NetSuite vs. Intacct: Which One Is Right for Your Business?

Many companies are now facing a weighty decision: NetSuite vs. Intacct. They must choose one to handle the increasing complexity of their accounting systems.

Fortunately, we can help you explore the differences between these two platforms—and we’ll start with a story.

Imagine a company spends months (and sometimes years) researching and building internal support for a new financial software system. It vets different vendors, selects one, and pays for and implements the software. Its goal is to boost accuracy and efficiency across the company while giving leaders the financial data they need to make strategic decisions.

But the company realizes it must still work in Excel—particularly for more complex financial processes. For example, the senior accountants struggle with revenue recognition—ultimately discovering that they need a bolt-on module to properly handle it. And the company has trouble introducing subscription-based product offerings. This problem arises because it’s too difficult for the software to integrate billing processes and properly recognize that revenue according to accounting standards.

In addition, product teams trying to view profitability by different product lines can’t easily define dimensions and segment data. Consequently, a billing clerk must manually enter sales information from the customer relationship management system into the accounting system and invoice clients at unpredictable intervals. 

Yet, the software vendor promised the company a “seamless integration” between its customer relationship management and accounting systems. 

So, everyone begins to wonder why they invested in the software at all.

When startups and growing businesses upgrade beyond Excel and entry-level accounting systems, NetSuite and Intacct are often two shortlisted vendors. But one is head and shoulders above the other in surprising ways. So, consider these criteria when evaluating NetSuite vs. Intacct for accounting and finance.

What do you need?

Let’s address the proverbial elephant in the room. NetSuite is an ERP system. Intacct is not. 

NetSuite can also manage and automate many business functions outside of accounting and finance, including: 

• Human resources
• Supply chain
• Warehouse management
• Inventory and order management
• Some parts of the manufacturing process
• E-commerce
• Procurement
• Professional services automation

NetSuite is a complete business platform. And while it offers a much broader range of features, customers can also start with basic accounting and financial functionality. Then, they can extend the system as the business grows or needs arise. 

On the other hand, Intacct is a robust accounting platform with some basic functionality for order management, inventory management, and time entry and tracking.

So, chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re not ready for full ERP functionality yet and just want to begin the ERP journey with finance and accounting. Your buying decision is probably driven by one of these factors:

• You have no accounting software.
• You have entry-level accounting software, but it’s no longer sufficient for the growing complexity of your accounting processes.
• You have legacy, on-premises software and want to move to the cloud.

NetSuite and Intacct are both cloud-based ERP systems with multi-tenant, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment models. So, all customers are on the same software version, which creates economies of scale and makes upgrading easier. And those upgrades come from the software vendor, requiring little effort from businesses. So, customizations and integrations can proceed automatically.

So, here’s the problem: With Intacct, many of these functions require additional modules, which are difficult to implement.

NetSuite and Intacct deliver what most vendors call “core finance functionality” in this SaaS model. This functionality includes the ability to: 

• Automate processes associated with Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable
• Manage cost centers
• Automatically reconcile transactions and post them to the general ledger
• Create financial statements 

The software also provides internal controls and segregation of duties.

However, most businesses need functionality beyond core financials. In fact, Intacct recently released a report covering the top technology priorities for nonprofit finance leaders in 2021. Many of the top five items will resonate across all businesses. This includes the ability to:

• Automate financial reporting
• Integrate with other systems
• Manage multiple funds through fund accounting
• Automate tracking and outcome metric reporting
• Automate multiple entity consolidation

So, here’s the problem: With Intacct, many of these functions require additional modules, which are difficult to implement. And Intacct users can adopt accounting features for an end-to-end accounting process, but only if they have the budget for it. These accounting features include: 

• Financial consolidation across multiple entities or subsidiaries
• Revenue recognition
• Subscription billing
• Multi-currency Specific VAT capabilities

Intacct sells these features as separate modules, and customers may require help from one of the company’s partners to implement them. These limitations often convince companies to switch from Intacct to NetSuite. 

For instance, database software vendor MongoDB used Intacct and had to complete all its revenue recognition in spreadsheets. The process was time-consuming, manual, and error-prone. The company also had to make manual currency conversion adjustments and lacked tight integration between Intacct and Salesforce.com.

However, NetSuite offers much of this functionality out of the box. The company builds modules natively on its platform and includes them as part of the licensing and pricing structure. 

Additionally, NetSuite serves customers in more than 200 countries and dependent territories. And with its OneWorld product, the company’s software supports the following:

• 27 languages
• More than 190 currencies
• Transactions in more than 90 bank formats
• Tax and reporting standards for more than 100 countries

OneWorld also offers multi-subsidiary consolidation. This feature allows businesses to easily roll up data from the subsidiary level to the parent level. NetSuite also facilitates intercompany consolidation so organizations can establish consistent business processes.

Let’s explore why it’s important to natively build some of that functionality on the platform. 

Revenue recognition. One customer who switched from Intacct to NetSuite spoke on a recent webinar. They said that as an Intacct user, they had to complete revenue recognition processes outside the system, which helped drive their decision to change. 

For example, Intacct required them to complete revenue recognition in Excel, and the system didn’t tie it to invoicing. So, they had to spend significant time preparing spreadsheets and answering client invoice questions. With NetSuite, this person saved more than five hours per week on this process—and the labor of two accounting team members.

Subscription billing. Many B2B companies want to sell products or services by subscription models and pricing, and some even implement models based on usage. Unfortunately, the billing processes for these models get complex. But integration between revenue recognition and subscription billing systems can help log revenue at the right time.

Growth can happen quickly, and a financial system that doesn’t support international operations can limit that progress.

Multi-subsidiary or multi-entity support. Companies who operate globally can’t easily email spreadsheets back or forth or even house them in a cloud-based document management system. Those methods are not only clumsy and inefficient, but they can also introduce errors. So, NetSuite’s multi-subsidiary and multi-entity financial consolidation support becomes a significant benefit.

Support for multiple languages and multiple currencies. Intacct only comes in English and requires additional modules and custom implementations to manage currencies other than USD. However, NetSuite OneWorld automates the accounting process management in 27 languages and 190 currencies.

Some businesses might consider multi-subsidiary consolidation and multiple currencies support nice features to have but ultimately unnecessary. Yet, growth can happen quickly, and a financial system that doesn’t support international operations can limit that progress.

There are also essential differences in architecture between the two offerings. NetSuite, an Oracle company, runs on the Oracle database and is hosted in 18 Oracle data centers worldwide. And it will deliver even greater security, availability, scalability, and expandability as it transitions to Oracle’s Gen 2 cloud infrastructure. It will also offer customers a path to the Oracle Autonomous Database and artificial intelligence. 

Intacct also runs on the Oracle database in data centers based in Sacramento and San Jose, California. Quality Technical Services and Equinix run these centers, respectively. Both are third-party data center service providers. Intacct also operates a data center based in Dublin for U.K. customers.