April 8, 2002 (Los Gatos, Calif.)— Intacct® Corporation, the leading provider of online professional accounting solutions for small and midsize enterprises, today announced the release of its Multi-Entity Console (M-ConsoleTM) application. The M-Console is the first Internet-based accounting application designed to satisfy the unique financial management needs of organizations with multiple constituents or entities, including: multi-location or multi-division firms, multi-company enterprises, franchise organizations, national associations, and corporate shared services organizations.
With the M-Console, each business unit within a multi-entity organization uses the same accounting system, eliminating the incompatibility and inconsistencies that currently result when different business units within the same organization rely on disparate accounting systems. Because the Intacct accounting system is an Internet-based solution, accounting systems at each business unit can be set up and configured remotely within a matter of hours, instead of the weeks often required for client/server or packaged systems. And because each business unit's accounting system is securely connected with the parent system, financial managers at the central headquarters have access to real-time financial data for all of their constituent business units, greatly enhancing their financial management capabilities.
"Intacct developed the M-Console after hearing from many multiple-entity organizations about the challenges they face because of disparate accounting systems," said Intacct CEO David C. Thomas. "By using the M-Console, organizations with multiple business units now have—for the first time—a single accounting system to support, manage, and control all their accounting and financial processes in real-time throughout their organizations."
Intacct's M-Console eliminates many of the barriers that once undermined the timeliness and integrity of critical accounting and financial data circulating among the various business units of a multi-entity organization. For example, with the M-Console, there is no longer a need for corporate headquarters to wait for a computer disk filled with outdated accounting information to arrive from a remote subsidiary or office. Rather, with the M-Console, this and other related work can be accomplished online through a single integrated web interface. Using the M-Console, central financial managers can view, modify, consolidate, and switch among any number of business units' accounting systems—all in real-time.
"We evaluated multiple accounting systems and none came close to the Intacct M-Console and how it lets us centrally manage our investment group entities," explained Teddi Lee Morrison, CFO, of The March Group LLLP, a private investment-banking firm based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. "Through the M-Console, we give our investment partners the ability to view the status of their companies from any Internet-connected computer at any time of the day or night, which is great for positive client relations."
Flexible Configuration and Scalability
The M-Console scales to support an essentially unlimited number of subsidiary entities, and can be configured to manage other, nested M-Consoles that can be established in second or third-level hierarchies (such as the departments of a corporate subsidiary). The M-Console also features the built-in flexibility to enable central financial managers to impose certain organization-wide controls over individual business units' accounting systems while preserving the necessary business unit autonomy. Within this framework, central financial managers can create accounting templates that make it possible for them, with just a few mouse clicks, to set up standardized accounting systems for new business units. Or else they can "clone" new accounting systems from existing ones when adding, say, a new franchise location or a new branch office.
This flexibility further offers multi-entity organizations significant new financial management capabilities. For instance, as a completely online solution, the M-Console and the broader Intacct accounting system dramatically reduce the cost of setting up, interconnecting, and maintaining individual business units' accounting systems. And the M-Console's seamless integration of subsidiary accounting systems greatly facilitates the preparation, by central financial managers, of consolidated financial statements for their multi-entity organizations.
Secure Accessibility
One of the most innovative features of Intacct's M-Console is its proprietary Secure Slide-InTM capability. The Secure Slide-In feature permits M-Console users to securely access the accounting systems of any constituent entity in real-time. Authorized users then can review and drill down into subsidiary detail accounts and source transactions while logged into the Intacct system—at any time and from any geographic location—without having to manage multiple sign-on requests or numerous browser windows. The M-Console further allows a central administrator to determine the specific business units to which an M-Console user will be able to access, thereby restricting access to only the appropriate central and business unit users.
About Intacct Corporation www.intacct.com
Intacct Corporation is the leading provider of online professional accounting solutions. The Intacct accounting system is designed for companies that need more than an entry-level PC-based accounting package but want an alternative to complex, IT-intensive client/server solutions. In addition to its core accounting functionality, the Intacct accounting system also includes Intacct Audit, co-developed with Deloitte & Touche. Offered on a monthly subscription basis, the Intacct accounting system can be accessed via any current web browser and is both PC and Mac compatible.
