere: There were a couple different things happening in this release. Uh, there was a lot of customer ideas. There was a warning. Not a warning, but a must [00:04:30] do to all customers. And there were really three main buckets of the releases. So, um. Let's see. Yeah, I, I made really good notes. Save time was one of the buckets. Accelerate decision making was another. And then optimize your business, which I thought was a little bit different than what they normally do. But, um, I kind of like how they named these three buckets and had the ideas underneath them. Uh, I thought it was better than, you know, like industry insights, which is what they normally do. And I thought that was more clear cut.

Doug Lewis: So [00:05:00] I guess why did we change? Anyone know? Any clue? Just I.

Emily Madere: Don't.

Doug Lewis: Know.

Karen Penhallegon: I don't know why, but I agree with Emily. I like these better personally. Um, yeah. They're more.

Doug Lewis: I heard they were your idea.

Karen Penhallegon: Oh, yes. Sure.

Doug Lewis: I heard they they ran it all by you first. Yeah.

Karen Penhallegon: Before they always asked me before they change anything.

Emily Madere: Absolutely.

Doug Lewis: So, you know, there's there's a lot of different pieces to go through. We obviously can't touch on everything. Or this would be a five hour, uh, five hour episode here today, which would be great. Cpe I'm sure people would love to knock that [00:05:30] out, but, Karen, anything that just really stands out before we kind of go section by section and hit the highlights, is there anything you're like, wow, that was a little a little surprising or this is pretty cool or haven't really seen much of this before.

Karen Penhallegon: Uh, I know we're we're going to dig into some of these a little bit. One of the ones I was most excited about is the partnership with Mineral Tree. I think this is filling a big hole in functionality. The intact has been missing. So that's a great one. And then, um, the new closed workspace through [00:06:00] the AI powered close I think is going to be very exciting. So we can we can dig into those a little bit more as we go through the different categories, I think.

Emily Madere: But yeah.

Karen Penhallegon: That's the two that I liked the best.

Emily Madere: Well how about this. So there were I think four customer ideas out of the four customer ideas. Like which one was like, yes, I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented a long time ago.

Doug Lewis: Well, before you before you even say I'm surprised about this, Emily, why don't you just give that overview? What are those?

Emily Madere: Yeah, yeah. So customer ideas are, um, [00:06:30] if you have access to the Sage community. So if you're a user of Sage Intacct, you have access in the community. And that's where users can go in and they can put ideas on the software. Okay. The software doesn't work in this way. Sage can you please add this functionality? And a lot of times Sage will if it gets enough votes and enough comments, they'll get their developers to develop that specific functionality.

Doug Lewis: And in this specific release notes. What were some of the core customer ideas that really came out?

Emily Madere: Yeah. Um, AP approver delegation, enhanced [00:07:00] intelligent time tracking, match tolerance insights, and project revenue recognition enhancements.

Doug Lewis: Love it. And of those Karen, you're about to say which one. You're like, oh finally it's here. What is what is the crown jewel in your mind?

Karen Penhallegon: The time tracking changes actually probably are the one that I have had the most heartburn over the things that they are finally adding. Um, so just to go ahead, I guess, dig into that one a little bit earlier. So Intacct has a couple of different methods of gathering time tracking. [00:07:30] So if you're in a business that, um, maybe you're in a project based business or consulting firm, accounting firm like we are or a construction firm, um, you need your employees to enter time to projects. The time tracking actually inside of Intacct is very inflexible. They came out with a few years ago. They called Sage Intelligent Time, which is actually an AI engine that can help you complete your time sheets. It's a separate entry screen as well that is different [00:08:00] than the standard time sheets and intact, but it was still basically just like entering your time and intact. It was just a, you know, different, different view of it. What they've changed now, though, is it's going to be more like the regular entry screens you see in intact. So when you go into an AP bill and intact, you can change the entries table to be different formats. You can move things around, you can put the fields that you need the most into that grid. They're adding that to time entry. So I think that's huge. That's actually a complaint that I've heard from many, many [00:08:30] intact users.

Doug Lewis: Is that so is that kind of right out the box. You can you can do that and customize it yourself. Or do you need an implementer to kind of help.

Karen Penhallegon: You customize it yourself, just like any of the screens, if you don't know how to do that, go into Intex help. Literally just search customize entry grids or entry screens, and it's going to pop up and show you how to do that. It's very, very easy. Just drag and drop. Um, so it's very simple. The other piece they added, there is two other things that are a little more payroll and costing related. [00:09:00] Um, one of them is the ability to calculate overtime. So another huge painpoint in tax time sheets that I could do costing they you had to manually indicate when it was overtime for costing purposes. Now you can actually set up overtime rules so you can say hey, when somebody works over 40 hours a week or maybe over eight hours in a day, I need you to automatically switch them to overtime. And so that is going to be huge. And then there's one more.

Doug Lewis: That didn't exist anywhere.

Karen Penhallegon: Did not exist. It's just.

Doug Lewis: Amazing.

Karen Penhallegon: At [00:09:30] all. Um, and so the huge pain point, if you needed that, you're going to have to do your time. And another solution. So we had people that were doing time in their payroll solutions and trying to integrate that into intact. Um, but this is going to be incredibly huge for a lot of my clients. Um, the last one kind of bordering almost a little more to into sort of HR and payroll territory. This is an early adopter. Um, but they're going to actually put leave tracking or PTO tracking as [00:10:00] well into the timesheets. Um, so early adopter TBD a little bit on that one. I don't know if it's going to look like yet, but there's going to be an approval process where you can request leave, and then it's going to track balances and accruals and all of that.

Emily Madere: And Karen, I guess like obviously some of this functionality Sage Intacct needed, but the kind of going into the HR space, like what do you think Sage's play is there?

Karen Penhallegon: So I feel like that's more and more where they have been moving to into sort of payroll and HR. So we've seen it in the construction world. We've [00:10:30] seen it with um, Sage Intacct payroll powered by ADP. Payroll and HR are very closely related to finance, often in an organization. So I feel like there's a lot of bleed over between those two departments. And I just think that they're seeing more and more that rather than trying to use the payroll systems timesheets, people want to enter it into accounting directly, because accounting probably owns payroll in a lot of these these companies. Um, I don't know. You know, at the end of the day what their thoughts really are behind [00:11:00] that. But I'm definitely seeing more movement that way into the payroll and HR world.

Doug Lewis: So so who are they trying to take down that's the big no no we don't have to dunk.

Emily Madere: Who are they going for.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. Well I mean you know no one just does this for fun. So, uh, you never know. But, uh, I guess the market will tell us in, uh, in a couple of months, maybe a year from now. Who they're going after. Any other customer ideas that really kind of stuck out to either one of you where it's like, oh, how did how did it take this long to get here? Who else is having this problem? This is something that I've [00:11:30] seen over and over again. Any other ones that are really kind of top of mind for either of you two?

Karen Penhallegon: That was the big one for me. Emily. I don't know if you had one of the other ones that jumped out at you.

Emily Madere: Um, the AP approver delegation, I think, uh, AP approvals in general and intact. Uh, I think have been a little bit lacking, and I think intact is finally recognizing that and pushing out some new functionality that so you don't have to go out to an outside party to, to get that functionality. [00:12:00] I think this is just the start of what they'll do in the pre approval, um, space.

Karen Penhallegon: Yes, I agree with that.

Doug Lewis: Start I want to jump into each kind of section, each category here in a moment. But I believe. How did you word this Emily. There was a stern warning or something along those lines that came out in this whole thing. What is that? How ominous is that? What do people need to do? What do they need to pay attention to?

Emily Madere: They need to validate their email domain.

Doug Lewis: It's as simple as that.

Emily Madere: It's as simple as that.

Doug Lewis: That's it.

Emily Madere: Um, so if someone [00:12:30] doesn't have their email domain validated, how would they go about doing that?

Karen Penhallegon: So what you should.

Karen Penhallegon: See when you log into Intacct, if you haven't done this, is there going to be a pop up that will come up that says validate your email domain? Um, so it's as simple as clicking through, following the instructions And it will walk you through what you need to do. So it shouldn't be difficult if you're not seeing that pop up and you are concerned or have questions. You can search help as well for instructions, or you can reach out to your account manager or your partner and we can help with that.

Doug Lewis: So make it happen, captain. [00:13:00] A stern warning. Have you heard it? You heard it here first.

Karen Penhallegon: Very important.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. This is it. This is the. This is the lifeline here to make sure you don't lose your functionality. Uh. One move. Section by section. Now, Karen, you mentioned a couple of these that you're really excited about, two of which fall in the save time category, the first of which is the closed workspace and the mineral tree component as well. So do you want to maybe just just Spitfire some of the save time features that you think people need to know about why they're important, how [00:13:30] they could impact who they could impact just from a really high level?

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe I will start with closed workspace, which is which is a great one. I think now it is early adopter. So a little warning there. Not everybody's going to have this quite yet but they actually talked about this at Sage future a few months ago. So now we're finally seeing it in action. It's going to be Sage's copilot, uh, AI tool actually helping you do your clothes. And so it's sort of a dashboard type view that's going to give you insight [00:14:00] into what you need to do to complete your clothes, do different reconciliations, helping you identify things that are outliers. It's going to be a a ton of great functionality in that closed workspace. And so very excited to see that one. Um, another big one that's actually going to be an impact on a lot of users is the new enhanced list. So if you haven't seen these yet, um, they're even available today. But you have to opt into them. So when you go to a list screen and intact and a list screen meaning [00:14:30] the vendors list or a customers list or your bills list anywhere where data is listed, there's a button right now at the top right that says turn on enhanced lists. That is now going to be the default. So when you first log in on Monday after the release, you're going to see the default be the enhanced list views. And you can still opt back out again. But this is in text method of slowly phasing out those old views. Um, the views are not going to be quite in every screen yet, but they should be in most [00:15:00] screens. Um, and they are actually fantastic. So it's a big change. But they have so many improved features and we've talked about them in a previous podcast, so I won't go over that again. But they are way, way better than the old list views.

Doug Lewis: It's about time. That's what I heard.

Karen Penhallegon: Yes.

Karen Penhallegon: These are yes, so much better.

Doug Lewis: And again, just to just to reinforce this 100% your ideas.

Emily Madere: And you know, what they're doing right now with the list views is a part to, uh, their, you [00:15:30] know, commitment to communication excellence. So pushing out, pushing out this release, having it kind of over, over time become, uh, you know, you can use it, you can opt to not use it. And now, like it's going to be the default and you have to opt out not to use it. Uh, that's kind of where I see them using their communication excellence. Uh, well, I don't know where I was going with that one.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. Boy, the irony in that one there, which I love. Yeah, I know they were doing.

Emily Madere: Yeah. Doing well. Good.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. [00:16:00] Good stuff. The world um, kind of rounding out the the save time component because again, there's so many different features and functionalities we dive into really deep here. But Emily, anything that Karen didn't hit on in the save time portion of this whole thing that you think is worth mentioning.

Emily Madere: Yeah, she hit on it during the beginning and that was with, uh, Mineral Tree. So that was a couple months, not a month ago, they released that they would be partnering with Metal Tree, which I think is huge. I think Intacct has been, uh, lacking in the, the payment space. I think [00:16:30] they tried to have a partner a couple of years ago. That didn't work out too well. Um, but Mineral Tree is well known in the market, and I think this is a win for for Sage and mineral tree.

Doug Lewis: Now, for people who have absolutely no clue who mineral mineral tree is what they do, can you give people just the background of who they are, what they accomplish, and why? The partnership is really going to help people inside? Sage Intacct.

Emily Madere: Yeah, so they're a vendor payments provider. And I actually think I spoke with them a couple years ago, but at the time they [00:17:00] were the only AP company that was HIPAA compliant. So they probably still are HIPAA compliant. So, um, they can help manage your payments. So you would pay a bill in Sage and uh, for instance, like if you wanted to cut a check, you could send it to military. They would cut the check for you. And I don't know what their fees are. I'm assuming it's very small. Karen, do you know what their fees are?

Karen Penhallegon: I want to say it's maybe $2 for a check, maybe $0.50 for an ACH. It's. It's a per transaction fee. Um, and [00:17:30] it is. It was sort of soft launched at future Sage future, but now it's really generally available. So everyone can go opt into this and it really gives I think what it gives intact is an. End to end AP solution. They were really missing. So we had automation at the beginning of the process of getting bills in and getting them automatically drafted. But we were missing that piece at the end to actually automatically go out and pay vendors. And so that's what this really completes the lifecycle of AP.

Doug Lewis: So I heard manageable fees. That was the answer was manageable [00:18:00] fees I believe.

Karen Penhallegon: I think they're competitive in the industry.

Doug Lewis: Competitive fees. Even better. Oh my god yeah yeah you made it even better which I love. Um want to want to kind of jump into let's let's accelerate the conversation if we could into accelerate decision making. That was a good one. Um, yeah. Proud of that one. Uh, Karen, anything that's jumping out to you from this portion of the release notes.

Karen Penhallegon: Um, only really one in here that I would I would pull out, um, I mean, there's some updates [00:18:30] that are kind of bland, like tax updates and things, but, um, for me.

Doug Lewis: Give us the exciting stuff.

Karen Penhallegon: It's important, but who cares?

Karen Penhallegon: Um, more on the purchasing side. So they've they've been making a lot of improvements in purchasing as well throughout the last couple of years. But one of the areas they're improving is just the way that you can see, um, your matching tolerances and the exceptions. And so in fact has the ability to sort of identify, uh, does it, does it match within a certain [00:19:00] percentage. Right. So for people who are doing sort of bulk POS and bulk matching, um, but it was maybe not the easiest to see that information. Now there's a button right on the screen that says view exceptions that will pop up a little window that gives you exactly what the exception was in detail. So it's just an easier way to get that information. So I think that really plays into that accelerate decision making. That's really what it's all about, right. It's a faster way to get to the information that you know is there.

Doug Lewis: And so now what type of entities are really [00:19:30] going to benefit from that the most. You know, you said kind of bulk POA. You know what. You know who. Yeah. From a from a clientele perspective is really going to benefit from this.

Karen Penhallegon: Generally when you're doing sort of match tolerances, you're ordering things that are, um, not easy to count, if you will. So you're not ordering like 100 widgets, you're ordering 50 gallons of something or 100 pounds of something. So I have food manufacturers, for example, that they order chickens, but not every chicken is the same size, so you have tolerances [00:20:00] within that. They might order 500 pounds of chicken whole chickens, but they get 498 because that's, you know, that's how many chickens added up to, um, 498 pounds. So people who are doing kind of inexact, or if you have just a large volume and say you got 199 of 100 widgets and you're not going to try to go back and get that last widget from your, um, from your vendor. So that's either those are doing very large, uh, POS or those who are doing inexact [00:20:30] ordering would probably be in their chemical companies, that sort of thing.

Emily Madere: So intact really hasn't been very strong in the manufacturing distribution space. Do you think this is kind of like their soft launch into that?

Karen Penhallegon: I don't know if I'd call it a soft launch into it. Um, dipping a toe a little bit, maybe into that water. Uh, we'll see. We'll see where it goes.

Emily Madere: Okay.

Doug Lewis: Dipping a toe instead of soft launch, I like that. Uh, I also liked how you completely neglected the metric system on your examples. Oh, more power [00:21:00] to you. Gallons. Which I absolutely love.

Karen Penhallegon: Liters. Um, yeah. Centimeters. Sorry about that.

Doug Lewis: No, I love it. I think that's hilarious. It actually is a good question. I mean, I assume you can you can set this up any way you need to, right? Based on your on your business use case.

Karen Penhallegon: So yes, you can have whatever units of measure you need.

Doug Lewis: So if you're.

Karen Penhallegon: Operating in metric system or in our crazy US system, um, either way.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. So you mean if you're operating in the world or the US? Got it. Okay.

Karen Penhallegon: Anywhere else or here?

Doug Lewis: Yeah. We're still fighting the good [00:21:30] fight here. You know, for some reason that no one can explain. Uh, but that's, I guess, a whole. We'll do that on the next release notes. We'll talk about the metric system and how we don't use it here in the US. We'll spend the entire time on there not talking anything about the release notes. Emily. Anything else sticking out to you in the accelerate decision making, or did Karen pretty much nail it?

Emily Madere: Yeah, Karen pretty much got it. I think it was a smaller section.

Doug Lewis: Yeah. It was, it was the least, least meaty, if I'm not mistaken, across the board. Moving on to to optimize your business, [00:22:00] which I love. It sounds very synergistic. Optimize your business. What Karen, give us give us the highlights from your point of view on this one.

Karen Penhallegon: We already talked about one and that's intelligent time. So those enhancements we talked about earlier is a great one. Um, there are a couple others that jumped out at me and they're both in the project and or construction world. So that's another area. And tech has been putting a ton of development into recently. Yeah.

Emily Madere: This is not a construction and intact is not a soft launch. Dipping your toe. It's a full on.

Karen Penhallegon: Oh no. [00:22:30]

Emily Madere: In the.

Doug Lewis: Belly. They belly flopped into that thing. Okay.

Karen Penhallegon: 100%. Got it. Um, so maybe I'll start with the one that's a little more. A little more technical, maybe a little less fun. And that's, um, revenue recognition. So they so just had project revenue recognition for for a long time, it's been one of their key features. Um, for anybody who's doing project based business, um, revenue recognition can be really tough. They're really changing more the way they're doing one of the back end calculations on [00:23:00] this one. And so it's kind of a surprising change. One of those things, I'm surprised it didn't already work this way. But when you would use revenue recognition based on your budget, it when it calculated it would calculate based on the date you basically ran it. So if I ran it today, it would use 85. That's not really what most companies need to do. If I was running it today, I'd probably want to run it as of the end of the month, right? So rather than whatever arbitrary date I ran the program, um, [00:23:30] that's what they've changed. So now you can sort of, as of date the revenue recognition calculation. So you're not crossing periods and doing things in a weird way. So like I said, more technical, but I think a really important enhancement to the functionality.

Doug Lewis: Like any specific industries that, you know, that's either going to help or make things a little more difficult or is it pretty much broad strokes? It's going to help everybody.

Karen Penhallegon: It's probably more especially longer term project industries, because that's where revenue recognition usually [00:24:00] comes in, is because the whole goal of revenue recognition, for those of you who may not be familiar, is to match your revenue with your cost. And, um, you know, for example, if maybe you're paid upfront for a service, but then you're actually performing that service across a long time period. So that's the idea of the revenue recognition is and in this case it's a common method because the you're trying to match the revenue literally to the cost of the budgeted cost of the project. So like [00:24:30] I said, anybody who's doing longer term projects I think is going to be an impact for them.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, that makes sense. Emily, anything sticking out to you and optimize your business?

Emily Madere: Uh, no, just optimize your business. But one thing, it's not in the release, but they just released it, and we still don't know how it's going to affect anything yet. But Sage just acquired file, which is an expense management solution. So, um, I think is huge because when folks come to me and they're like, okay, uh, check [00:25:00] gl check AP, check AR uh, what about expenses? Can my employees submit receipts in Sage or whatever it may be? And it you know, Sage can do it. Uh, that answer has typically been no. Uh, but now I'm assuming we're going to be able to sell it on Sage paper file and sages papers. Uh, so that answer is changing to yes. I don't have much information besides that.

Doug Lewis: So that's actually a really interesting point. You know, from an acquisition standpoint, when Sage brings something in house, let's call it through [00:25:30] an acquisition. Let's just use that terminology for now. You know, in your in the two of your opinions because you work very heavily with other vendors, third party supplier, all this fun stuff as well as clients directly. Now does that ruffle feathers from anyone inside? You know, the Sage intact ecosystem? Like from a partnership perspective, I'm curious to see if you've, you know, heard good, bad, ugly things after an acquisition that, oh, well, you know, now now I'm going to have less market share.

Karen Penhallegon: I don't know if I've heard that. [00:26:00] I mean, I think it's probably unsaid out there. Um, I also would be a little bit curious. So file is a very interesting case. Um, because Sage in the last few releases has actually been releasing things for their own internal expense reporting. So they released an internal mobile functionality. They made updates to the expense functionality in the product. So I was somewhat surprised when I heard that they were acquiring file because where are they? Are they planning on putting [00:26:30] that actually into the product, or is it continued to be sort of a third party add on that's just sold on their paper, I guess, is the question. Um, I don't know. I think it's I think it's something they probably are running into, but they're, they're maybe not expressing that to us.

Doug Lewis: Well, sure, it's probably not going to be overly public. I'm curious if you've heard rumblings behind the scenes from other, you know, third party providers that that plugged in that, uh, might not be as, uh, necessary to the ecosystem anymore after a certain acquisition. But I guess I guess no one's too vocal [00:27:00] about that, are they? Everyone.

Karen Penhallegon: Yeah, they're probably they're probably. They still want to get what they can. Right? Yeah. They're not going to say too much out loud.

Doug Lewis: No, no, that that makes sense. Um, you know, Emily, I know you kind of. You kind of said all you have to do is optimize your business, which is simple. It's great advice. Um, nothing else kind of sticking out to you within that specific section of the release notes, correct?

Emily Madere: Yeah. No, that is correct.

Doug Lewis: Oh, nice and easy. Karen, I want to throw it over to you now. So let's just let's just wildly predict the future here. So we want to cut some of the customer ideas, [00:27:30] right. Which, uh, you know, you talk to many customers, you know, Sage Intacct inside and out better than anybody else out there in the marketplace. What customer idea do you have that's going to show up on the next release notes. We gotta make them listen now. We gotta make them listen. All right. What do you want.

Karen Penhallegon: To show up or.

Doug Lewis: What do you want to see? Show up on the next release. Notes from a customer. It's gonna be they're going to change the entire segment to our clients.

Emily Madere: Our clients. They typically put, uh, notes [00:28:00] out there. Do you remember one recently, Karen?

Karen Penhallegon: Oh my goodness. Um, you're putting me on the spot because I wasn't I wasn't prepared for that. I mean, I know that they're some of the some of the highest ones out there that I think may come eventually. And I see some, some rumblings of potentially, um, don't hold me to this, but probably the number one of the number one ideas out there. I just keep waiting on it. Every release is the ability to merge Records. Um, so for example, this is where I might see sort of GL accounts going [00:28:30] a little bit. And the reason being, um, they just released functionality a couple releases ago to change GL account numbers, which was never able to be done in the past. I wonder if that's leading into now we'll be able to merge GL accounts common functionality in some older softwares. The number one idea probably is merging customers and vendors. So if you accidentally have duplicate records that are created, merge those records together to become a single record. I think people would love to see that. Will it happen? [00:29:00] I don't know. Um, that's the number one request I probably get. Uh, I'd have to go back and look. We do have ideas come through from clients all the time.

Doug Lewis: So that's client ideas that you see come through now. Is does that align with what you personally would like to see in the next release notes. I mean, if you could wave the magic wand.

Karen Penhallegon: If I could have anything I wanted.

Doug Lewis: Absolutely. What is that one piece?

Karen Penhallegon: Um, Gosh, there's so much I would change. No. I'm kidding. Um, for me, I think the number one thing that I wish I could [00:29:30] do better was actually like improvements to the interactive custom report writer. So it's something I haven't seen much of in the last couple of releases, but we use it heavily with clients. Um, especially for construction clients or those project based businesses. It's great for those or inventory businesses. And I feel like there's some definite lacks in the way that that functions today. And so that's a place that I would like to see Sage focus on. Um, something we always joke about too, internally. Don't don't kill me. Sage for saying this. But they they [00:30:00] focus a lot on innovation, which is fantastic. But also let's fix some of the things that are broken in the current software. Right? So maybe let's come back and make some fixes to things that are known, um, issues, instead of just focusing on the newest AI thing that they're coming out with.

Doug Lewis: And don't worry about it. We're the unofficial Sage Intacct podcast here. The answer is everything's opinion based. We are not affiliated whatsoever.

Karen Penhallegon: If we need.

Doug Lewis: To, like, cut.

Karen Penhallegon: That part out. Blur my face out so they can't see who I am.

Doug Lewis: No, that would [00:30:30] actually be really fun if we just put you in, like, the black silhouette. The little, like, dark. Yeah, unlike the shadow documentaries or whatever. And then we just, like, deepen your voice, but then keep you normal the rest of the episode. It's like, so anonymous disappears.

Emily Madere: We know what happened to her. Sage took her.

Karen Penhallegon: Sage got me.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, that's what they're known for. You know, just anyone who disagrees, they're gone. They're done. Yeah. No. That's good. Emily, does that specific use case come up with a lot of your clients? Do you see that same challenge or issue on your end? [00:31:00]

Emily Madere: Yeah. Well, luckily, Karen's clients are my clients, and my clients are Karen's clients, so, um.

Doug Lewis: Well, you know, you never know who. You know, people express different opinions. Different people, I don't know. You're right.

Emily Madere: You know.

Doug Lewis: It's like, hey, maybe. Maybe they trust. They trust Karen more than you, which I wouldn't doubt.

Emily Madere: Yeah, no, they definitely trust Karen more than me. Um, I'm trying to think. Yeah, I would say yeah. From Karen's perspective, um, and her thoughts. Yeah. I don't I don't want to get abducted by Sage.

Doug Lewis: I'll [00:31:30] take that risk. Let me just throw some of my wild. No, I don't think I don't think the.

Emily Madere: World's, I think.

Doug Lewis: Insane ideas.

Emily Madere: I think Sage is doing a lot in the AI space, which I think is important, right? To stay relevant with these other solutions. But again, going back and and and fixing other things I also think is important. Um, but at the end of the day, Sage wants to sell software and like I get it. And so the AI is flashy.

Doug Lewis: It makes sense. I love it, you know, money, uh, money matters. Um, well, that's kind of again, the the highest [00:32:00] flyby we could possibly do with these release notes. Again, this could be hours long, but I don't think everyone needs to hear all of that. I will, uh, challenge Sage. Maybe the next release notes. This is Karen's. Karen's ideas. Now it's Karen's corner. We're going to change the customer ideas to Karen's corner. Uh, we'll just see. We'll see. I mean, you never know. We'll meet halfway. Uh, but regardless, uh, Karen, thank you for sharing some legitimate insight on these release notes. Uh, as always, uh, we hope to have you back again, because I can't say it enough times. None [00:32:30] of us know what we're doing here. None of us know what we're talking about. And have a true professional like you makes all the difference in the world. Uh, I'd love to end these things on a terrible dad joke. I will throw the offer out to either one of you ladies. Uh, a terrible mom joke. Maybe if if you have one on standby. Any takers?

Karen Penhallegon: Um.

Emily Madere: Okay. I'm surprised you don't have one.

Karen Penhallegon: I'm trying to think because I had heard one the other day. Um. Hmm. [00:33:00]

Doug Lewis: Sounds like you're throwing in the towel.

Karen Penhallegon: I don't have. I don't have a good one.

Doug Lewis: Emily, are you passing? Are you passing again? All right, all right. Uh. Oh, okay. Here's. All right. Why did the accountant break up with the calculator?

Karen Penhallegon: Why?

Doug Lewis: Any guesses?

Emily Madere: Ah, I'm always so bad at these. Uh, why did the count break up with the calculator? Because. Okay. Probably has something to do with Excel because his [00:33:30] x like x Dash sell came in, like, I don't know.

Doug Lewis: Well, that's certainly a guess. Karen. Anything on your end?

Karen Penhallegon: No, I'm afraid to guess now after that guess.

Doug Lewis: Because they just couldn't count on each other anymore.

Karen Penhallegon: Oh.

Doug Lewis: Right. It was great. Oh, that's what I get. Chest pain.

Emily Madere: I'm done with the podcast wishes for.

Doug Lewis: That's it. That's that's it. I gave you both the opportunity to throw one out there and [00:34:00] you chose not to. So that's what.

Doug Lewis: You stuck with.

Doug Lewis: But thank you for joining us again, Karen. Thanks everyone for listening. And we will be back, better or worse.