Intacct Partners With Clarizen, Adds Project Accounting AppIntacct Partners With Clarizen, Adds Project Accounting App

Intacct, which provides cloud-based financial management and accounting applications, has announced a project accounting applications as part of Intacct Summer 2010, the newest release of its Intacct Financial Management and Accounting System. Separately, Intacct announced work on a new joint offering in collaboration with SaaS-based collaborative online project management software providerClarizen.

Intacct Project Accounting, a new application included in Intacct Summer 2010, is intended for use by professional services organizations and other project-based companies in the SMB market to track and manage projects. "We are focused on professional service organizations with projects based on time and materials, or fixed-bid, especially projects where there are employees or contractors in the field," says Laurie Wood, senior product marketing manager, Intacct. For example, says Wood, Intacct Project Accounting users could include IT and management consultants, some architectural and law firms, media firms, and professional services teams within larger firms.

"Many of these service firms are still using manual processes to collect information from the field, which often creates 'leakage and loss,' and many analysts say that up to 10% of potential revenue is lost due to data errors rekeying from spreadsheets," says Wood. "Tracking team financial performance is hard today, and Finance doesn't have real-time visibility into how the services are progressing to know when they can bill and get the cash influx from payment. Intacct Project Accounting is good for in-the-field staff who need to submit their costs, so the business can quickly invoice and collect, and also have visibility in terms of how a project is progressing, whether the budget is being met or exceeded, and the like."

According to the company, Intacct Project Accounting lets these service-oriented companies and departments:

-- Capture, track time and expenses online, updating project status in real-time, and view project costs, margins, utilization and productivity, by office, project, client, or employee.

-- Automate billing and invoicing.

-- Organize and manage projects and budgets, including analyses such as calculating the projected progress compared to the forecast.

Intacct Project Accounting is part of Intacct Summer 2010, which is available now.

Other changes and additions to Intacct Summer 2010, according to the company, include a redesigned, simplified user interface architected by the designer of Mint.com.

Additionally, Intacct announced a partnership with Clarizen, integrating Clarizen's cloud computing-based work management application with the Intacct cloud-based financial management system and Intacct's new project accounting application.

Clarizen's cloud-based work management solution lets organizations manage projects, resources and tasks; includes time and expense reporting, and support ticket management. The companies will integrate Intacct's Management and project accounting applications with Clarizen's work management application, and collaborate to market the new joint solution.

The new combined offering, which does not yet have an announced name, is intended to make it easier for service-based and project-based businesses to optimize the service delivery lifecycle, letting service employees initiate, track and manage delivery of their projects in Clarizen, while the finance side makes use of Intacct to manage the financial implications of service delivery, according to the two companies

"Clarizen is for service organizations with much more sophisticated needs for service delivery," says Intacct's Wood. "Intacct is helping Finance manage things, Clarizen is to help the teams with their project, like document management, that have some financial implication to track. For example, if you have 200 people working on 50 projects, Clarizen helps manage 'do I have the right people and are they applied to the right project?'"

The target date for the integration availability is by the end of this quarter.

FURTHER READING:

-- Daniel Druker Of Intacct On Application Suites Vs. Best-of-Breed

-- Intacct To Put Accounting Software In The Cloud

-- Intacct Opens Channel To Small And Midsize Business

-- Mike Braun Of Intacct On When Your Business Outgrows QuickBooks