FinancialForce Review: Salesforce's Accounting Arm Analyzed

Most business software buyers would agree:

Integrating your financials with CRM can be incredibly messy and time-consuming.

But what if you could seamlessly connect your accounting to Salesforce with a natively built solution? One that provides real-time insights, smooth interoperability, and a familiar user experience.

Well, FinancialForce makes this possible.

In this post, we're going to dive into FinancialForce's core capabilities, advanced features, ecosystem integrations, pricing, and more. You'll see how FinancialForce simplifies accounting for Salesforce customers, where it excels, and considerations for implementation.

Introduction to FinancialForce

FinancialForce is a cloud ERP solution built on the Salesforce platform, providing integrated accounting, revenue recognition, billing, and other financial management capabilities.

Overview of FinancialForce

FinancialForce was founded in 2009 as a joint venture between Unit4 and Salesforce. It offers a full range of accounting and financial management applications designed specifically for the Salesforce platform and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Key capabilities of FinancialForce include:

• General ledger
• Accounts receivable/accounts payable
• Revenue recognition
• Billing and invoicing
• Expense management
• Reporting and dashboards

FinancialForce targets small and medium-sized businesses across industries looking to unite their front and back office systems within Salesforce.

Key Benefits of FinancialForce

FinancialForce provides several notable benefits, including:

• Tight integration with Salesforce - All accounting data flows seamlessly into Salesforce in real-time, providing users a unified view of customer, sales, and financial information.
• Rapid deployment - As a native cloud application, FinancialForce implementations can be up and running quickly without lengthy on-premise installations.
• Accessibility - Since FinancialForce lives in the cloud, financial data can be accessed from anywhere on any device.

Limitations of FinancialForce

While FinancialForce has many strengths, there are some limitations to consider:

• Less flexibility - Being built exclusively for Salesforce, customizations may be more constrained compared to standalone accounting systems.
• Narrow focus - FinancialForce specializes in light-to-medium accounting needs, so companies requiring advanced capabilities may need to look elsewhere.
• Ongoing vendor dependence - Reliance on both FinancialForce and Salesforce for support could present potential issues.

Core Financial Capabilities

FinancialForce provides robust core financial management capabilities out-of-the-box to meet the needs of most businesses.

General Ledger

The general ledger within FinancialForce provides real-time visibility into financial transactions across the business. Key features include:

• Multi-book accounting support for tracking financials separately by department, legal entity, or accounting standards
• Customizable chart of accounts with multi-segment coding for detailed transaction tagging
• Automated currency conversion and financial consolidation capabilities
• Flexible transaction tagging and reporting by custom dimensions
• Audit trail tracking for financial data changes

With a unified ledger across modules like billing and AP/AR, FinancialForce delivers accurate financial reporting and analysis.

Accounts Receivable and Billing

For the critical accounts receivable and billing processes, FinancialForce enables:

• Customer account and contact management
• Flexible invoice creation, delivery, and tracking
• Revenue recognition rule configuration
• Collections workflow automation
• Customer payment processing and cash application
• Aged receivables and collections analytics

This supports efficient order-to-cash operations.

Accounts Payable

On the payables side, FinancialForce provides:

• Supplier records management
• Invoice and payment processing
• Expense claim submissions
• Three-way matching and exception flagging
• Payment run automation
• AP analytics like aged payables

This allows organizations to streamline payables workflows.

Fixed Assets

For tracking fixed assets and depreciation, notable FinancialForce features consist of:

• Custom asset categories and depreciation methods
• Automated calculation of depreciation expense
• Asset transaction history and movement audit trails
• Custom asset reporting and analysis
• Asset retirement and disposal processing

Together this enables centralized management of capital assets to support financial accounting and reporting.

Advanced Capabilities

FinancialForce offers several advanced accounting capabilities beyond core financial management. These tools allow businesses to automate complex accounting processes with greater efficiency and control.

Revenue Recognition Management

FinancialForce provides sophisticated revenue recognition capabilities to account for revenue according to accounting standards and business models. Key features include:

• Flexible revenue scheduling based on milestones, percentages, timeframes, etc.
• Automated revenue calculation and journal entries
• Support for complex revenue recognition standards and scenarios
• Tools for revenue forecasting, analytics, and reporting

With FinancialForce's revenue automation, businesses can save significant time on revenue recognition activities while ensuring accuracy and compliance.

Project Accounting

Robust project accounting tools in FinancialForce enable enhanced budgeting, costing, and billing for professional services and project-based businesses. Key capabilities include:

• Project planning with bottom-up budgets tied to tasks
• Time tracking and expense management
• Project costing and work-in-progress valuation
• Flexible project invoicing by phase, milestone, etc.
• Real-time visibility into project profitability

These features simplify project financial management and ensure projects stay on track.

Consolidations and Multi-books

For global businesses, FinancialForce provides multi-book accounting and financial consolidations to support unified reporting across entities and geographies. Features include:

• Multi-GAAP and IFRS compliance
• Automated currency translation and intercompany eliminations
• Flexible management, legal, and statutory reporting
• Real-time consolidation dashboard

With multi-book accounting, FinancialForce customers gain a consolidated view of finances across all operations.

Global Tax Engine

FinancialForce offers a robust global tax engine for automated tax compliance and optimized tax handling. Capabilities include:

• Tax calculation embedded throughout system
• Support for over 110 countries' tax rules
• Tools to define tax policies and jurisdictions
• Tax reporting dashboards and analytics

The global tax engine enables efficient tax management and compliance across global business activities.

Ecosystem Integrations

FinancialForce offers deep integration with the Salesforce platform to streamline business processes. By building on the Salesforce platform, FinancialForce inherits robust CRM capabilities out-of-the-box.

Salesforce CRM

FinancialForce seamlessly integrates with Sales Cloud, allowing for automated syncing between accounting data and customer/sales data. Key benefits include:

• Real-time visibility into customer account status, order history, and payment info
• Automated revenue recognition based on completed sales orders
• Single source of truth for customer data across departments

This eliminates manual duplication of data between systems. The integration facilitates accurate financial reporting directly from CRM activity.

FinancialForce Billing

FinancialForce Billing is an add-on module for managing recurring customer subscriptions and usage-based billing. Key features include:

• Automated invoice generation for subscriptions
• Flexible usage rating engines and price books
• Payment collection using Salesforce Payment Services
• Subscription and usage data visibility in customer records

This enables more flexible billing models like SaaS, utility billing, and consumption-based pricing.

Third-Party Apps

FinancialForce has a robust app ecosystem that connects complementary solutions. Notable apps include:

• FloQast: Close management software for reconciliations and tie-outs. Enables month-end close automation.
• Adaptive Insights: Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) tools for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. Provides quick insights.
• MuleSoft: API-led connectivity to integrate other apps and data sources. Facilitates custom integrations.

These apps extend the accounting platform to meet additional financial use cases beyond core accounting.

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Implementation and Support

FinancialForce offers comprehensive implementation and ongoing support services to ensure a smooth and successful deployment.

Onboarding and Setup

The typical FinancialForce implementation follows these key steps:

• Discovery Phase: FinancialForce consultants meet with your team to understand requirements, identify integration points, and define the project scope and timeline.

• Configuration & Development: The FinancialForce platform is configured based on your processes and requirements. Any customizations, extensions, or third-party integrations are built.

• Testing & Validation: Thorough testing is conducted to validate all business processes and ensure the solution meets specifications.

• Training: End users receive training on using FinancialForce. Admins receive platform administration training.

• Go-Live: The system goes live, with FinancialForce consultants providing go-live support to ensure a smooth transition.

The typical FinancialForce implementation takes around 12-16 weeks from project kickoff to go-live. The timeline can vary based on scope, complexity, customizations required, and availability of internal resources.

Ongoing Administration

Key aspects of administering FinancialForce include:

• User & Security Management: Adding/updating users, managing roles and permissions, implementing single sign-on.

• Configuration Changes: Modifying or adding new custom fields, page layouts, approval processes, and other configurations.

• Reporting: Building reports and dashboards using native reporting tools or integration with a BI platform.

• Integrations: Managing third-party integrations and ensuring reliable data flows.

• Upgrades: Planning and executing major version upgrades which are released 2x yearly.

Most admins spend 5-15 hours per week on routine FinancialForce administration tasks after go-live. This typically requires at least one dedicated resource.

User Support

FinancialForce provides three tiers of customer support:

• Standard: Included with subscription. Web-based ticketing system for issues and how-to questions.

• Premier: Prioritized response times with direct phone and email access to Tier 2-3 support reps.

• Premium: Assigned technical account manager plus proactive guidance to optimize use of the platform.

Support response times range from 24 hours (Standard) to 1 hour (Premium) depending on tier. Most choose the Premier tier for faster responses and highly skilled reps.

Pricing and Licensing

FinancialForce offers flexible pricing and licensing options to meet the needs of various business sizes and use cases.

Subscription Cost Structure

FinancialForce solutions are sold as monthly or annual subscriptions based on:

• Edition Types: There are three product editions - Community Edition (free), Professional Edition, and Enterprise Edition. Each edition includes additional features and capabilities.

• User Licenses: Pricing tiers are primarily determined by the number of user licenses required. More user licenses mean a higher subscription cost.

Additional Cost Factors

Other variables can impact overall pricing:

• Add-On Services: Additional costs may apply for set-up, implementation, training, customization, and managed services.

• Usage-Based Fees: Overage charges could apply for exceeding storage limits, bandwidth usage, number of transactions, etc.

Total Cost of Ownership

The total cost of ownership (TCO) for adopting FinancialForce solutions depends on several key factors:

• Number of users
• Edition type
• Add-on services required
• Data storage and bandwidth needs

Small businesses may only require 10-15 user licenses on the Community Edition, whereas larger enterprises are more likely to utilize the Enterprise Edition with premium add-on services and hundreds of users.

Example TCO Scenarios:

• A small business using Community Edition for 5 users could expect a yearly TCO of around $7,500.
• A mid-sized company on Professional Edition with 75 users may see about $45,000 in yearly TCO.
• For a large enterprise with 500 users on Enterprise Edition, estimated yearly TCO could surpass $300,000.

The TCO can vary widely based on the scale, edition requirements, and services needed by each customer. FinancialForce provides customized quotes based on each company's unique parameters and use cases.

Competitor Comparison

FinancialForce offers a robust cloud ERP built on the Salesforce platform, providing deep integration options for organizations leveraging Salesforce CRM. As a native Salesforce product, FinancialForce provides unique benefits but faces stiff competition from other leading cloud accounting solutions. Here is how FinancialForce compares to some of the top alternatives:

NetSuite

FinancialForce provides seamless integration with Salesforce CRM which NetSuite cannot match. However, NetSuite offers more extensive inventory management and manufacturing capabilities out of the box. NetSuite also has a wider geographic presence whereas FinancialForce focuses more narrowly on key global markets.

Overall, FinancialForce will appeal more to businesses deeply entrenched in the Salesforce ecosystem who need tight CRM integration above all else. NetSuite is better suited for manufacturing and distribution-focused companies that require advanced supply chain features.

Sage Intacct

A key advantage FinancialForce has over Sage Intacct is the ability to run natively on the Salesforce platform. FinancialForce also offers more flexibility for customizations. However, Sage Intacct provides superior multi-entity consolidation and global financial management capabilities.

Generally, FinancialForce will be the better fit for Salesforce customers who want a seamless user experience across CRM and ERP. But Sage Intacct excels at complex multi-subsidiary financial reporting essential for large global corporations.

Acumatica

The main differentiator between FinancialForce and Acumatica is integration with Salesforce. For companies that rely heavily on Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce delivers unparalleled connectivity that Acumatica cannot match as a standalone system.

However, Acumatica offers better manufacturing support, more pricing transparency, and includes unlimited user licensing in its pricing model. Acumatica also has strong mobile and construction vertical offerings.

So companies deeply invested in Salesforce will gravitate to FinancialForce for its tight integration, while those less reliant on Salesforce can benefit from Acumatica's inclusive licensing, manufacturing capabilities, and vertical solutions.

Conclusion and Recommendations

When FinancialForce Excels

FinancialForce is best suited for medium to large organizations already leveraging Salesforce and seeking deeper financial management capabilities natively tied to their CRM. The solution works well for businesses that need advanced revenue recognition, global consolidations, project accounting, or subscription billing that integrates with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.

Implementation Considerations

When evaluating FinancialForce, key factors to consider include:

• Integration with your existing Salesforce instance and workflows
• The level of financial management complexity required
• Cost compared to other standalone accounting systems
• Availability of support resources and documentation

The Future of FinancialForce

As part of Salesforce, FinancialForce is well-positioned to continue enhancing its financial applications and integrating them deeper into the Salesforce ecosystem. We can expect continued innovation in areas like AI, reporting, and vertical-specific features. While FinancialForce may not displace larger Tier 1 ERP vendors, it will likely keep growing its mid-market customer base among Salesforce-centric organizations.

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