For a thriving business, the IPO is a major milestone. However, the IPO also brings to the finance team a new set of reporting, accounting, and control burdens. One important way to improve your IPO readiness is to deploy a modern, IPO-ready financial management system at least 12-36 months in advance. Entry-level software might handle the needs of a growing company for a few months, but it is not IPO-ready software. Legacy financial systems are inflexible, lacking the features, controls, and the analytical capabilities you need as a public company.

Of course, the IPO isn’t the finish line. Post-IPO, the finance team must focus on a changing set of essential requirements in the journey of building a successful company. To manage the challenges of being a public company, you need a system that supports operational growth and strategic complexity. Intacct meets the needs of companies before and after an IPO with:

• Professional-strength financial management software to deliver real-time reporting and analytics
• Powerful automation and integration
• Superior compliance and auditability
• Unlimited flexibility and scale in the cloud to evolve with your business

These capabilities are among the reasons that the AICPA selected Intacct as its preferred provider of financial applications.

The Four Keys to IPO Preparedness

1. Streamlined financial processes

Intacct enables your company to be IPO-ready with financials built on well-
documented, organized transactions and balances for faster period closes, accurate financials, and easy auditability.

• Automate order processing and consolidations, saving you from hiring staff to keep pace with growth in these areas.
• Eliminate spreadsheets for revenue recognition and currency conversion, ensuring accurate financial reporting and compliance with accounting standards.
• Create multiple ledgers and multiple books, letting you maintain separate sub-ledgers or tax-only books in order to streamline your period close and reporting processes.

2. Robust internal controls

IPO preparation must include robust internal controls that demonstrate the effectiveness of your accounting and reporting processes. Intacct focuses solely on financial management, with 100 percent of all R&D going toward finance/accounting challenges, so your financial controls are always IPO-ready.

• Document and follow approval processes for purchase orders, employee expenses, sales contracts, journal entries, and more.
• Enforce segregation of duties, with a documented audit trail.
• Create reports on the history of changes to settings, data, and system access to prove that proper controls are in place.
• Set and manage controls from a centralized management module, making it easier to establish thorough controls and demonstrate them to auditors.

3. Skilled financial staff

Comprehensive automation lets you manage growth without hiring extra staff to perform manual work. With a more ef ficient closing process and stronger reporting, your team can focus on more than just
churning out reports.

• See the big picture with tools that analyze the unique dynamics of your business.
• Develop the new skills you need to prepare for the IPO and beyond — forecasting, treasury, and SEC reporting.

4. Best-in-class business systems

Intacct is a best-in-class financial management system built to integrate with other business solutions.

• Use standard APIs and Web services in the cloud to link payroll, project management, CRM, and more — with
  Intacct as your financial system of record.
• Expand finance’s capabilities without extra staff or specialized IT resources, thanks to flexible, scalable
  Web-based integrations.

The Four Keys to Post-IPO Success

1. Fast and accurate financial reporting

s your public company grows, your finance team must evolve to manage
global expansion, support M& A events, and build a best-in-class ecosystem of business solutions.

• Meet unique requirements with a flexible system that is easy to re-configure without additional IT resources.
• Quickly add multiple entities, currencies, and locations as your business expands.

2. Regulatory compliance

Post-IPO, there is much greater scrutiny on your financial reporting from the SEC, auditors, analysts, investors, and the media.

• Keep current with guidelines for revenue recognition and other complex accounting standards, as well as business and regulatory changes – with Intacct’s automatic quarterly updates.
• Establish policy and exercise accounting judgment with a flexible system that you can configure to meet unique needs, not a fixed, pre-defined methodology.

3. Focus on the forecast

As your forecast on future results become public, your ability to meet that forecast is scrutinized more heavily than the actual forecast. Intacct enables greater insight into business operations, so you can fine-tune your forecast for greater accuracy.

• Gain real-time visibility into financial and operating data in the same place.
• Keep up with rapid change in a growing business to capitalize on shifting market opportunities.
• Develop deeper insights into what’s not working — understand why, in real-time, so you can make rapid course corrections.

4. Data visibility

Going public means executives spend less time on growth and more time managing a variety of costs. This shifting focus on the bottom line is an implicit change that CFOs must figure out quickly before enduring a missed earnings forecast.

• Drill down into any exceptions, and slice and dice by business drivers (Intacct calls them “dimensions”) such as project, customer, and department to understand the true nature of your business.
• Tag every transaction, budget, and even operational measures with dimensional values that capture the business meaning of the data.
• Improve cost management by getting granular — digging into budgeted and actual expenses for each department,
  team, and project — in real-time to hold teams accountable.

Conclusion

Many aspects of your finance team and processes will change before and after the IPO. With Intacct as your financial-management software foundation, you will be better prepared to manage these new complexities. Go public with Sage Intacct and benefit from:

• The best management reporting and business visibility of any system for medium-sized businesses
• A configurable system that meets your unique requirements
• A best-in-class solution built for integration, with 100 percent focus on finance
• A cloud-based solution offering a fast pace of innovation to support your growth

Are you ready to respond? See how you compare with the results from a recent survey of top finance executives…Read more.