That’s a meaningful distinction, especially during compressed deal timelines, when the stakes are high. Financial statements follow accounting rules. A QoE report asks harder questions about the business underneath those numbers. This article breaks down what a QoE report reveals, why it matters for both buyers and sellers, and how to use it to make smarter transaction decisions.

Financial Statements Show the Scoreboard – Not the Game

A balance sheet and income statement reflect the past. They’re prepared according to GAAP, which means they’re consistent and auditable, but they don’t necessarily reflect the economic reality of a business going forward. Revenue gets recognized in ways that look clean on paper but may not repeat. Expenses get classified in ways that make margins look stronger than they are. One-time items get buried.

A QoE report digs into all of that. It looks at whether revenue is genuinely recurring, whether customer concentration creates risk, and whether any costs were deliberately deferred or excluded from the period being reviewed. The goal isn’t to catch anyone doing something wrong. It’s to understand what normalized earnings actually look like once you strip out the noise.

Earnings Sustainability: The Question Audits Don’t Ask

A quality of earnings report and an audit answer different questions: an audit confirms that financial statements follow accounting standards, while a QoE report asks whether the earnings those statements show are sustainable. Those are two very different questions. Analysts conducting a QoE review examine revenue recognition patterns closely. They look at whether growth came from new customers or from pulling future revenue into the current period. They check whether contracts are multi-year or project-based.

They assess whether pricing is stable or artificially inflated heading into a transaction.On the expense side, they identify costs that the current owner absorbed personally, costs that won’t exist post-close, and costs the buyer will need to add. All of that feeds into adjusted EBITDA, which buyers and lenders use to inform M&A valuation and structure financing.

Working Capital: Where Deals Get Surprised

Working capital is one of the most common sources of post-closing disputes, and it’s an area where financial statements alone will mislead you. The reported working capital balance on a given date tells you very little about what’s normal for that business across the year.

A QoE report analyzes working capital trends across multiple periods. It identifies seasonal patterns, changes in collection practices, unusual prepayments, and shifts in inventory management. That analysis directly informs the working capital target in the purchase agreement, which determines whether the buyer gets a price adjustment after closing.

Cash Flow Reality: Income and Cash Aren’t the Same Thing

A business can show strong net income and still have serious cash flow problems. A QoE report examines the relationship between reported earnings and actual cash generation. If those two numbers diverge significantly, it’s worth understanding why.

The analysis covers capital expenditure requirements, deferred maintenance, and whether the business needs ongoing investment to sustain its current revenue base. Some businesses look highly profitable until you account for the equipment refresh cycle, the software licenses, or the headcount needed to scale. A QoE report surfaces all of it.

Sell-Side QoE: Not Just for Buyers

Many sellers assume a QoE report is something the buyer orders to scrutinize them. That’s only half the picture. Sellers who commission sell-side due diligence before going to market show up to the process in a much stronger position.

A sell-side QoE lets you find and address issues before a buyer does. It gives you time to document one-time items, prepare clean explanations for anomalies, and tell your financial story proactively rather than reactively. That credibility often translates into less friction during diligence and better deal terms.

Working With BPM

BPM’s transaction advisory team takes a forensic, business-focused approach to quality of earnings work, going beyond the numbers to help you understand what they mean for the deal ahead. Whether you’re buying, selling, or preparing for either, we work with you to surface what the financials don’t show on their own and give you the clarity to move forward with confidence.

If you have a transaction on the horizon and want to understand what an engagement would look like for your situation, explore BPM’s Quality of Earnings Services or contact us

The real value comes from how well those systems work together.

When critical business applications aren’t connected, finance teams often become responsible for bridging the gaps through manual data entry, spreadsheet reconciliations, and duplicate processes, all signs that may warrant a Sage Intacct health check

Sage Intacct’s Marketplace offers a broad ecosystem of pre-built integrations designed to streamline data flow between business systems. Choosing the right integrations can help reduce manual effort, improve data accuracy, and give finance teams more time to focus on analysis and strategic decision-making.

This article explores several areas where Sage Intacct integrations can deliver meaningful value for growing organizations and what finance leaders should consider when evaluating their integration strategy.

Connecting Business Systems Creates Greater Value

Few organizations operate on a single software platform. Customer relationship management, payroll, expense management, procurement, and business intelligence often reside in separate systems, yet finance depends on accurate information flowing between all of them.

When those systems aren’t connected, finance teams spend valuable time manually entering data, reconciling discrepancies, and resolving inconsistencies. As organizations grow, those manual processes become increasingly difficult to sustain.

Integrating key business applications with Sage Intacct helps create a more connected finance environment where information flows automatically, reducing duplicate work while improving consistency and visibility across the organization.

CRM Integrations Improve the Flow Between Sales & Finance

The transition from a closed sale to invoicing and revenue recognition is an important handoff between sales and finance. Without integration, customer information, contract details, billing schedules, and pricing often need to be entered into multiple systems, creating delays and increasing the opportunity for errors.

Integrations with platforms such as Salesforce and HubSpot help streamline that process by allowing information to flow more efficiently into Sage Intacct. This can accelerate invoicing, improve data consistency, and provide greater visibility into the customer lifecycle.

Expense Management & Accounts Payable Automation Increase Efficiency

As organizations grow, invoice processing and employee expense reimbursement can become increasingly time-consuming. Manual approvals, paper invoices, and repetitive data entry often create unnecessary bottlenecks within the finance team.

Solutions such as BILL, SAP Concur, Expensify, and other Marketplace partners support accounting automation with Sage Intacct across many of these routine processes. By streamlining approvals, reducing manual data entry, and improving visibility into upcoming cash requirements, finance teams can process transactions more efficiently while strengthening internal controls.

Payroll Integrations Improve Financial Visibility

Payroll is one of the largest operating expenses for many organizations, making timely and accurate financial information especially important.

Integrating payroll platforms such as ADP, Gusto, or Paylocity with Sage Intacct can reduce manual journal entries while providing better visibility into labor costs across departments, projects, locations, or entities. As organizations expand, this level of insight becomes increasingly valuable for budgeting, forecasting, and operational decision-making.

Business Intelligence & Planning Tools Support Better Decision-Making

Sage Intacct provides robust multidimensional reporting, but some organizations require broader financial planning and analysis capabilities.

Integrations with solutions such as Microsoft Power BI, Planful, and Prophix allow organizations to combine financial information with operational data from other business systems, providing leadership with a more comprehensive view of performance. These insights become especially valuable when planning for growth, evaluating new investments, or preparing information for boards and investors.

Choose Integrations Based on Business Priorities

Not every integration will deliver the same value for every organization. The most effective integration strategy starts by identifying where manual effort, duplicate data entry, or reporting challenges have the greatest impact on the business.

From there, organizations should evaluate solutions that not only address today’s operational needs but also support future growth. Considerations such as scalability, security, data governance, vendor support, and long-term maintainability are just as important as individual product features.

The goal isn’t to connect every application, it’s to build a technology ecosystem that supports an efficient, connected finance function.

Working with BPM

Selecting the right Sage Intacct integrations involves more than reviewing a list of available applications. It requires understanding how your organization operates today, where inefficiencies exist, and how your technology strategy can support future growth.

At BPM, our Sage Intacct services help organizations evaluate their current processes, identify opportunities to simplify workflows, and design a connected Sage Intacct environment that aligns with their business objectives. Whether you’re planning a Sage Intacct implementation for the first time or optimizing an existing environment, our team can help you prioritize the integrations that will deliver the greatest value.

If you’re looking to reduce manual effort, improve visibility across your organization, and get more from your Sage Intacct investment, we’d welcome the opportunity to discuss your goals and help you build a scalable integration strategy.

Understanding how NetSuite licensing works before requesting a quote can help you avoid unnecessary costs, purchase the right functionality, and position your business for long-term growth. Just as importantly, involving the right NetSuite partner early in the process can make all the difference.

Why NetSuite Licensing Strategy Starts Before Pricing

NetSuite licensing isn’t one-size-fits-all and pricing isn’t publicly published. Unlike purchasing off-the-shelf software, there isn’t a single price that applies to every customer. Every agreement is built around an organization’s specific requirements and negotiated individually. That means the most important licensing decisions often happen before a quote is ever generated. An experienced NetSuite Solution Provider helps organizations evaluate requirements, identify the right edition and modules, determine appropriate user licensing, and structure an agreement aligned with their business needs and budget.

The earlier a partner is involved, the more value they can provide. Before an initial quote is created, there’s an opportunity to shape the licensing strategy from the ground up. Once pricing has already been established, there are naturally fewer opportunities to influence how the agreement is structured. At BPM, our licensing professionals work alongside our implementation consultants every day. This gives us a practical understanding of how licensing decisions impact implementation complexity, user adoption, and long-term system success, not just your initial purchase. Talk to a BPM licensing consultant before requesting your first quote from NetSuite.

Understanding Your Core NetSuite Licensing

Every NetSuite ERP subscription begins with a base platform license that includes core financial management functionality such as:

• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Financial Reporting
• Cash Management
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Inventory Management

The cost of that base license depends largely on which edition is appropriate for your business. NetSuite ERP for growing businesses offers Starter Editions designed to provide enterprise-grade financial management without enterprise-scale complexity. These editions include industry-specific configurations for businesses such as wholesale distribution, manufacturing, software, nonprofit, professional services, and more.

Selecting the right edition is one of the first decisions that can significantly impact your long-term licensing investment. Organizations often either purchase more functionality than they need today or select an edition they quickly outgrow as their business evolves. Evaluating your business roadmap upfront helps ensure your licensing supports both current operations and future growth, and you get the most out of your NetSuite investment.

Users: How License Types Impact Your Costs

After the base license, user licensing is typically the largest factor affecting cost. Every individual who needs to access NetSuite requires some level of user license. However, not every employee requires the same level of access. For example, employees who simply submit expense reports, enter timesheets, or view dashboards often qualify for less expensive limited-access licenses rather than full-user licenses.

Mapping user roles before requesting pricing creates a much more accurate licensing estimate and often uncovers opportunities to reduce unnecessary costs. User licensing is also an area where careful planning can create significant savings. Many organizations assign full-user licenses to employees whose responsibilities may not require that level of access. A thoughtful role-mapping exercise before pricing discussions begin can significantly optimize your licensing investment.

Modules: Paying for the Functionality You Need

Beyond the base license, NetSuite’s modular licensing model allows organizations to add functionality based on their specific business requirements. Capabilities such as financial automation, business insights, order management, eCommerce, human resources, professional services automation, and supply chain automation are licensed separately, allowing businesses to invest in the functionality they need. One of the biggest misconceptions about NetSuite licensing is that every module must be purchased individually. In reality, NetSuite often offers packaged licensing options that combine multiple capabilities at a lower overall cost than purchasing each module separately.

An experienced NetSuite Solution Provider can help identify when these options make sense and ensure your licensing strategy aligns with your business requirements, maximizing your investment. The goal isn’t to purchase as many modules as possible, but rather to purchase the modules your business genuinely needs. A manufacturer managing inventory across multiple warehouses has vastly different requirements than a software company focused on subscription billing. Likewise, a professional services organization may prioritize project accounting over inventory management.

It’s equally important to identify functionality that’s already included in your edition before purchasing additional modules. Companies sometimes invest in capabilities they already own simply because no one walked them through what was included in their licensing. The best licensing decisions come from mapping your actual business processes to NetSuite functionality before requesting a quote. That’s one of the most valuable exercises BPM performs with prospective clients, helping organizations build a licensing strategy that supports both their immediate needs and future growth.

Contract Structure: Planning for Long-Term

NetSuite subscriptions are typically structured as annual agreements, but the contract itself is about much more than the initial purchase price. Decisions made during your first licensing negotiation can influence future renewals, expansion pricing, annual increases, and the overall cost of ownership for years to come. Understanding contract timing, renewal strategy, co-termination of additional licenses, and future growth plans can help avoid surprises later.

An experienced licensing partner can support you throughout the lifecycle of your NetSuite investment, not just during the initial purchase. BPM helps clients navigate initial licensing decisions and negotiations, future expansion needs, and renewal conversations, serving as your advocate throughout your relationship with NetSuite so your team can stay focused on running the business.

Should You Buy NetSuite Directly from Oracle or Through a Solution Provider?

One of the most common questions organizations ask is whether they should purchase NetSuite directly from Oracle or work through a NetSuite Solution Provider like BPM. The answer surprises many buyers. In most cases, the licensing cost is the same whether you purchase directly or through an authorized Solution Provider. The difference is the experience, guidance, and advocacy available throughout the evaluation process. Working with a Solution Provider gives you an experienced partner who can help:

• Evaluate editions and licensing options
• Right-size user licensing
• Determine which modules you need
• Structure contracts around future growth
• Coordinate negotiations with NetSuite
• Provide ongoing licensing support after the sale

Rather than navigating the licensing process alone, you have a dedicated partner whose goal is helping you make informed decisions before commitments are made. Unlike a licensing-only conversation, BPM brings implementation experience into the evaluation process. We understand how decisions around editions, users, modules, and configurations affect the way your team will actually use NetSuite after go-live.

Make Your First Quote Your Best Quote

NetSuite licensing isn’t simply about negotiating the lowest price, it’s about ensuring you purchase the right solution for your business today while creating a foundation for future growth. The best licensing strategy balances cost, functionality, and scalability. The decisions you make before requesting your first quote can influence your licensing costs, NetSuite implementation success, and long-term flexibility for years to come. Having an experienced partner involved before pricing discussions begin gives you the opportunity to evaluate your options, understand available licensing structures, and enter the conversation with NetSuite fully informed.

At BPM, our NetSuite Licensing services help organizations evaluate editions, user licensing, modules, and licensing strategy before they ever request a formal quote. Our goal is to help you understand your options, avoid unnecessary costs, and build a licensing footprint tailored to your specific needs and budget. Contact us today to request a complimentary NetSuite licensing consultation with BPM and start your NetSuite journey with the right strategy from day one.

Sage Intacct provides powerful reporting and dashboard capabilities, but getting the most value from them requires thoughtful planning. This article explores several best practices for designing dashboards that deliver real-time financial insights with Sage Intacct, support better decision-making, and evolve alongside your business.

Start with Business Questions, Not Dashboard Components 

Before building a dashboard, identify the questions your leadership team asks most often.Are they focused on cash flow? Profitability by business unit? Budget performance? Project margins? Accounts receivable management? Customer collections? Those questions should drive the design. 

Too often, organizations begin by browsing available reports and assembling dashboards based on what’s easy to display rather than what leaders actually need to know. Starting with business priorities ensures every metric serves a purpose and every dashboard supports meaningful conversations. 

Design Dashboards for the Audience 

Different stakeholders need different information. An executive team may want a high-level view of financial performance, trends, and key performance indicators. Department leaders often need operational metrics that help them manage budgets, projects, or resources. Accounting teams typically require greater transactional detail. 

Sage Intacct allows dashboards to be tailored by user role and permissions, making it possible to deliver relevant information to each audience without overwhelming users with unnecessary detail. A focused dashboard is often the most effective. Rather than displaying every available metric, prioritize the information that helps each audience make timely, informed decisions. 

Use Drill-Down Capabilities to Provide Context 

Dashboards should answer the first question, and make it easy to answer the second. A KPI may highlight that expenses increased or gross margin declined, but decision-makers often need to understand why. Configuring dashboard components with drill-down capabilities allows users to move seamlessly from high-level metrics into the underlying transactions and reports without leaving Sage Intacct. Providing that additional context helps transform dashboards from static reports into interactive decision-support tools. 

Keep the Experience Simple & Consistent 

Effective dashboards emphasize clarity over complexity. A clean, consistent layout helps users quickly locate the information they need without unnecessary distractions. Use chart types that best communicate the underlying data, apply colors consistently, and place the most important information where users naturally focus first. Consistency across dashboards is equally important. Standardizing layouts, terminology, and visual indicators creates a more intuitive experience while reducing training time and improving adoption across the organization. 

Review Dashboards as Your Business Evolves 

Business priorities change over time, and dashboards should evolve with them. As organizations grow, introduce new service lines, expand into new markets, or adjust reporting structures, existing dashboards may no longer reflect the information leadership needs most. Periodically reviewing dashboard content through a Sage Intacct health check helps ensure reports remain relevant while eliminating metrics that no longer support business decisions. The best dashboards aren’t static, they evolve alongside the organization they support. 

Working with BPM 

Building effective dashboards requires more than technical expertise. It begins with understanding how leadership makes decisions and identifying the financial information that supports those decisions. At BPM, our Sage Intacct services work with organizations to design Sage Intacct dashboards that align reporting with business objectives, improve visibility, and provide meaningful insights for every level of the organization.

Whether you’re beginning a Sage Intacct implementation or looking to optimize your existing reporting environment, we can help you build dashboards that deliver lasting value.

Key Change: Software Treated as Tangible Personal Property

HB26-1223 amends Colorado’s definition of tangible personal property to include computer software. The revised definition of computer software covers coded instructions delivered by any means, including compact disc, download, or remote access through the internet. The law also expressly includes applications installed on cellular phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

Sourcing Software Transactions May Present Compliance Challenges

The legislation removes prior multiple-points-of-use language allowing taxpayers to allocate software licenses based on use inside and outside Colorado. As a result, taxpayers may face uncertainty in determining how software and SaaS transactions should be sourced, particularly for enterprise licenses, mobile applications, and remotely accessed platforms used across multiple jurisdictions.

Colorado generally applies destination-based sourcing rules to sales of tangible personal property and taxable services. Those rules may now apply to taxable software and SaaS transactions using the following hierarchy:

• If the purchaser receives the software at the seller’s business location, the sale is sourced to that location.
• If the software is not received at the seller’s business location, the sale is sourced to the location where receipt by the purchaser occurs, including the location indicated by delivery instructions if known by the seller.
• If those rules do not apply, the sale is sourced to the purchaser address available in the seller’s ordinary-course business records, provided use of the address is not in bad faith.
• If business records do not resolve the sourcing location, the sale is sourced to an address for the purchaser, including the address associated with the purchaser’s payment instrument, provided use of the address is not in bad faith.
• If none of the above rules can be applied, the sale is sourced to the location indicated by the address from which the tangible personal property was shipped.

Exemptions for Certain Software Transactions

Custom Software

Software developed for a particular user, rather than offered for repeated sale or license to multiple users, remains exempt from Colorado sales and use tax.

Negotiable License Agreements

The law also provides an exemption for software governed by a qualifying negotiable license agreement. To qualify, the agreement must be individually bargained between the licensor and licensee and signed in writing by authorized representatives of both parties. Standard form, boilerplate, click-through, browse-wrap, shrink-wrap, account-creation, embedded-signature, and other automated acceptances generally do not qualify. Electronic signatures, such as through DocuSign or a similar authorized method, may satisfy the written signature requirement.

Business-to-Business Transactions Require Further Review

Purchases of software and SaaS may qualify for exemption in limited business-to-business situations, such as purchases for resale by managed service providers or software incorporated into products sold by the purchaser. However, these exemptions may not apply neatly to many software and SaaS arrangements.

Colorado generally excludes from sales and use tax purchases of tangible personal property that are purchased for resale in the ordinary course of business.

Colorado also provides an exemption for ingredients and component parts purchased by manufacturers when the property becomes part of a manufactured product.

Because software and SaaS may not fit squarely within these existing business-to-business exemptions, additional guidance from the Colorado Department of Revenue will be important. Businesses should review resale, embedded software, and managed service provider arrangements before January 1, 2027.

Home Rule Cities May Apply Different Rules

Colorado’s local sales tax system is complex, and many home rule cities administer their own sales taxes. These jurisdictions may diverge from state definitions and exemptions, and some already treat software and SaaS as taxable. Sellers and purchasers should separately evaluate state and local taxability for Colorado transactions, including whether particular local jurisdictions conform to the new state rules.

Client Considerations

Businesses selling or purchasing software in Colorado should begin preparing for the January 1, 2027 effective date. Key action items include reviewing product taxability, evaluating customer and vendor license agreements, determining whether negotiable license or custom software exemptions may apply, updating billing and tax calculation systems, and developing documentation to support sourcing and exemption positions.

Companies with customers, users, or employees in multiple Colorado jurisdictions should also assess local tax exposure, as home rule city treatment may differ from the state-level rules.

Please contact your BPM tax advisor to discuss how these changes may affect your business and what steps may be appropriate before the January 1, 2027, effective date. 

This article looks at how AI and Sage Copilot are reshaping the close process, which tasks they can streamline, and what finance leaders should think through before adopting them.

Why the Traditional Close Still Slows Teams Down

Most finance teams spend much of the close reconciling accounts, preparing journal entries, and investigating discrepancies. A controller might pull data from three or four systems, match it by hand, and flag anything that looks off. That work is repetitive, but it still requires judgment, so companies can’t just hand it to a junior employee without review.

The result is a monthly financial close that often stretches past ten days for mid-market companies and delays timely reporting. Every extra day delays the reporting that leadership needs to make decisions. It also keeps skilled accountants tied up in tasks that don’t use their training.

What Sage Copilot Actually Does

Sage Copilot is an AI assistant built directly into Sage Intacct. It answers questions about financial data in plain language, drafts journal entries, and flags transactions that look unusual based on historical patterns. Its variance-analysis capabilities can surface budget-to-actual differences and explain key drivers in plain language, and it pulls the answer in seconds instead of an hour of digging.

The tool also helps with anomaly detection. For example, the Financial Assurance agent can compare journal entries with historical patterns and materiality thresholds to flag unusual activity. These alerts do not replace a reviewer’s judgment, but they can focus attention on items that warrant a closer look, which saves real time during the close cycle.

Beyond Copilot, Sage Intacct accounting automation handles bank reconciliations, intercompany eliminations, and recurring journal entries without much manual input. Together, these tools shift the close from a manual checking exercise to a review-based process.

How AI Changes the Accountant’s Role

None of this removes accountants from the process. It changes what they spend their time on. Instead of matching transactions line by line, an accountant reviews what the system has already flagged and applies judgment to the exceptions. That shift moves the role closer to analysis and further from data entry.

This matters for staffing, too. Mid-market companies often struggle to hire and retain accounting talent. When AI reduces the repetitive work involved in the close, the job becomes more appealing to people who want to do meaningful work rather than reconcile spreadsheets all month.

What to Consider Before Adopting AI in the Close Process

AI tools work best when the underlying data is clean. A company with a flawed chart of accounts structure or messy historical data will get unreliable results from any AI feature, no matter how well built. Getting the foundation right matters more than picking the flashiest tool.

Companies also need a plan for how much they trust automated outputs. Some finance teams turn on every automation feature at once and then spend weeks untangling errors they didn’t catch early. A better approach introduces automation gradually, starting with lower-risk tasks like bank reconciliations before moving to journal entries and anomaly detection.

Training matters just as much as the technology. Staff need to understand what the AI is doing and why, so they can catch mistakes instead of rubber-stamping whatever the system produces. Without that understanding, automation can create new risks instead of removing old ones.

Getting the Close Process Right With BPM

Adopting AI in the close process takes more than flipping a switch in Sage Intacct. It takes a clear finance transformation strategy built around data quality, a rollout sequence that matches a company’s risk tolerance, and staff who understand how to work alongside these tools rather than defer to them blindly. BPM’s Sage Intacct Services help mid-market finance teams build that plan, from cleaning up the data foundation to evaluating and configuring Sage Copilot and related automation features in a way that fits how the team works.

If your close process still takes longer than it should, talk to BPM about how Sage Intacct optimization or expanded capabilities could improve the close for your team. Reach out to start the conversation.

7 Signs Your Sage Intacct Implementation Needs a Tune-Up

This article walks through the warning signs that point to a Sage Intacct implementation in need of a tune-up, and what finance leaders can do about it.

1. Your Month-End Close Keeps Getting Longer

A well-designed Sage Intacct environment should support a fast monthly financial close, not one that gets slower over time. If your team is spending more hours each quarter reconciling accounts, chasing down discrepancies, or manually adjusting entries that should flow automatically, the configuration, processes, or integrations may no longer support the team’s needs.

Sometimes the issue is a missed opportunity for automating accounting with Sage Intacct. Other times it’s a chart of accounts that has grown messy after years of ad hoc additions.

2. Reports Don’t Match Across Departments

When finance, sales, and operations pull numbers from the same system but get different answers, trust in the data erodes fast. This usually points to inconsistent use of dimensions, different report definitions or filters, duplicate records, or reporting templates designed for an earlier version of the business.

A company that has grown through acquisition or added new revenue streams often outgrows its original reporting framework without anyone updating it to match.

3. Your Team Relies on Spreadsheets to Fill the Gaps

Sage Intacct is built to provide real-time financial insights, so if your team still exports data to Excel to build the reports leadership wants, the system may not be fully supporting current reporting requirements. This is one of the clearest signs that dashboards, custom reports, or saved views were never configured to match how the business operates today.

It’s a fixable problem, but it usually requires a fresh look at reporting needs rather than another patch on top of the old setup.

4. Custom Fields and Workflows Have Piled Up

Every business adds a custom field or two along the way. The trouble starts when nobody tracks what those fields do, why they were created, or whether anyone still uses them. Over time, unused fields and abandoned workflows clutter the system, slow down performance, and confuse new hires trying to learn the platform. A cluttered Sage Intacct instance is harder to train people on and harder to trust.

5. Integrations Break or Require Manual Fixes

If your team regularly re-enters data because an integration with your CRM, payroll system, or expense tool stopped syncing correctly, that’s a red flag. Integrations may be disrupted by expired credentials, connector or API changes, revised mappings, or changes to data structures and business processes. When manual intervention becomes routine, the integration and its error-handling process should be reviewed.

6. You Haven’t Adopted New Features Since Go-Live

Sage Intacct issues four releases each year, and updates such as Sage Intacct 2026 Release 1 consistently include enhancements relevant to finance-team pain points. Companies that haven’t revisited their setup since implementation are often missing tools that could save real time, from improved automation options to better multi-entity consolidation. Keeping the original configuration unchanged year after year may prevent the organization from realizing the full value of its investment.

7. Nobody Fully Understands the Original Setup Anymore

Staff turnover happens, and when the people who built the original implementation move on, institutional knowledge often goes with them. If your current team can’t explain why certain settings exist or how a particular workflow was designed, that’s a sign the system needs a documented review. This kind of knowledge gap makes it hard to troubleshoot problems or plan for growth with confidence.

Working With BPM

A Sage Intacct health check does not have to mean starting over. It typically means evaluating configuration, dimensions, reporting, workflows, permissions, integrations, and feature adoption, identifying areas that no longer support the business effectively, and prioritizing targeted improvements.

BPM’s Sage Intacct services help finance teams review existing environments, pinpoint the root causes behind slow closes, mismatched reports, and inefficient workflows, and put a plan in place that fits how the organization operates.

If your Sage Intacct system feels like it’s working against you instead of for you, now is a good time to find out why. To schedule a Sage Intacct health check and get a clear picture of what a tune-up could do for your team, contact us.

The complexity is real, but most of it is manageable with the right tax planning for professional athletes. The challenge is that the planning cannot wait until April. Here is an overview of the major tax issues professional athletes face and why they require a coordinated, year-round approach.

Your Income Is More Complicated Than Your Contract

Most athletes think about income in terms of what is on their playing contract. For tax purposes, though, your total picture is likely broader and more varied than that. Common income sources include:

• Team salary reported on Form W-2
• Signing and performance bonuses, which may be taxed in the year received or structured for deferral
• Endorsement, sponsorship, and appearance fees, typically reported on Form 1099 and subject to self-employment tax
• Prize money and competition awards
• Licensing and royalty income from the use of your name, image, or likeness (NIL)
• Investment income from portfolios, real estate holdings, or business interests

Each of these income streams is taxed differently depending on how it is structured, where it is earned, and whether it qualifies for any deferrals or deductions. Running them together without a coherent strategy can mean missed planning opportunities and avoidable tax exposure.

“Athletes often don’t realize how many different tax treatments are layered into a single year of income until they see it broken out on paper,” said Elizabeth Dodson, Partner at BPM. “A signing bonus, a sponsorship deal, and a playoff share can each be taxed under different rules, in different jurisdictions, on different timelines. Without a plan that accounts for all of it together, it’s easy to miss opportunities or end up with a bill you didn’t see coming.”

Quarterly Taxes & Cash Flow Planning

Unlike a traditional salaried employee, you will not always have taxes withheld at the source. Endorsement fees, appearance income, prize money, and other self-employment revenue typically arrive without any withholding, which means you are responsible for making quarterly estimated tax payments at the federal and state levels. Missing those installments, or underpaying them, can trigger penalties and interest before you have even filed your return for the year.

Variable income makes this harder to manage than it sounds. What you earn in a given year may look nothing like the prior year, depending on contract bonuses, endorsement activity, playoff performance, or a midseason trade that changes your jock tax exposure overnight. Building a cash management discipline that sets aside a meaningful portion of income as it arrives, rather than scrambling at year-end, is one of the most practical steps you can take to avoid tax surprises. Consistent recordkeeping throughout the year also supports the multi-state filing obligations described below, where accurate documentation is not optional.

Multi-State Income & the Jock Tax

If you play or compete in multiple states, your home state is not your only tax jurisdiction. The jock tax is the informal name for the nonresident income taxes that most states and many localities assess on athletes who earn income within their borders. The result, for many professional athletes, is a filing footprint that spans ten, fifteen, or more states in a single year.

States generally use one of two methods to allocate your income across jurisdictions. The duty day method calculates the percentage of your total duty days (from the first required reporting date through the end of your season) that occurred in each state, then applies that percentage to your annual compensation. The games-played method uses the ratio of games in a given state to total games on your schedule. Either way, the math requires consistent documentation throughout the season, not just at tax time.

Tax credits for taxes paid to other states can help prevent double taxation, but claiming those credits accurately across multiple nonresident returns requires coordination. A missed credit is money left on the table. A missed filing is a potential audit trigger.

Residency & Domicile Planning

Where you live can be just as important as where you play, especially when considering the tax implications of moving to a new state.. States differ dramatically in how they tax residents. Florida, Texas, Washington, and Nevada impose no personal income tax, while California and New Jersey carry top marginal rates that can reach into the double digits. Athletes who can establish legitimate domicile in a lower-tax state may reduce their overall liability meaningfully over the course of a career.

That said, states take residency questions seriously, particularly when high-income individuals are involved. Simply maintaining an address in a no-tax state is not enough if you spend most of your time, keep close personal ties, or maintain a primary home elsewhere. Residency audits targeting high earners are common, and the burden of proof typically falls on the taxpayer. Documenting where you actually spend your time, where your immediate family lives, where you bank, where your vehicles are registered, and where you maintain meaningful personal and professional relationships is the foundation of a defensible domicile position.

Endorsement Income & Entity Structuring

Endorsement, sponsorship, and media income differs from your playing salary in a meaningful way: it is typically self-employment income, which means it carries self-employment tax on top of ordinary income rates. For athletes generating consistent off-field revenue, structuring that activity through a pass-through entity such as an S corporation may reduce that additional tax burden.

An S corporation election allows you to divide income between a reasonable W-2 salary and owner distributions. Only the salary portion is subject to payroll taxes, which can produce real savings once your endorsement income crosses a certain threshold. In the sports and entertainment world, this structure is commonly referred to as a loan-out company.

Under a loan-out arrangement, you become an employee of your own entity, which then contracts directly with sponsors, brands, or media companies on your behalf. Beyond the potential tax advantages, a loan-out can also provide a degree of liability protection and gives you more control over how your off-field income is categorized and managed. The right structure depends on your income level and the nature of your activity, but for athletes with growing personal brands, this is a planning area worth examining carefully.

Deferred Compensation

Some of the most visible tax planning in professional sports involves deferred compensation arrangements. When structured properly, deferring a portion of your salary allows you to shift income recognition into future years when your overall tax picture may look different. Shohei Ohtani’s decision to defer the vast majority of his Dodgers contract brought widespread attention to how significantly deferral can reshape an athlete’s annual tax liability, but the underlying principle applies across sports and income levels.

Careful review of contract terms, bonus timing, and incentive structures with both your legal and tax advisors can have consequences that extend years into the future. In a compressed earning window, the timing of when income is recognized matters as much as how much you earn.

Retirement Planning in a Short Career

Most professional careers last somewhere between three and fifteen years, which means the window to build a lasting financial foundation is narrow. Tax-advantaged retirement accounts are one of the most straightforward tools for making the most of it.

In 2026, a solo 401(k) allows total contributions of up to $72,000, and a SEP-IRA offers a similar ceiling for self-employment income. Athletes with both W-2 income from a team and self-employment income from endorsements may be able to contribute across multiple plan types, subject to coordination rules. Front-loading retirement contributions during peak earning years, then considering Roth conversions in the lower-income years following career end, can extend tax-advantaged growth for decades after your playing days are over.

Charitable Giving

Many athletes are active philanthropists, and charitable giving can work alongside your broader tax strategy when it is thoughtfully structured. Donating appreciated securities rather than cash, for example, allows you to sidestep capital gains tax on the appreciation while still receiving a deduction for the full fair market value. Donor-advised funds offer additional flexibility for athletes who want to make a substantial gift in a high-income year and direct it to causes over time.

One recent change worth noting: beginning in 2026, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) requires that charitable contributions exceed 0.5 percent of your taxable income before generating a deduction benefit. Athletes with significant philanthropic programs should revisit how their giving is structured in light of this new threshold.

Estate Planning & the Role of Life Insurance

Athletes who build significant wealth during their careers often want that wealth to benefit the next generation. But high-value estates carry their own tax obligations, and the structure of an athlete’s assets can create complications that require planning well in advance.

The federal estate tax applies to estates above the applicable exemption threshold. For athletes whose wealth is concentrated in illiquid assets such as real estate, business interests, or a licensing portfolio built around their name and likeness, heirs may face a tax bill that the estate does not have the liquid assets to cover. Without advance planning, that can force a sale of assets at an unfavorable time and on terms the athlete would not have chosen.

Life insurance is one of the more straightforward tools for addressing this problem. A properly structured policy provides beneficiaries with a cash benefit that can satisfy estate tax obligations without requiring a sale of the underlying assets. Holding the policy inside an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) can keep the death benefit outside the taxable estate, further strengthening its value as a planning vehicle. For athletes whose personal brand or intellectual property continues to generate income long after their playing careers end, this kind of liquidity planning is not a peripheral concern. It is central to preserving what they have built.

The Case for Coordinated Planning

The common thread running through each of these areas is that none of them can be addressed in isolation. Your residency position shapes your state tax exposure. Your entity structure determines how endorsement income is taxed. Deferred compensation decisions interact with retirement planning. Charitable giving touches both cash flow and tax liability. When these pieces are not working in concert, gaps form and opportunities slip by.

Professional athletes need a tax and financial planning strategy that treats all these elements as connected. Because they are.

BPM’s Private Client Services Group Is Here to Help

BPM’s Private Client Services professionals work with athletes across a range of sports and income profiles, helping them navigate the full scope of multi-state filings, income structuring, residency planning, deferred compensation, and long-term wealth management. If your career is generating questions your current advisors cannot fully answer, we are ready to help. Contact us to start the conversation.elp you prepare for the expectations of a digital asset audit. To learn more, contact BPM’s Blockchain and Digital Assets team.

The Default AI Planning Table

When AI initiatives launch, the same cast usually shows up: IT leads implementation, legal builds the governance framework, finance approves the budget. HR is called in later to coordinate training and manage internal communications. It feels like a sensible division of labor until you consider what’s missing from that early conversation.

Every AI deployment reshapes how people work, which tasks get automated, which roles evolve, and what skills your workforce will need next. Those are HR questions. And when the people best positioned to answer them aren’t at the table during the design phase, organizations end up with systems that function technically but stall organizationally.

“The organizations we see succeeding with AI aren’t necessarily the ones with the most advanced tools,” said Jill Pappenheimer, MBA, SPHR, Partner, HR Consulting at BPM. “They’re the ones who brought HR into the conversation early, thought carefully about their people, culture, messaging and built adoption into the strategy from day one. Technology creates efficiency. But it’s people who drive growth, and you need both to actually get there.”

Of course, this challenge looks different depending on where your organization is. Some companies have seasoned HR teams that simply haven’t been given a seat at the AI strategy table yet. Others are working with lean HR functions that are stretched thin by day-to-day operations, with little bandwidth to take on something as complex as AI governance, workforce planning and strategy. And some, particularly fast-growing mid-market companies, are navigating this without a dedicated internal HR team at all. In any of those cases, bringing in a fractional HR advisor early can fill the gap and give your AI strategy the people-centered foundation it needs before decisions get locked in.

What HR Adds to the AI Strategy Conversation

The Beamery research identifies three areas where early HR involvement strengthens AI integration in HR: efficiency, equity, and acceptance. Each represents a real risk when HR is sidelined, and a real opportunity when HR is given a seat at the design table.

Getting AI Right Requires Workforce Visibility

One of the more revealing findings in the Beamery study is how often C-suite leaders make automation decisions without accurate data about how work actually gets done. In fact, 37% of HR leaders identified this visibility gap as the single biggest barrier to preparing their workforce for AI. Yet only about 29% of C-suite leaders analyze task duplication across roles and departments when deciding what to automate, and fewer than half look closely at productivity impact or the repetitive nature of specific tasks.

That gap matters because targeting the wrong tasks for automation is one of the most common and costly AI missteps. HR professionals have the granular workforce visibility that helps correct it. They know which roles overlap, where time is genuinely being spent, and which functions could most benefit from automation without disrupting what’s working. They can identify where AI frees people for higher-value work and where it creates new problems. That perspective, applied during the planning phase, leads to smarter and more targeted AI investments.

For organizations without a dedicated HR function, or with an HR team focused primarily on operations and compliance, that visibility can be genuinely hard to develop internally. An outside HR advisor can step in to conduct the workforce assessments, skills inventories, and task analyses that give your AI strategy accurate data to work from. It’s one of the most practical ways to close the gap between what your C-suite thinks is happening and what’s actually happening across your workforce.

Equity Isn’t Automatic: It Has to Be Designed

When HR is consulted only after an AI strategy is set, organizations lose one of their most important checks against bias and unfair outcomes. This risk is both growing and increasingly visible. Since 2022, legal challenges alleging that AI-powered hiring tools produce discriminatory results have been rising steadily, covering protected characteristics including race, gender, age, and disability. With roughly 88% of companies now using some form of AI for initial applicant screening, the scale of that exposure has expanded significantly.

HR professionals are well positioned to address it. They understand employment law, know how to assess disparate impact, and can apply AI for HR best practices to bias testing and oversight that keep AI tools fair and defensible. When involved from the design phase, they can build equitable data practices and ethical governance into an AI strategy from the ground up, rather than retrofitting protections after a problem surfaces.

Employee Acceptance Is Earned, Not Assumed

Nearly half of the C-suite leaders in the Beamery study cited gaining employee trust and overcoming resistance as among their greatest challenges in implementing AI. That outcome is predictable when workforce perspective is missing from the planning process.

The anxiety is real and measurable. A recent American Psychological Association survey found that more than a third of workers worry AI will make some or all of their job duties obsolete. Among that group, roughly half reported experiencing negative mental health effects, and nearly half said they were considering leaving their employer as a result. Concerns were notably higher among Black, Hispanic, and Asian workers, underscoring the connection between the acceptance and equity challenges.

HR professionals are built for this moment. They know how to communicate organizational change in ways that build confidence rather than fear, design transition pathways that give employees a meaningful stake in the outcome, and structure the kind of engagement that converts skepticism into adoption. When those strategies are part of an AI initiative from day one, rather than grafted on after resistance has already taken hold, the results are measurably different.

The Business Case for Getting This Right

The Beamery data makes the gap between ambition and practice hard to ignore. Just 12% of C-suite leaders said their Chief Human Resources Officer had the most influence in AI decision making, even as nearly all of them expect AI to reshape their organizational structures this year. That discrepancy is where a lot of AI value goes unrealized.

Organizations that close that gap tend to capture significantly more of what AI actually promises. Research from leading consulting firms points consistently to substantial productivity gains for functions that approach AI with people strategy built in. The organizations that treat AI as a pure technology initiative, on the other hand, often find themselves explaining to leadership why significant investment hasn’t delivered. The answer typically comes back to the same set of factors: trust, readiness, and the alignment between the technology and the workforce expected to use it.

The CHRO community has taken note. Surveys published in 2026 show that the vast majority of Chief Human Resources Officers rank AI and workplace digitization as their top concern, ahead of governance, engagement, and talent issues combined. HR leaders see the stakes clearly. The question is whether your organization gives them the standing to act on that early enough to matter.

How BPM Can Help

At BPM, our AI in HR services work alongside organizations navigating exactly this challenge. Building a sound AI strategy means addressing the technology and the people simultaneously. Those conversations need to happen together, not in sequence. Through our HR consulting and workforce advisory services, we can help you:

• Assess your current HR function’s readiness for AI integration and identify the right place to start
• Build AI governance frameworks that account for workforce fairness, data privacy, and evolving regulatory requirements
• Develop upskilling and reskilling programs that prepare your people for the roles AI will reshape or create
• Design change management strategies that build employee trust and accelerate adoption
• Align your AI investments with a broader talent and workforce strategy tied to your business goals

Whether you’re in early planning stages or working through the challenges of a rollout that didn’t fully account for people factors, BPM can help you build a more complete and durable foundation.

Ready to put HR at the center of your AI strategy? Contact BPM’s HR consulting professionals to start the conversation.

Top Signs Your Original Structure Might Not Fit Anymore

This article walks through seven signs that can help you determine when to change your business structure and what each one could mean for your tax position.

1. Your Ownership Group Has Changed

Bringing on a new partner, buying out a co-owner, or adding an investor changes more than your cap table. It changes how income, losses, and credits flow through to each owner, and your existing operating agreement may not account for the new mix. LLCs taxed as partnerships have to revisit allocation provisions every time ownership shifts, and an outdated agreement can create mismatches between what the document says and what happened during the year.

2. Your Partner Allocations Are Getting Complicated

Income, gain, loss, deduction, and credit allocations among partners have to hold up under Internal Revenue Code Section 704(b), and that gets harder as a partnership grows. Capital accounts, basis calculations, and at-risk limitations all need to stay accurate, and debt allocations among partners add another layer most owners don’t think about until something goes wrong. If these calculations are becoming difficult to maintain, it may be a sign that the entity has outgrown informal tracking methods.

3. You’ve Expanded into New States

Adding locations or signing contracts in new states means your flow-through entity now has to navigate multiple state tax regimes, each with its own filing requirements and treatment of pass-through income. What worked as a single-state LLC can turn into a compliance burden once apportionment, state tax nexus, and state-level entity-level taxes enter the picture. This is also where LLPs run into added complexity, since partner compensation and ownership transfers can trigger different reporting obligations depending on where the partnership operates.

4. Your Personal Assets Carry More Risk Than You Think

General partners and sole proprietors are personally liable for the debts and legal claims of the business. Depending on the structure, a lawsuit, vendor dispute, or unpaid loan may expose an owner’s personal assets.

Converting to an LLC or corporation builds a legal separation between the business and its owners, which matters most in industries where litigation risk runs high, such as construction, real estate development, and healthcare.

5. You’re Preparing to Sell or Acquire a Business

An M&A transaction almost always forces a hard look at entity structure.The acquiring entity has to absorb liabilities, integrate ownership, and meet compliance requirements that may span several jurisdictions. On the seller’s side, how the business is structured can affect whether a sale gets taxed as a stock transaction, an asset sale, or something in between, and that distinction can change the outcome significantly. These conversations work best months before a deal closes, not during final negotiations.

6. You’re Planning for the Next Generation

Passing a business to family or a long-time partner requires a structure that can support the transition. Without the right entity in place, transfers can trigger estate tax consequences nobody planned for or create disputes among heirs who weren’t given clearly defined ownership stakes. A structure built for one owner rarely accommodates a multi-owner succession plan without some rework.

7. Your Tax Bill Doesn’t Match Your Expectations

When your tax liability feels disconnected from how the business performed, the entity itself is often part of the explanation. Sole proprietors and general partners pay self-employment tax on the full amount of profit, while S-corp owners can split income between salary and distributions in ways that may reduce that burden. None of this eliminates taxes outright, but the right structure changes how and when you pay them, and that difference compounds year over year.

Working With BPM

A business structure is not a decision you make once and leave alone. As ownership, operations, and long-term goals evolve, the entity that made sense years ago may no longer reflect how the business operates today. BPM’s flow-through services help partnerships, LLCs, and S corporations evaluate whether their structure still fits, addressing everything from partner allocations and basis calculations to multistate compliance and succession planning.

If any of these seven signs sound familiar and you are wondering when to change your business structure, it’s worth having a conversation before the next filing deadline forces the issue.