First Look at MISys Manufacturing Integration with Sage Intacct

by

Earlier this month (January 2019), MISys Manufacturing released their Version 6.4.2. software update which included reestablishment of support for Sage Intacct. While this First Look1 will focus primarily on the integration between MISys Manufacturing and Sage Intacct, we will spend a few moments insuring that our readers are familiar with Sage Intacct (Since it is a product that we do not routinely cover within Insightful Accountant).

Sage Intacct is an innovative cloud application offering both financial management and accounting functionality. It is the preferred AICPA business financial application solution. Many growing companies rely on Sage Intacct once they migrate from small-business accounting software. As a result of the AICPA association, hundreds of CPA firms offer Sage Intacct to their clients.

The cloud platform offers a range of financial and accounting functionalities includes cash management, order management, accounts payables and receivables, spend management, among others. Sage Intacct also offers a variety of modules to extend functionality business needs develop.

While Sage Intacct offers fundamental inventory management, including purchasing, sales, item and inventory control, the product was not designed with true manufacturing capabilities in mind. To that extent, an external 'manufacturing software product' like MISys Manufacturing that is specifically designed to provide the manufacturing specific functionality without duplicating the features that Sage Intact performs well. By combining the two systems, you will use them both to the best of their abilities.

You will use Sage Intacct to manage the "front office," everything that is customer-facing including your customer records, sales orders, sales inventory, accounts receivable, accounts payable and general ledger. While you use MISys Manufacturing to manage you "production facilities," like purchasing, raw material inventory, finished goods design, production scheduling and more. MISys maintains a sub-ledger of all the manufacturing costs and syncs it with Sage Intacct on the schedule you determine. The transactions are easily audited and performed automatically, there is never any double data entry.

Your Sales Orders will start out in Sage Intacct and then become MISys Production Orders or Manufacturing Orders, depending upon their complexity. And, since MISys manufacturing system performs no 'sales functions,' you transfer your 'finished goods' back to Sage Intacct for purposes of sales and invoicing. But long before any of those actual manufacturing tasks begin, the set-up and integration between Sage Intacct and MISys has already been established like a two-way partnership.

As with other MISys accounting integrations, you select the specific accounting system with which you wish to integrate from the drop down in the first field of the Accounting tab within the Administration menu item. In this case, Intacct has been selected.

You will also configure your other accounting related settings including period end consolidation preferences, Invoice Bill reference numbering, your Sage Company ID, User ID and Password, support, and other settings as maybe required for your Sage Intacct configuration. In addition, because Sage Intacct offers Multi-entity functionality, MISys permits you to select one of the entities to associate with each MISys Company by enabling Multi-entity support (seen in the last section of the window shown above).

For the accounting to work properly between MISys and Sage Intacct, the 'account set' referenced in MISys much exist within Intacct and have the same name and numbers so that purchasing and sales transactions, as well as period end transfers, can take place properly. To facilitate this functionality, not only does MISys create a set of general ledger accounts specific to MISys within each Intacct Company, but MISys has a functionality that checks and automatically creates any needed accounts in Intacct each time any transaction or transfer is undertaken (as shown below).

Another important area of commonality in the 'Master Files' of MISys are the Suppliers which are called 'Vendors' in Sage Intacct. MISys can import Intacct Vendors when the integration is first being configured, it also can push suppliers into Intacct as Vendors. Many users will choose to configure their Suppliers in MISys, where significant more detailed information is captured regarding cost options, additional cost (methodologies), and discounting options and then push the information Intacct needs for accounting and payment purposes at the time data is exchanged.

For example, let's assume we create a Purchase Order in MISys for an item (say Item No. 101) from a Supplier (No. 5000) called 'Deca Management' (as shown above), and we go about the process of receiving against this Purchase Order at the time the Items arrive, and we are ready to exchange this information with Intacct. When the information reaches Intacct, a warning is displayed that the Vendor does not exist (as shown below). By selecting 'OK' the basic information within MISys populates the Vendor information within Intacct.

Simultaneously, the information associated with the purchase and received goods is recorded as a bill to this vendor's balance within Intacct Accounts Payable functionality. You can see details of the Bill in the example below.

Some people will be saying, "Murph, you have gotten the cart before the horse because you are buying items from vendors when you haven't even set-up items yet..." and of course, you would be right. But the reality is that you must have Suppliers in MISys before you can complete Item set-up, since you typically associate each Item with at least one Supplier. Well, this is the point when we want to look at Items in both MISys and Intacct.

Of course, there is a lot more to 'Items' then just vendors when it comes to sharing information between MISys and Intacct. But, as with other 'Master files,' the ability to exchange information is a 2-way street, MISys can pass information about items to Intacct, or it can import item information from Intacct.

The key to this process is the "Sales Item No." recorded in the MISys Item Master record (shown in the red box in the illustration below). The hyperlink to the right of the number links MISys users to the Intacct Item list.

When importing Items from Intacct, you can even create MISys Bills of Material for items with assemblies, this streamlines the task of MISys set-up when initially integrating the two products; when Intacct is the existing system and MISys is being added to expand manufacturing capabilities.

One of the unique 'facilities' of MISys when integrated with accounting systems supporting items is the ability to read and report the quantity of items in both systems. In other words, MISys can display the quantity of an Item in both MISys and the accounting system. The quantities of Items in MISys always appear on the 'Stock' tab, while the quantities of the Item within the 'accounting system' appear in the MISys 'Sales Stock' tab. In this case, MISys displays that there is a quantity of 10 'on hand' at the 'sales location' (Warehouse 1), an Intacct location on the Sales Stock tab. Take note that it also displays a quantity of 20 on Intacct 'sales orders'.

One other feature to point out while we are talking about items is the ability to not only transfer quantities back and forth between the 'stock' within MISys and the 'sales stock' in Intacct, but the ability to keep any serial or lot tracking in-tact (yes that's Murph using a 'play on words;' get it, Intacct and in-tact.) when making such transfers. The illustration below shows the Intacct Lot tracking history for the Item which has been transferred back and forth between MISys and Intacct multiple times over a period of time.

Of course, the real reason you acquire MISys is to do the heavy lifting of performing the actual manufacturing functions associated with production. That means you want to import Intacct Sales Orders and convert them into either MISys Work Order or Manufacturing Orders, depending upon their complexity. When you select the 'Process Sales Orders' option from the Production menu in MISys, you will be asked if you wish to 'retrieve Intacct Sales Orders' (as shown at the top of the next page). Remember, the normal work flow will be that your sales personnel will be using Intacct for their customer interactions including estimates and sales, when sales orders have been finalized with the customer, the work begins in MISys.

Sage Sales Orders are imported into MISys along with their details including the customer and sales item(s) with quantities. Sales Order dates and locations, along with quoted delivery or expected dates, are also in the transferred information (as can be seen in the illustration below). From here, the MISys user can begin either a production work order or manufacturing order, depending upon the Item design, configuration and production requirements specified.

In the case used for purposes of this illustration, a MISys Manufacturing Order has been initiated for building Item No. SL45 to meet the requirements of Intacct Sales Order No. SO0014 (line 1) which was dated 1/21/19 with a completion (or due date) of 1/25/2019, as set forth in the sales order. The sales location and customer (Jim's Company) were transferred from the Intacct information but are preserved throughout the MISys processing of the manufacturing process for this order.

When the manufacturing process is completed, the Intacct Sales Order will be fulfilled within Intacct by virtue of an item transfer of the finished SL45 product quantities from the MISys 'stock' to the 'sales stock' within Intacct, so that the sales order can be Invoiced.

As mentioned back when we were discussing the 'accounts set-up,' MISys maintains a sub-ledger of all the manufacturing costs and syncs it with Sage Intacct on the schedule you determine. This 'period end' process passes debit and credits for transactions posted in the MISys sub-ledger accounts to the corresponding Sage Intacct General Ledger accounts. Once they have been transferred, MISys flags those transactions as having been posted to the GL so they do not get posted again by mistake in the future. Below is an example of a report showing a single day's 'period end'.

Within Intacct, the transactions are easily audited and performed automatically, there is never any double data entry. Each MISys entry is easily identified within the 'memo/description' of the Intacct General ledger Report along with the date, GL Account and account number, entry #, journal #, currency, and applicable total $ as well as the debits, credits and transaction balance (as shown below).

Wrap-up

When you couple MISys with Sage Intacct, you significantly expand the capabilities of both systems. MISys becomes a system fully capable of supporting organizations of any size in terms of meeting all their requirements, not just their manufacturing needs. The combination means that the 'total package' is available to mid-upper market sized manufacturing customers.

Likewise, the combination of MISys with Sage Intacct means that those Intacct clients who have needed more in terms of sophisticated manufacturing capabilities than Intacct could offer them but want to stick with all that Intacct offers their 'front office' and 'sales teams,' will find that the combination is likely a dream come true for many such clients.

In either case, you should consider exploring the integration more deeply than we were able to cover in this article, which wasn’t intended as a comprehensive product review of MISys, Sage Intacct or the new integration, as we simply intended to provide you with a 'first look.' So, if you want more information about MISys or how it works with Sage Intacct, you should check out the MISys Manufacturing website or contact a MISys sales representative. You can visit the Sage website if you want more information about Sage Intacct and schedule a demonstration from one of their sales representatives as well.

Editor's Comment:

A big thank you goes out to Charlie Kimbell, Director of Sales & Marketing at MISys Manufacturing and Doug Drew, Director of Technical Support at MISys Manufacturing for their assistance in providing content relative to this feature, especially related to the graphic illustrations featuring both MISys and Sage Intacct. Without their cooperation and assistance, this article would not have been possible.

1- First Look features are intended to provide an overview or synopsis of an application, software, or a specific 'functionality' related thereto, without providing in-depth instruction or analysis of same. The intent is to make the reader aware of the generalities of the subject with enough detail as to promote interest such that it may solicit further investigation including product research, a free trial or demonstration especially when the application or software fits a need or potential need of the reader or one of the reader's clients. First Look features are NOT 'sponsored' articles, nor are they specifically connected with any advertising or other promotional considerations.