SITUATION
As a multi-entity business, the Lac du Flambeau Business Development Corporation (LDF BDC) was struggling to gain visibility, internal controls, and reporting and process efficiency from QuickBooks. Being on multiple instances of QuickBooks instead of a common chart of accounts prevented their accounting team from closing the books and reconciling due to’s and due from’s in a timely manner. Additionally, real-time reporting for consolidated operations and a clean audit was impossible.
STRATEGY
Sage Intacct offered the multi-entity capabilities the LDF BDC was looking for, and Wipfli offered the extensive implementation experience to maximize the organization’s return on investment with the new accounting software. Wipfli was able to map out a smooth transition from QuickBooks to Intacct.
This meant preparing the LDF BDC staff for the most impactful day-to-day differences between the two systems, especially when it came to controls. While QuickBooks, for example, allows staff the flexibility to change dates without reversal and reposting on cash transactions, Sage Intacct’s strong controls foster greater accountability and enable a clear audit trail — a must for a collection of regulated companies. The controls alone have resulted in cleaner, less expensive audits, as well as more trustworthy data that can be used to create well-rounded and accurate financial reports.
RESULTS
In addition to its controls, Sage Intacct’s biggest benefit was putting the LDF BDC on a common chart of accounts. Coupled with strong work-flow automation capabilities, Sage Intacct has eliminated the accounting team’s need to manually perform reconciliations, multi-entity consolidations and reporting preparation.
Plus, the time spent tracking down changes to prior periods and the use of manual spreadsheets has been all but eliminated.
As a result, morale and efficiency are up at the LDF BDC. Due to the big reduction in manual processes and implementation of automated, real-time dashboard insights, the accounting team has been able to focus on more strategic projects. This includes switching to a perpetual inventory process in their point of sale (POS) system for their c-store, smoke shop and country market.
Prior to implementing Sage Intacct with Wipfli, LDF BDC lacked strong monitoring of their budget to actuals. They now have a single source of truth that provides trustworthy data to analyze the productivity of their individual entities and make key decisions to meet their mission of creating new revenue sources and career opportunities for the Tribe. All of this is critical when looking to pursue more complex and larger government contracts. Plus, the more accurate, timely financial reports the LDF BDC can present, the greater insight Tribal leaders have into the BDC’s efforts on their behalf.
In summary, the organizational change management that LDF BDC architected with Wipfli, combined with the go-live of the Sage Intacct project, helped LDF BDC achieve their overall goal of financial and digital transformation.
CLIENT PROFILE
The Lac du Flambeau Business Development Corporation is an economic arm of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and spans across many entity types and structures. Their mission is to diversify the Tribe’s non-gaming revenue sources and to create career opportunities for the Tribe’s community.
