Moving from QuickBooks to Sage Intacct Construction takes more work than moving from Sage 100 Contractor or Sage 300 CRE, because projects, cost codes, and cost types are new to your team.
We've done a lot of implementations and wanted to share what makes them successful. Tina Rehberg and Troy Guevara sat down for this article with a few examples that showcase a smooth migration.
Construction accounting requirements
When you have a dedicated parts inventory, you need Sage Intacct Construction, not the standard version of Sage Intacct.
Sage Intacct Construction provides the structure contractors need for job costing, project profitability, cost codes, compliance, project management, submittals, transmittals, RFIs, and change management.
QuickBooks is a useful bookkeeping system for startups. It helps a business record checks and invoices and assign them to the appropriate accounting categories.
QuickBooks doesn't do construction accounting. It does a really good job of identifying categorically where checks and invoices go, but it doesn't provide you true job cost information.
Troy Guevara · Construction TechnologistA general ledger shows that an expense occurred. Project, cost-code, and cost-type structure shows which job the cost hit, what kind of cost it was, and what it does to work in progress.
Why a QuickBooks migration takes more work than a Sage migration
Moving from QuickBooks requires more translation than moving from another Sage product.
Contractors using Sage 100 Contractor or Sage 300 CRE typically have concepts and structures that carry into Sage Intacct Construction. They may already work across multiple entities and organize accounting information using GL prefixes, subaccounts, or similar reporting structures.
These systems are not identical, but they have important similarities. Some terms and workflows may change, while much of the underlying accounting structure remains familiar.
QuickBooks is organized differently. Customer and vendor records can carry over, but the broader dimensional structure is often new. The migration moves the records and teaches your team a different way to organize and report what you already track.
Most of that extra work is training, and it's crucial to make sure the team is prepared.
Dimensions determine migration complexity
QuickBooks users understand customers and vendors. Sage Intacct Construction builds on those two dimensions and adds locations, projects, cost codes, and cost types.
Everything past those first two is new, and it moves the view down to where the work actually happens.
If you have never used projects in QuickBooks, that shift is the part that takes the training.
Dimensions, again, are the core hurdle. In QuickBooks they understand customers and vendors — and those are dimensions in Intacct too — but the expansion is the new part: locations, cost codes, cost types, project IDs. A lot of QuickBooks clients don't use projects at all, so the shift we're guiding them through is going from seeing accounting only at the general-ledger level to seeing it at the project and cost-code/cost-type level. The vocabulary is different too; what Sage 300 calls a category, QuickBooks calls a cost type. I make a point of letting the client explain their world first so I hear their language, then I adapt mine to match theirs as we map it into Intacct.
Tina Rehberg · Senior Sage Intacct ConsultantA simple reporting question highlights the difference: Can you run a profit-and-loss statement by customer, location, project, or item? QuickBooks does not provide that analysis through a dimensional chart of accounts.
This reporting gap helps determine how much new structure your implementation team must design during the migration.
Item IDs and part numbers
Ackerman’s inventory requirements made the design more complex. The company needed to preserve detailed inventory information, including strict item IDs and part numbers.
Not every QuickBooks migration includes this level of inventory detail.
Interstate Mechanical & Core, which migrated from Sage 300 CRE, used a more general cost-code structure and did not need to preserve the same level of item detail. Both companies moved to Sage Intacct Construction, but the data-modeling work was very different.
Construction companies that want interest in Intacct will look up Sage Intacct, but we need to make sure we distinguish and let them know they need to look at Sage Intacct Construction, which is different from Sage Intacct.
Troy Guevara · Construction TechnologistTwo contractors using the same accounting software may need very different implementations. The difference often depends on how much cost information they track through inventory. The scoping conversation has to get into your item list before anyone quotes you a timeline.
When QuickBooks reporting reaches its limit
Contractors often start looking for a new accounting system when they can no longer report on their financial information in the way the business requires.
The data exists in QuickBooks, but the system may not be able to organize and present it in the format management, regulators, or investors need.
It usually comes down to frustration getting data out of the system the way they need to see it. The reporting is outdated or just doesn't give them what they're looking for; they can't dissect the data for new reporting requirements, new state requirements, or a new private-equity owner who wants to see the numbers in a different format their current system can't produce. That's exactly what the dimension model fixes — you can manipulate and modify dimensions to get to the end result they need to see. So with the clients I work with, the readiness signal is that data frustration: they've hit the ceiling of what QuickBooks reporting can show them.
Tina Rehberg · Senior Sage Intacct ConsultantDimensions allow you to analyze the same financial activity by job, location, item, or other business criteria without rebuilding the chart of accounts for each report.
Strict inventory requirements and limited reporting can make a move to Sage Intacct Construction a detailed data-modeling project. If you need profit-and-loss statements by customer, location, project, or item, those dimensions should be included in the system design from the beginning.
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