Sage Intacct Construction Canada: What It Gives Contractors

Sage Intacct Construction is native cloud accounting software for general contractors and real estate developers, and it is available in Canada. For a Canadian contractor deciding whether it belongs on the shortlist, three questions matter: what it handles, what is specific to working in Canada, and whether your company is the kind it fits.

Here is what it does, how it connects to the other tools a contractor runs, and how to tell whether it fits.

What Sage Intacct Construction Is

Sage Intacct Construction pairs the Sage Intacct financial platform with the construction expertise of Timberline, Sage's long-running construction software line. It is cloud construction accounting software from the start, so there is no server to maintain and no software to install.

That sets it apart from Sage 100 Contractor, which is built for a local installation and can be cloud-hosted for remote access. Our post on Sage 100 Contractor cloud options covers that choice.

What It Handles for a Contractor

Construction accounting software tracks costs, budgets, and billing against each job in the same system as the general ledger. In Sage Intacct Construction, that includes:

• Job costing against budgets and cost codes, so project managers see where a job stands while it is still running
• Dimensions for tagging transactions by job, cost type, and other categories your reporting needs
• Estimates and project contracts that carry through to billing
• Progress billing against the contract as work is completed
• Change orders that update contract value and budget when they are approved
• Subcontractor commitments and payables
• Work-in-progress reporting built from the same data
• Role-based dashboards for the office and the field

Two of these are worth reading about on their own: how to job cost a construction project and what change order accounting software should handle.

Sage reports 20% to 40% efficiency gains in accounts payable and receivable and an average month-end close that is 25% to 50% shorter. Your results depend on how much manual work you have today.

Sage Intacct Construction in Canada

Sage Intacct Construction is supported in Canada. It is a separate subscription from the core Sage Intacct financials, so we scope it into the project from the start.

Canadian tax is built in. The standard tax solution sets up the rates for GST, HST, PST, and QST. The system also generates payment files in regional bank formats and prints on Canadian cheque stock.

Holdback is the other Canadian detail. Sage Intacct calls it retainage. It is tracked on both customer invoices and vendor bills and released in batches. Release timing is tied to lien legislation that varies by province, so we configure it to match the rules where you work.

Running More Than One Company or Location

Multi-entity construction accounting is where many contractors first feel the limit of their current system. Sage Intacct Construction supports multiple entities, locations, and currencies in one system and handles intercompany transactions. Consolidating across entities shortens time to close because nothing is exported and rebuilt by hand.

If you combine separate company files by spreadsheet each month, this is the part of the system most likely to change how your month-end works. The same pattern shows up in our post on when to upgrade from Sage 50 or QuickBooks in construction.

What Cloud Means Day to Day

Because Sage Intacct Construction is fully cloud-based, your people reach it from the office, a jobsite, or home with an internet connection. There are no software updates or hardware upgrades for you to manage. Accounting and project managers work from the same current numbers instead of waiting for an export.

Procore and Other Integrations

Sage Intacct Construction has an open API, so it can connect to the tools a contractor already uses for estimating, field work, and project management. The best known is the Procore integration. It syncs cost codes, cost types, and job costs between the two systems. Commitments and change orders created in Procore with Sage Intacct cost codes are approved by accounting and pushed into Sage Intacct.

Two things to plan for. Projects already in progress when the connection is made cannot be synced without paid professional services, and Procore connector availability depends on the country or region you operate in, so confirm that with Procore before you build a plan around it.

Who Sage Intacct Construction Fits

It tends to suit contractors whose current setup has stopped keeping up:

• You run more than one company or location and combine them by spreadsheet.
• Your WIP report or month-end reporting is built by hand.
• The same information is entered in estimating, the field, and accounting.
• You need an open API, multiple currencies, or intercompany transactions.
• The company has grown past what the current system was built to handle.

It is not the right answer for every contractor. A company with one entity, one office, and reports that already show job profit while jobs are running may be well served by Sage 100 Contractor. Ward Bros. Construction, a general contractor in southern Alberta, runs on it, and owner and CFO Darren Boras says the company is "finally able to hold the superintendents and project managers accountable for their projects." The full success story has the details.

If you are coming from entry-level software, our post on upgrading from Sage 50 or QuickBooks covers the signs and how to tell whether the problem is the software or the setup.

What a Move Involves

I often say, "Software is only 50% of the solution." For a contractor, the other half is the move itself, and active jobs keep running through it. The work is planning a cutover date, deciding which open jobs come across with their budgets and costs to date, and training the people who will use the system every day before it goes live. Most problems come from people and process rather than the software, which our post on financial software implementation challenges covers. Our implementations come with fixed pricing and a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Learn More

If you are curious about what is included, our Sage Intacct Construction page has the details, and our construction page shows where it sits alongside Sage 100 Contractor.