On September 11, 2018, FloQast announced multi-book accounting capabilities designed to help organizations to support ASC 606 compliant financial closes by supporting dual reporting on revenue recognition and related expenses. As Amalgam Insights has covered in prior research, ASC 606/IFRS 15 standards for recognizing revenue on subscription services are currently required for all public companies and will be the standard for private companies as of the end of 2019.
Currently, FloQast supports multi book accounting for Oracle NetSuite and Sage Intacct, two strong mid-market finance solutions that have invested in their subscription billing model support capabilities. This capability is available for FloQast Business, Corporate, and Enterprise customers at no additional cost. The support of these solutions also reflects the investment that each of these ERP vendors has made in subscription billing. NetSuite’s 2015 acquisition of subscription billing solution Monexa eventually led to the launch of NetSuite SuiteBilling, while Sage Intacct developed its subscription billing capabilities organically in 2015.
Why This Matters For Accounting Teams
Currently, accounting teams compliant with ASC 606 are required to provide two sets of books associated with each financial close. Organizations seeking to accurately reflect their finances both from a legacy and current perspective either need to duplicate efforts to provide compliant accounting outputs or to use an accounting solution that will accurately create separate sets of close results. By simultaneously creating dual level close outputs, organizations can avoid the challenge of creating detailed journal entries to explain discrepancies within a single close instance.
Recommendations for Accounting Teams with ASC 606 Compliance Requirements
This announcement has a couple of ramifications for mid-market enterprises and organizations that are either currently supporting ASC 606 as public companies or preparing to support ASC 606 as private companies.
First, Amalgam Insights believes that accounting teams using either Oracle NetSuite or Sage Intacct should adopt FloQast as a relatively low-cost solution to solve the challenge of duplicate ASC 606 close. Currently, this functionality is most relevant to Oracle NetSuite and Sage Intacct customers with significant ASC 606 accounting challenges. To understand why, consider the basic finances of this decision.
Amalgam Insights estimates that, based on FloQast’s current pricing of $125 per month for business accounts or $150 per month for corporate accounts , FloQast will pay for itself with productivity gains in any accounting department where an organization spends four or more man-hours per month to create duplicate closes. This return is in addition to the existing ROI associated with financial close that Amalgam Insights has previously tracked for FloQast customers in our Business Value Analysis. In this document, we found that FloQast customers interviewed saw a 647% ROI in their first year of deployment by accelerating and simplifying their close workflows and improving team visibility to the current status of financial close.
Second, accounting teams should generally expect to support multi-book accounting for the foreseeable future. Although ASC 606 is now a current standard, financial analysts and investors seeking to conduct historical analysis of a company for investment, acquisition, or partnership will want to conduct a consistent “apples-to-apples” comparison of finances for multiple years. Until your organization has three full years of financial statements under ASC 606 that are audited, your organization will likely have to maintain multiple sets of books. Given that most public organizations started using ASC 606 in 2018, this means having a plan for multiple sets of books until 2020. For private organizations, this may mean an additional year or two given that mandatory compliance starts at the end of 2019. Companies that avoid preparing for the reality of dual level closes for the next couple of years will be spending significant accountant hours on easily avoidable work.
If you would like to learn more about FloQast, the Business Value Analysis, or the current vendor solution options for financial close management, please contact Amalgam Insights at info@amalgaminsights.com