Incloudcounsel slashes close time in half, gains scalability amid global business growth

Handling routine legal work with in-house attorneys or outsourcing it to a traditional law firm can be costly, inefficient, and time-consuming. InCloudCounsel offers a better way.

Founded in 2014, the legal technology company combines cloud-based software and highly experienced corporate attorneys to offer enterprise clients a scalable, end-to-end solution for negotiating and managing routine legal work.

InCloudCounsel’s global attorney network processes and abstracts a broad range of contracts across a variety of industries, with notable leadership in demanding verticals like asset management, investment banking, and real estate. The InCloudCounsel software platform is designed to maximize organization, efficiency, and insight by providing a robust set of document management and data reporting capabilities.

It’s a formula for success, as InCloudCounsel reports a 70% average cost savings for clients and a 94% client retention rate. A boom in growth, both domestically and internationally, across the entire business — employees, customers, and attorneys — brought new complexity and rising workloads for the small finance and accounting team.

Upgrading from Excel to Sage Intacct for cloud-based financial management has improved InCloudCounsel’s efficiency, scalability, and insights as the company continues growing its service offerings and software platform.

As outlined in our InCloudCounsel customer success story, the company has:

• Reduced monthly close time from up to three weeks to 10 days
• Eliminated two days of manual journal entries per month
• Saved a half day each month in credit card reconciliations and another half day in manual uploads to Excel
• Improved cash reconciliations efficiency by 50%

“Our app is built on a modern web architecture, and we wanted a financial management vendor that was similarly tech-forward with an open API and a cloud platform that’s agile and scalable enough to grow with us,” said CFO Jeff Bohl. “Sage Intacct is delivering those capabilities.”

Eliminating Hours of Manual Work Each Month

Sage Intacct’s open API has been instrumental in InCloudCounsel’s accounting transformation. Working with CrossCountry Consulting, a Sage Intacct implementation partner, InCloudCounsel uses the API to connect Sage Intacct with its proprietary application, which handles both client invoicing and payments across its vast network of contract lawyers worldwide.

By eliminating manual data uploads and entry into Excel, the accounting team saves roughly half a day of work each month. Today InCloudCounsel can apply payments at a more granular invoice level, aiding in its reporting.

“Sage Intacct lets us easily recognize invoices, apply cash clearly, and produce real-time aging reports, which is really important for our business,” said Andy Lujan, VP of Finance at InCloudCounsel.

The API also introduces new efficiencies between Sage Intacct and best-of-breed applications like Tipalti for accounts payable and Expensify for expense management. For example, the company integrated Sage Intacct with Tipalti, automating journal entries for all vendor payments and saving roughly two days of accounting time per month.

Likewise, InCloudCounsel has eliminated manual credit card reconciliations in Excel with Sage Intacct and Expensify, saving another half day of manual work each month.

‘Vastly Improved’ Reporting and Multi-Entity Accounting

Today InCloudCounsel is better able to manage international operations in the UK and Asia Pacific region with Sage Intacct’s multi-currency and multi-entity consolidation capabilities. Sage Intacct’s dimensional slice-and-dice capabilities provide “vastly improved” reporting over what was possible in the previous environment.

Now InCloudCounsel can easily produce P&L statements and analyze metrics such as profitability and net dollar retention by client, as well as revenue, costs, and margin at the department level.

“CrossCountry Consulting helped us design the optimal dimensional structure in Sage Intacct, allowing us flexibility to create custom reports,” said Lujan. “We can scale our reporting with Sage Intacct, which we couldn’t have done previously without significant time and cost.”

InCloudCounsel is also considering the use of the Sage Intacct Contracts module to streamline order-to-cash for a new SaaS-based subscription offering rolled out in 2020. The SaaS model introduces complexities that InCloudCounsel doesn’t face with its existing “pay as you go” pricing model.

A Rewarding Partnership with CrossCountry Consulting

CrossCountry Consulting, named in 2020 to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies for the fifth consecutive year, has played a key role in InCloudCounsel’s accounting modernization.

InCloudCounsel first engaged the CrossCountry strategy selection team as it evaluated financial management solutions, including Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics, before ultimately selecting Sage Intacct for its ease of use, robust dimensional reporting, strong API, and ability to handle multi-entity accounting and tiered client structures.

Impressed with CrossCountry’s advisory work, InCloudCounsel also used the firm’s implementation team to get Sage Intacct up and running, and continues to rely on the team for ongoing assistance.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do as much as we have in such a short timeframe, if at all, without CrossCountry,” said Khalid Ghafari, the company’s controller. “They evaluated our business, understood our pain points, and worked through how to get data from our proprietary app into Sage Intacct. CrossCountry has done a great job for us.”

Sean Barrett, a CrossCountry managing consultant, said InCloudCounsel has been a rewarding engagement for the company, which has handled about 150 Sage Intacct implementations.

“Sage Intacct is really a path to the future of the finance function at InCloudCounsel,” Barrett said. “Sage Intacct is empowering the finance team to focus more on value-add activities and support the overall business vision by delivering information to make better decisions faster.”

See our InCloudCounsel success story to learn more about how the business has modernized accounting and finance with Sage Intacct.