Sage Intacct Boosts HIPAA, GDPR Capabilities Of Its Cloud Financial Management Apps

Application developer Sage Intacct is doubling down on the healthcare, nonprofit and financial service industries with expanded functionality in a new release of the vendor’s cloud financial management software.

The new 2018 Release 2 edition also offers increased support to meet Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements.

"We continue to invest in adding capabilities for specific vertical industries and micro verticals," said Dan Miller, vice president of product for Sage Intacct, in an interview. That focus, he said, is key to the success the vendor's channel partners have in those vertical markets.

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Sage, a long-time developer of financial, ERP and CRM applications, acquired accounting and financial management application developer Intacct in August for $850 million. Today the Intacct software is available as part of the Sage Business Cloud.

Both vendors have traditionally focused on SMB customers and have a significant presence in the channel.

Sage Intacct competes with cloud financial management applications from Microsoft, Oracle subsidiary NetSuite, and Financial Force, among others.

Sage Intacct, based in San Jose, Calif., has been investing heavily in its cloud financial infrastructure to better support growing mid-size customers across multiple industries. The company said that some mid-size customers have more than 3,500 users and are processing a million transactions per month.

Topping the list of enhancements in the new release is a number of HIPAA privacy compliance capabilities, including advanced audit trail functionality for monitoring and auditing access to protected healthcare information.

With the software’s ability to meet HIPAA compliance requirements, Sage Intacct can now sign a Business Associate Agreement with healthcare clients attesting to that fact. Miller said that will make it possible for channel partners to sell to, and better support, customers with strict HIPAA requirements.

On the GDPR side, Sage Intacct applications now provide new data obfuscation tools that businesses use to manage personal data within financial records.

"Sage Intacct's customers must act as stewards of data that is increasingly subject to privacy regulation," Miller said in the statement announcing the Sage Intacct 2018 Release 2. "Our latest quarterly product update provides tools to support our customers in complying with HIPAA and the new GDPR regulations."

In the interview, Miller also noted that some of Sage Intacct's partners have been expanding beyond SMB customers recently, selling to larger businesses with operations in European Union countries. For them, the GDPR compliance capabilities are critical.

The new release also has enhanced multi-entity analytical capabilities that financial services companies use to support business decisions and measure efficiencies using key performance indicators. Consolidation enhancements include a new graphical organization view and real-time access to financial information and drill-down to sub-ledgers in a single view.

For nonprofit customers, Sage Intacct developed the Nonprofit Financial Board Book, a dashboard that automates the process of tracking and managing best practices and provides insights into an organization’s processes. That, according to Sage Intacct, helps nonprofit organizations better benchmark their financial health, sustainability and mission impact, according to the vendor.

To develop the Nonprofit Financial Board Book, Sage Intacct partnered with GuideStar, an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies that maintains a database of 2.5 million organizations.

Sage Intacct works with VARs, accounting service providers and ISV partners. Some resell the Sage Intacct application service, adding support and other value-added services to their offerings, Miller said. Other partners develop add-on extensions and applications for the Sage Intacct platform.