FAQs around the Sage Intacct Salesforce Integration

In Sage Intacct, Salesforce by Hannah Munro

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Integrating your CRM and finance platforms are key tools to improve productivity. This specific article is designed to address the many questions we get about the Sage Intacct and Salesforce Integration and how it works. There are a number of different options for integration, but to be very clear, this is only referring to the Sage Intacct managed module, which is an out of the box integration, rather than using any of the middleware options or a custom API integration. Before getting stuck into the FAQ’s watch our short Sage Intacct and Salesforce integration video to help you better understand the integration.

Sage Intacct & Salesforce FAQs:

Are Sage Intacct & Salesforce on the same platform?

The short answer is no, but in my opinion, you don’t want them to be. The reality is that Salesforce is an incredible CRM, but it has not been designed for financial use. The interfaces work brilliantly and seem incredibly intuitive if you work in sales, but the way you interact with customers is completely different from a finance perspective.

So, why would you want to use the same system? There is an old saying “Jack of all trades, Master of none” and what it basically means, is that you have to choose to either be really good at one thing or sort of good at a few things. Salesforce is incredibly good at managing revenue generation, it’s just not that great at managing the entire business. I can say that because as a previous Sage Financials (aka Sage Live) partner, we identified that there were a number of issues caused by the way that the Salesforce platform and tools are built, which in turn, stopped the development team from building the product as planned. Now in most cases, we managed to find workarounds, but that illustrates my point. The best thing about having a separate platform for both CRM and your financial software is that it allows it to be designed to suit the exact needs of each team, instead of built with compromise, and so focusing on making each team the most efficient possible.

What Information integrates?

Ok, so you want to know what information is shared between the two platforms? At a very basic “object” level, the following entities will be integrated:

  • Contacts
  • Customers
  • Products
  • Price Books
  • Projects
  • Tasks
  • Invoices/Sales Orders

The important thing to mention is that all of these objects exist in BOTH systems, which means that data can be seen from both sides. Not only that, but you can even pop various Intacct customer reports, including aged debt and transactional info from within Salesforce. You can also sync your Salesforce chatter feeds across both systems – neat huh!!

Is it bidirectional?

Updating certain objects is mostly bidirectional, but there is for most objects, a single object creation method. i.e. invoices are pushed through from opportunities, but we don’t push every invoice created back as we don’t have an opportunity to link them against. However, depending on settings, you can amend some elements within both systems to ensure an accurate single source of the truth i.e. adding a line to a contract.

Does it work in both lightning and classic?

Yes, the integration is compatible with both, assuming you are on the latest version of the integration (v2)

Sage-Intacct-best-of-breed-CTA-small

Does it support multiple entities?

Yes, you can set up the integration to link to work with a multi-company environment on Sage Intacct.

How do I trigger a Sales Order/Invoice?

Simply navigate to the opportunity and click the Sales Order or Sales Invoice button to generate a transaction.

How often is the sync?

It’s instant, there isn’t a nightly or scheduled sync to wait for. Not only that but there is a smart sync option to minimise resource usage so that it only syncs when the relevant fields are updated.

How easy is it to set up?

Pretty damn easy if you know what you are doing, but like any integration, it’s less about the set up itself and more about reviewing what and how you want to share information across to make sure you have identified all the scenarios.

What if I need to change it?

It’s not a code-based integration that requires a team of developers and 12 months to change, it’s a configurated one, so you can maintain and tweak as you need to and it gives you options to tailor the system as you grow.

Can I report on the information in Salesforce?

Yes, the data is actually stored on both systems and the integration maintains it in both systems, so you can use the reporting tools from both sides.

What happens when there is an Intacct/Salesforce update?

Everything blows up! Ok, I am joking, there are no fires to put out. One of the best things about both Salesforce and Intacct is that both architectures have been designed in layers that mean that updates can be applied without affecting the configuration. More importantly, the integration is covered by Intacct’s buy with confidence guarantee. Intacct actually supports the integration themselves and are a top-level development partner, so you can sleep at night knowing this is covered.

What about historical information

If you already have Sage Intacct or Salesforce, don’t worry! We can do some data update processes to either mass sync or match existing accounts across the two systems. Just give one of our team a call to talk it through!

Conclusion

We hope we have covered all your questions however if you have any more please email us at info@itassolutions.co.uk or give us a call on 01824 780000. You can also read more about Sage Intacct here. We also provide personalised Sage Intacct demos or if you would rather something more on-demand and casual we also have a Sage Intacct product tour.

If you would like to see the Sage Intacct and Salesforce integration in action you can find a demo of it, here.

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