The Problem: Navigating Growth With a Decade-Old Financial Compass
A Melbourne-based professional services firm specialising in environmental consulting had grown from a boutique practice of eight staff to a team of 52 across two offices over nine years. Revenue had crossed the $7 million mark, the firm had won several significant multi-year government contracts, and the partners were in active discussions about a third office in Brisbane.
But the finance function had not evolved alongside the business. The firm was still running on the same accounting software it had installed in its second year of operation — a desktop-based system that had served it adequately when the team was small and the work simple, but was now visibly straining under the complexity of a mid-sized professional services operation.
Month-end close was taking 15 working days. By the time the management accounts were prepared, distributed to the partners, and discussed at the monthly leadership meeting, the data was already three to four weeks old. Decisions about resourcing, project investment, and business development were being made on information that reflected where the business had been, not where it was.
The firm's finance manager — a capable and diligent professional who had been with the business for six years — was spending the majority of her time on manual reconciliations, data re-entry between systems, and the production of board reports that required significant manual manipulation in Excel. She had raised the need for a system upgrade at least twice in the preceding two years. Both times, the conversation had been deferred due to competing priorities.
The trigger for change was the government contract win. The new contract required the firm to submit monthly project financial reports to the client in a prescribed format. The existing system could not produce those reports without significant manual intervention, and the finance manager estimated it would consume two to three full days per month in additional work. The partners recognised that the tipping point had been reached.
Marginfy's Approach
Marginfy was engaged to lead the ERP selection and implementation process, recognising that the choice of system and the quality of its implementation would determine whether the firm's finance function was genuinely transformed or simply shifted from one set of limitations to another.
The selection process involved a structured assessment of four systems appropriate for a professional services firm of this size and complexity: Sage Intacct, NetSuite, MYOB Advanced, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Assessment criteria included multi-entity capability (relevant for the planned Brisbane expansion), project accounting functionality, integration with the firm's existing project management and time-tracking software, reporting flexibility, and total cost of ownership over three years.
Sage Intacct was selected based on its strong project accounting module, its native multi-dimensional reporting capability, and its open API architecture, which allowed clean integration with the firm's time-tracking platform. The total cost of ownership was favourable relative to NetSuite at the firm's scale, and the implementation pathway was assessed as lower risk.
Before implementation began, Marginfy led a chart of accounts redesign. The existing structure had evolved organically over a decade and contained redundant accounts, inconsistent departmental coding, and a project classification hierarchy that did not align with how the business was actually managed. The new chart of accounts was designed around the firm's three service lines and two office locations, enabling the multi-dimensional reporting that the partners had wanted but never had the system infrastructure to support.
The implementation was structured in two phases. Phase one covered core financials, bank feeds, accounts payable and receivable, and the time-tracking integration. Phase two covered the project accounting module, contract management, and the custom report and dashboard build. The phased approach allowed the firm to go live on the core system while the more complex project accounting configuration was completed and tested without business disruption.
Marginfy built a board reporting pack directly within Sage Intacct, producing a suite of reports that could be generated in minutes at month-end rather than assembled manually over several days. The pack included a consolidated P&L with prior year and budget comparatives, a utilisation report by service line, a work-in-progress and debtors summary, and a project-level contribution margin report covering all active contracts.
Change management was an explicit component of the engagement. Marginfy conducted training sessions with the finance manager, the project managers who would be entering time and approving project costs, and the two partners who would be primary users of the board reporting dashboards. Adoption of any new system lives or dies on the quality of this onboarding, and the training investment was reflected in how smoothly the go-live period progressed.
The Results
The first full month-end close on Sage Intacct was completed in 9 days — reducing the previous 15-day close by 6 days. By the third month, the finance manager had refined her close process further and was consistently completing month-end within 8 to 9 days, representing a 40% improvement in close efficiency.
The partners received their first management accounts within two weeks of the period end — a meaningful shift from the previous reality of receiving data that was already a month stale. The quality of financial discussion at leadership meetings improved noticeably, with the partners now working from current data and the forward-looking insights the new dashboards provided.
The government contract reporting requirement, which had been the immediate catalyst for the project, was met without difficulty. The monthly project financial reports were configured as a standard output from the project accounting module and were being produced in under an hour per month.
The multi-entity capability Sage Intacct provides was activated when the Brisbane office opened, six months after go-live. The consolidated group reporting that had previously been a manual exercise was automated from day one of the new entity's operation.
Indirect financial benefits were also measurable. With the finance manager freed from the time previously consumed by manual reconciliations and report production, she was able to turn her attention to analysis and business partnering work that had always been theoretically within her role but practically impossible given the system constraints. Her involvement in project profitability analysis during the engagement period identified a pattern of scope creep on a particular service line that was reducing project margins by an estimated $120,000 annually — recoverable through improved contract management disciplines that she led.
The partners reflected that the ERP project had done more than upgrade a system. It had changed the relationship between the leadership team and their financial data — from a periodic, backward-looking obligation to an ongoing, forward-looking advantage.