Sage (FTSE: SGE), the market leader in cloud business management solutions, today announced that Laird Management has utilized Sage Intacct to dramatically improve accounting efficiency and consolidate multiple entities under a single charts of accounts. The company has reduced monthly reporting from 10 hours to two and has cut its monthly close in half. New efficiencies and insights have helped the company expand its locations and launch a new line of business.
A family-owned company with about 650 employees, Laird Management is one of the largest Burger King franchisees in Arizona, with 32 restaurants today. The Phoenix-based company has also recently become a franchisee of Anytime Fitness, a global chain with more than 4,000 gym locations.
Laird Management had previously struggled with manual accounting work and limited visibility as it expanded from a handful of restaurants to 28 eateries by 2015, with each entity managed as a separate QuickBooks instance. An in-family sale of the business in 2015 and restructuring under an umbrella management company introduced new complexities that exceeded the capabilities of its previous entry-level accounting system. In 2015, the company switched to Sage Intacct, a solution available in Sage Business Cloud, after evaluating Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains).
“It was very cumbersome to do accounting in the old days,” said Pam Bakker, Laird Management’s controller and HR director. “We needed a single chart of accounts, and I wanted to be able to do our reporting in minutes. Sage Intacct has helped streamline our business by allowing us to create twice as many reports in less than half the time we needed in the past – providing faster access to key business insights.”
After implementing Sage Intacct, Laird Management has realized significant benefits including:
Faster, more insightful reporting: Laird Management is producing five monthly reports in as little as two hours, a 5x efficiency gain compared to 10 hours to produce just a balance sheet and P&L report in the past. Based on real-time data, those reports are richer, more insightful, and support data-driven business decisions.
New accounting efficiency: Time needed for the monthly close has been reduced from 20 days to nine or 10, and Laird Management can seamlessly manage and consolidate across all 32 locations under a single chart of accounts. The company has trimmed its accounting team from four full-time staffers to 3.5, while staffers have a much better work-life balance. The new efficiencies are attributed to helping Laird scale as it grew from 28 restaurants in 2015 to 32 today.
Speed and scalability for growth. Laird Management added four new eateries while on Sage Intacct, with new entities set up in minutes, rather than hours of manual work. New visibility and controls with Sage Intacct also support Laird Management’s expansion into its new personal fitness line of business.
“We couldn’t easily do a year-over-year comparison with QuickBooks. Now that’s a press of a button in Sage Intacct,” Bakker said. “It’s been a huge time savings for me personally — I work a lot of hours, but not nearly as many as I did before Sage Intacct. Time savings through Sage Intacct have definitely helped as far as family time and gaining a better work/life balance.”
For more information on how Laird Management uses Sage Intacct, view the full case study.
About Sage
Sage (FTSE: SGE) is the global market leader for technology that helps businesses of all sizes manage everything from money to people – whether they’re a start-up, scale-up, or enterprise. We do this through Sage Business Cloud – the one and only platform that customers will ever need, comprising Accounting, Financials, Sage Intacct, Enterprise Management, People & Payroll, and Payments & Banking.
Our mission is to free business builders from the burden of admin, so they can spend more time doing what they love – and we do that every day for three million customers across 23 countries, through our 13,000 colleagues and a network of accountants and partners. We are committed to doing business the right way and giving back to our communities through Sage Foundation. Find out more at www.sage.com/en-us.