Commercial finance company streamlines key accounting processes
Read more to learn how Crystal Financial gained the ability to report on consolidated entries with Baker Tilly.
Client background
Crystal Financial provides senior and junior secured revolvers and term loans for both asset-based and cash flow financings to middle market companies. It provides capital to sponsored and nonsponsored companies, either as a sole lender or in conjunction with banks and other lenders. Typically, financings are in excess of $10 million. They provide a consistent source of capital throughout a business’ life cycle, as well as in varying economic conditions.
Julie Monahan, Controller, Crystal FinancialBaker Tilly was instrumental in helping us create the templates needed for our business operations and for the import our financial data. They continue to work with us, long after our implementation, to make sure we are utilizing Sage Intacct per our specific business needs and budget. Having a contact person at Baker Tilly to reach out to is priceless.
The business challenge
Crystal Financial utilized QuickBooks for its accounting and general ledger functions. Working in QuickBooks became cumbersome and involved long and drawn-out manual processes. In addition, with an acquisition in 2012, Crystal Financial’s statements began to be incorporated into public filings. They needed a new accounting solution that could:
- Efficiently communicate their financial health to their parent company
- Allow them to report on a granular level
- Provide more capability and an audit trail
- Deliver a stable cloud-based environment
- Handle multiple entities
- Import data files
Julie Monahan, Controller, Crystal FinancialIn Sage Intacct, we can import and tag borrower interest and fee income for the month, which allows us to easily run custom queries and obtain detailed granular reports. For example, we can report on loan balances by borrower at any date and time. In QuickBooks, that functionality did not exist.
Strategy and solution
After careful analysis, Crystal Financial selected Baker Tilly to implement Sage Intacct, the only accounting solution that is recommended by the AICPA. Crystal Financial gets the cloud-based environment they need and the long-awaited departure from Excel for entity consolidations.
“Before Baker Tilly we were limited in where we could work, in a cloud-based environment we now have the flexibility to work remotely and have anytime, anywhere access to our financials,” Julie Monahan, Controller at Crystal Financial.
By eliminating some of the manual processes required when Crystal Financial was on QuickBooks, they have dramatically increased their team’s efficiency. The ability to import journal entries and complex effective interest schedules in bulk, via a template, has directly correlated to time saved in their close process.
Since Baker Tilly's implementation they have:
- Reduced their monthly reporting processing time
- Simplified and streamlined key accounting processes
- Acquired the ability to tag journal entries and create queries on specific tags
- Incorporated more information into their general ledger
- Gained the capability to report on consolidated entities, a process that was manually done in Excel before Sage Intacct