The IT Nerd

 Sage today unveiled new functionality in Sage Intacct designed to help finance teams move from managing data to driving performance. These new features simplify operations, accelerate reporting, and empower finance teams to lead with accuracy, agility, and confidence.

With finance leaders under pressure to move faster and deliver more value, Edelman DXI research for Sage  shows that 84% want to close the books faster, and 87% are seeking greater automation across AP and reconciliation workflows. The latest Sage Intacct updates address these needs with AI-powered intelligence that helps teams work smarter and make confident, data-led decisions.

Alongside these innovations, Sage is taking steps to make AI more transparent and accountable. The Sage AI Trust Label, now live in Sage Intacct in the US and UK, gives customers clear insight into how AI is developed and applied, including how data is used, the safeguards in place to prevent bias, and the measures taken to ensure accuracy and compliance.

Driving the Next Era of High-Performance Finance

From AI-driven variance analysis and real-time reconciliation to automated consolidations, connected insurance data, and a growing network of intelligent Agents, Sage Intacct continues to deliver on its vision for High-Performance Finance, helping customers simplify complexity, improve control, and accelerate growth.

These Agents – including Close, AP, Time, Assurance, and the newly announced Finance Intelligence Agent – work together to automate repetitive tasks, surface insights in context, and provide finance leaders with continuous visibility across their operations. Together, they represent a significant step toward autonomous finance, where insights and actions flow seamlessly across the business.

As Sage advances this vision, partners and customers are already seeing how these innovations bring new levels of visibility and confidence to financial operations.

What’s New in Sage Intacct R4 2025

•  Close Automation with Sage Ai 
  
  Close Automation with Sage Ai is now generally available for all customers in the US and UK, bringing together the full suite of intelligent close capabilities – Close Workspace, Close Assistant, Subledger Reconciliation Assistant, and Variance Analysis – all in one connected, Sage Copilot-guided experience. The solution provides visibility across teams, tasks, and entities, helping finance leaders identify issues early, shorten close cycles, and improve accuracy and auditability.
  
  Available to customers in the US and UK
  
• Finance Intelligence Agent
  
  The Finance Intelligence Agent is the newest addition to Sage Intacct’s growing network of AI Agents, delivering autonomous insights alongside existing Close, Accounts Payable, Time, and Assurance Agents. It allows finance teams to ask questions in natural language through Sage Copilot and receive instant, actionable answers – transforming how they access, analyse, and act on data.
  
  Early Access available to customers in the US and UK from December
•  Equity Method for Advanced Ownership Consolidation
  
  The new Equity Method for Advanced Ownership Consolidation automates equity accounting for complex, multi-level ownership structures, including partial ownership and multi-parent rollups. By automatically generating and recording equity entries during consolidation, finance leaders gain transparency, precision, and flexibility with affiliate-level reporting across multiple entities
  
  Available to customers in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and South Africa
• Sage Intacct PolicyConnect
  
  Sage Intacct PolicyConnect seamlessly integrates policy administration systems with the general ledger, giving insurance organizations a unified view of operational and financial data. This connection enables deeper analysis of profitability, exposure and performance, delivering real-time policy level data to accelerate reporting and provides actionable insights to stakeholders.
  
  Available to customers in the US
• AI Trust Label Now Live in Sage Intacct
  
  The Sage AI Trust Label is now live in Sage Intacct in the US and UK, giving customers greater transparency and confidence in how AI is developed and used. It provides clear, accessible information on Sage’s responsible AI practices, including compliance, data use, safeguards against bias, and accuracy monitoring — helping businesses build trust and confidence in AI-powered finance.
  
  Now available to Sage Intacct customers in the US and UK
•   Sage Expense Management
  
  Sage Expense Management, formerly Fyle, simplifies and automates expense workflows with real-time spend notifications and AI-powered receipt capture and matching. The card-agnostic solution lets organizations retain existing credit-card programmes while gaining instant visibility into spend, helping finance teams control costs, improve accuracy, and close faster.
  
  Available to Sage Intacct customers in the US

 Sage announced its AI Trust Label is now live in Sage Intacct for both US and UK customers. This first phase of a global rollout gives tens of thousands of users clearer insight into how AI is developed and used in business software, helping SMBs adopt AI with greater confidence.

Making AI easier to understand

The AI Trust Label provides transparent, accessible information about how AI functions across Sage’s products. It highlights key trust indicators, such as:

• Global regulation compliance
• Customer data usage
• Systems monitoring accuracy and ethical performance

By simplifying complex technical details, Sage enables SMBs to understand the impact of AI in their business without needing technical expertise.

Built on a foundation of responsible innovation

The rollout of the AI Trust Label builds on Sage’s long-standing commitment to responsible technology development. In 2023, Sage published its AI and data ethics principles and adopted the US NIST AI Risk Management Framework globally. The company also signed the Pledge for Trustworthy AI in the World of Work to promote fairness and inclusion and implemented emerging standards such as the UK Government’s AI Cyber Security Code of Practice.

Why trust matters

Sage research shows a direct link between trust and AI adoption. While 94% of SMBs already using AI report seeing benefits, the majority (~70%) have yet to fully adopt the technology. The difference is trust.

Among those who trust AI, 85% say they actively use it in their business. Among those who don’t, that statistic drops to 48%. Less than half (43%) of SMBs say they have low trust in the companies building AI tools for business.

Now, Sage Intacct customers will see the AI Trust label within the product experience and can access additional details via Sage’s Trust & Security Hub.

Expanding across Europe and beyond

Following the successful rollout in the UK and US, Sage will extend the AI Trust Label across Europe as the next step in its roadmap. Future phases will expand the AI Trust Label to more products and markets globally.

Calling for collaboration in responsible AI

Sage continues to advocate for closer collaboration between industry and governments to establish a consistent and certified framework for AI labelling. The company is also exploring ways to share its own framework more broadly to help to accelerate AI adoption across the technology sector.

Sage today introduced the Sage Intacct Finance Intelligence Agent. The Finance Intelligence Agent is part of Sage’s growing network of AI agents transforming the role of the CFO, from supporting the business to leading it.

This launch sets a new benchmark for high-performance finance and marks a pivotal step toward autonomous operations and insights. By supporting CFOs with AI-powered agents, Sage helps organisations get continuous accounting, trust, and insights, delivering speed, accuracy, and clarity, while reducing manual efforts and reporting.

Historically, finance teams often needed to hunt for reports, review dashboards, and sometimes export and manipulate data in spreadsheets to get answers and make recommendations – a process that could take minutes to hours depending on the complexity of the task. The Finance Intelligence Agent represents the next evolution of AI in finance, acting as an intelligence layer that routes natural language questions to the right AI Agents and financial data sources, coordinates their responses, and composes a final, actionable answer – in seconds. By eliminating the need to run reports or analyse data externally, it simplifies decision-making and accelerates outcomes.

A growing network of Sage AI Agents

The addition of the Finance Intelligence Agent builds on the existing suite of Sage Intacct AI Agents designed to support finance teams across workflows:

• Close Agent: Keeps close tasks on track, flags issues early and provides full visibility in one workspace.
• AP Agent: Automates bill processes, PO matching, and duplicate checks, allowing teams to review and approve with confidence.
• Assurance Agent: Catches errors at entry, stopping mistakes before they post and eliminating downstream rework.
• Time Agent: Automates project time capture, freeing staff from manual entry and maximising billing and estimating accuracy.

These agents are built on Sage’s unified platform – where applications, workflows, and data come together – and powered by Sage AI, which delivers purpose-built, domain-specific AI services. Acting as behind-the-scenes specialists, they operate within permission boundaries, whether surfaced through Sage Copilot or embedded into product workflows.

Sage AI Agents strengthen Sage Intacct as one of the industry’s leading and most trusted platforms for CFOs. Built by finance teams, Sage Intacct’s AI Agents deliver automation that is practical, transparent, and tailored to how they work, helping organisations meet today’s pressures head-on.

Empowering finance teams

Sage Intacct AI Agents relieve pressure on teams that spend too much time on manual processes and chasing data. By automating tasks like drafting bills, matching transactions, guiding close activities, and flagging errors before they escalate, these Agents help finance teams operate with greater speed, accuracy, and confidence.

They connect insights and actions across finance operations, enabling CFOs and their teams to focus on strategy and growth. Together, the Agents streamline core workflows and advance continuous accounting, delivering trusted insights while reducing manual effort and reporting overhead.

Meeting the pressure on finance

According to McKinsey, technologies can fully automate 42% of finance activities and mostly automate a further 19%. Sage data shows how this potential is being realised in practice, with AI processing 45 million bills, flagging 190 million anomalies, and processing 3.2 billion transactions annually. Customers are saving an estimated 50 million hours annually.

Availability and next steps

Unlike general-purpose AI tools that require extensive customization, Sage Intacct’s finance-first AI Agents work out of the box, delivering fast results with minimal setup.

Whether accessed through Sage Copilot or embedded into workflows, with the autonomy of agents, finance teams get faster results.

The Finance Intelligence Agent is available in December to Early Adopters on Sage Intacct across the US and the UK.

Sage today released new research revealing that small businesses could hold the key to closing Canada’s long-standing productivity gap—if supported by SME-first AI and digital policies.

The report, Canada’s Digital & AI Imperative: Closing the Productivity Gap and Driving SME Growth, shows that while digital adoption is now essential to business survival and growth, uneven access to technology and skills risks creating a two-speed economy that leaves smaller firms behind.

Research Overview

Conducted in collaboration with Strand Partners, the research surveyed over 2,000 SME leaders across Canada. It found that:

• Skills shortages are a growing concern: 41% of medium-sized firms cite a lack of internal expertise as a barrier to scaling digital adoption.
• Cost remains the top hurdle for small firms: 58% say affordability is the biggest barrier to digital transformation.
• Digitalization is mission-critical: 80% of SMEs say it’s essential for growth, and 82% say it’s vital for survival.
• AI adoption is accelerating: 51% of SMEs already use AI, with another 18% planning to adopt it within three years.
• Medium-sized firms are leading the charge: They’re investing nearly twice as much in AI as small firms and reporting significantly higher productivity gains.
• Digital investment pays off: SMEs adopting digital tools see an average 29% productivity boost in the first year, with every dollar invested returning up to $2.40 among digital leaders.

However, regional and sectoral divides persist:

•  AI adoption rates range from 56% in Québec to just 28% in Northern Canada.
• Sectors like finance and tech lead the way, while agriculture and construction lag.
• Cost, skills shortages, and unclear ROI remain major barriers.

SME-First AI Policy Recommendations

Sage is urging policymakers to place SME adoption at the heart of Canada’s AI strategy, backed by targeted skills investment and sustained support frameworks. To secure long-term prosperity and global competitiveness, Canada must close its productivity gap through inclusive AI adoption. This means empowering SMEs across all sectors and regions to lead confidently in the digital economy, while ensuring alignment with evolving global standards.

To address the most pressing barriers, Sage recommends the following policy actions:

• Embed SME adoption at the core of national AI strategy
• Equip SMEs with practical AI skills and confidence
• Unlock AI investment through targeted tax breaks and grants
• Deliver trusted, context-specific guidance for SMEs
• Foster a whole-of-ecosystem approach, uniting federal and provincial governments, industry, academia, and community partners
• Accelerate e-invoicing and structured data adoption

Closing Canada’s productivity gap demands inclusive action. Sage urges policymakers to adopt SME-first AI policies grounded in the lived experience of small business leaders. By investing in access, skills, and infrastructure—and aligning globally—Canada can unlock the full potential of its entrepreneurial economy. These priorities reflect the realities of Canadian entrepreneurs and chart a path to inclusive, innovation-led growth. As we mark Small Business Month, Sage calls on all stakeholders to champion a digital economy where small businesses lead.

You can download the report here.

A new study from IDC, commissioned by Sage, that examines how high-performing channel partners are leveraging AI to deliver powerful customer outcomes and shape the future of the channel.  

The study found that a new wave of high-performing partners is redefining the channel by scaling faster, adopting AI sooner, and delivering measurable customer outcomes. 

IDC surveyed 2,000 software resellers globally, including Canadian partners for the study. Key Canadian findings include:  

• 70% of Canadian channel partners say they have an AI practice. 
• Canadian partners face unique challenges
  • Almost half (49%) citing budget constraints are a top barrier to technology investment. 
  • 44% say lack of skilled resources is the top internal barrier to achieving high performance. 
• 76% of Canadian partners are embracing a more strategic role in the channel, positioning themselves as trusted advisors rather than transactional sellers. 

You can read the study here: https://www.sage.com/en-ca/news/press-releases/2025/09/idc-study-reveals-how-high-performing-partners-win-with-ai-and-specialisation/

 Sage today announced the launch of Workforce Intelligence, a new analytics engine for Sage People, designed to give HR leaders deeper visibility, anticipate challenges and drive strategic impact through data.

Despite growing pressure on HR teams to take a more strategic role, research from Gartner® found that although the labour market has undergone significant shifts, most organisations still rely on headcount-based planning, which limits their ability to anticipate future talent needs. In fact, only 15% of companies engage in strategic workforce planning, leaving a significant gap in HR’s ability to align talent with long-term business goals. Now available to Sage People customers, Workforce Intelligence addresses this gap by providing AI-powered insights, allowing HR to analyse, aggregate and visualise data to deeper insights into their business needs.

Designed for mid-sized, global businesses, Workforce Intelligence helps HR leaders see what’s really happening in their organisation so they can respond to change with confidence. By highlighting trends and uncovering blind spots, the latest enhancement to Sage People gives managers a clearer view of their teams and supports them to make faster, more informed decisions. Built on the Salesforce platform, it combines flexibility, security and ease of use in one intuitive experience.

Supporting modern HR teams with personalised learning and wellbeing support

With research from IDC finding that reskilling is now one of the top three pain points for HR leaders, and only 13% of employees saying they feel well supported in their professional development, there’s a clear need for more accessible, effective learning experiences. To help address this, Sage has partnered with Uptime, an award-winning platform that uses AI to deliver curated micro-learning and wellbeing content to HR teams.

Available in over 24 languages, Uptime brings together personal development, corporate training, compliance and wellbeing in bite-sized formats. Its unique five-minute knowledge hacks, distil key insights from books, courses, videos and podcasts, making it easier for employees to learn on the go, while integrated wellbeing content supports work-life balance and long-term resilience.

To find out more about the latest updates to Sage people visit: https://www.sage.com/en-gb/sage-business-cloud/people/

Sage today unveiled powerful new capabilities in Sage Intacct that help high-performing finance teams move faster, gain greater control, and lead with impact.

With new AI-powered automation, embedded payments, and built-in sustainability insights, the latest innovations are designed to simplify operations, accelerate the close, and give finance teams time back to focus on higher value work.

Today’s finance leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver speed, efficiency, and strategic value, yet many are still held back by manual processes, fragmented systems, and rising ESG demands. Recent Sage research found that 84% of finance leaders want to close the books faster, and 87% are looking for more advanced AP automation to support their goals.

From intelligent reconciliations and simplified payment to real-time emissions estimates, Sage Intacct is delivering the tools CFOs need to eliminate inefficiencies, boost resilience, and drive sustainable growth.

As Sage delivers on its High-Performance Finance vision, partners are seeing how these innovations translate into tangible improvements for customers.

What’s New in Sage Intacct R3 2025:

AI-Powered Close, Reconciliation, and Answers

• Close Automation – Subledger Reconciliation Assistant: Sage Copilot continuously monitors subledger and General Ledger balances, automatically flags discrepancies, and provides drill-down views to resolve issues before they delay the close. Saves time and improves accuracy.

Available for new and early access customers in the US and UK.

• Close Automation – Close Workspace: Standardises the month-end close with customisable task templates, checklists, ownership tracking. Sage Copilot delivers real-time notifications to keep the close moving and reduce last minute surprises.

Available to early access customers in US and UK.

• Copilot Search Help: Context-aware, natural language help that provides users with fast answers to product-related questions, increasing solution knowledge and productivity.

Available in English for customers in US, UK, Canada, South Africa, and Australia.

Smarter AP and Procurement Automation

• Sage Vendor Payments powered by MineralTree: Delivers embedded payments to streamline AP workflows with flexible payment methods via ACH, check, or virtual card directly in Sage Intacct. Gain better cash flow visibility, reduce fraud risk, and eliminate manual steps from your payment process.

Available to customers in the US.

• AI-powered Line-level Matching: Automatically matches invoice lines to purchase order lines, flags discrepancies, and accelerates approvals. Reduces manual AP reviews and errors.

Available to early access customers in all regions.

• Sage Intacct eProcurement: Now extended to all industries, with embedded vendor punchout for streamlined purchasing. Shop directly from vendor sites, automatically bring order data into Intacct, and apply negotiated pricing. Simplify procurement, improve accuracy, and strengthen spend control.

Available to customers in the US.

Sustainability by Default

• Sage Earth Carbon Accounting: UK customers now have access to fast, no-setup carbon footprint estimates based on industry and revenue data. Helps kickstart sustainability initiatives and prep for future reporting.

Available to customers in the UK.

Sage has today announced the launch of Tap to Pay in Sage Accounting. The new feature, powered by Stripe, is available to Canadian customers and enables small businesses and sole traders to take in-person payments using only their mobile phone, via the Sage Accounting app.

Tap to Pay removes friction from how businesses get paid. It forms part of a smarter, connected experience in Sage Accounting, where tasks like creating invoices, taking payments, reconciling accounts and tracking cashflow happen more seamlessly. Combined with Sage Copilot, it helps business owners stay on top of their cashflow with less effort and more confidence. Tap to Pay brings together Stripe’s trusted payments infrastructure with Sage’s deep understanding of how small businesses work to solve a real and everyday challenge: slow and inconsistent cashflow.

Research from Good Business Pays highlights that businesses in the last year are reporting a 20% increase in average payment times – now exceeding 80 days. The knock-on impact can be significant. With Tap to Pay, payment is automatically applied to the invoice and reconciled in the customer’s accounts, removing the need for manual input, hardware like card readers and chasing for invoices.

What Tap to Pay means for Sage Accounting customers

With support across the two main mobile operating systems, small businesses now have the flexibility to take payments in the moment, using the devices they already own.

The new feature supports mobile businesses and sole traders by making it easier to get paid at the point of service. From independent tradespeople and fitness instructors to market stallholders and consultants, customers can now take payment on the spot, without having to follow up later.

It means that customers can:

• Take payments anywhere using a mobile device
• Accept contactless cards and digital wallets
• Automatically reconcile payments in Sage Accounting
• No need for additional card readers or payment terminals
• Secure and compliant processing, powered by Stripe

Strengthening Sage’s partnership with Stripe

This marks the latest step in Sage’s partnership with Stripe, following last year’s announcement to embed payment capabilities across its small business solutions. With Tap to Pay, small businesses and sole traders can now accept contactless payments from cards or digital wallets directly via the Sage Accounting app.

To find out more about Sage Accounting and Tap to Pay visit here: https://www.sage.com/en-ca/sage-business-cloud/accounting/

Sage made several major announcements at its annual conference, Sage Future, in Atlanta today, which largely focuses on their vision and roadmap to empower professionals with new AI capabilities to drive efficiencies and greater value for their customers.

Today’s announcements Include:

Sage Copilot for Sage X3

Most notably, Sage announced the global availability of Sage Copilot for Sage X3, which marks the first time the company’s advanced generative AI productivity assistant, Sage Copilot which is designed to transform business management and operations is available to Canadian businesses.  Sage Copilot for Sage X3 will first focus on empowering sales managers and representatives to easily query customer orders, shipping timelines, and fulfilment issues.  Now with Sage Copilot, Sage X3 users will benefit from

• Conversational interaction
• Real-time operational alerts
• Sales intelligence that anticipates risk
• A unified 360° view

AI Trust Label

Sage also announced the development of its AI Trust Label – a first-of-its-kind initiative to bring greater clarity and accountability to how AI is developed and used in business software.  The AI Trust Label is designed to provide customers with clear, accessible information about the way AI functions across Sage products. 

The Trust Label focuses on key trust indicators such as compliance with privacy and data regulations, how customer data is used, the presence of safeguards to prevent bias and harm, and the systems in place to monitor accuracy and ethical performance. This initiative allows SMBs to understand how AI impacts them – without needing a technical background.

Agentic AI

Sage announced its vision for the next wave of artificial intelligence with the potential of agentic AI and autonomous agents helping SMBs in a third wave of innovation.  The company discussed its next phase of AI strategy and how Sage is building on its AI heritage and expanding into the emerging space of Agentic AI.

Sage Intacct Roadmap

The company also announced how Sage Intacct will leverage AI, automation and deep industry insights to propel finance teams into a new era of high performance by unveiling the Sage Intacct product roadmap, giving customers a clearer view of what’s coming next.  As part of the roadmap, organizations can expect more AI capabilities coming to Intacct, including:

• Close Workspace
• Enhanced AP Automation
• Continuous Assurance
• Cash Flow Prediction & Optimization
• Developer Tools for Sage Copilot

CPA AI Collaboration

Sage announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with CPA.com, the business and technology subsidiary of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), to license select AICPA resources to train Sage Copilot. The collaboration is about building trusted connections between the technology sector and the accounting profession, between innovation and governance, and between local leadership and global consistency. It signals Sage’s commitment to responsible, industry-aligned AI development and its ambition to help shape the future of finance with transparency and rigour.

High Performance Finance Software

Sage unveiled “High-Performance Finance Software”, a new brand mission to empower modern CFOs with the tools, skills, and community they need to lead in today’s economy. As part of the program, Sage will launch a CPE accredited training program for high-potential finance leaders, providing them the strategic tools and competencies to be the catalysts of growth.

Sage Supply Chain Intelligence

Sage announced Sage Supply Chain Intelligence to help operating teams reduce delays by 35%, protect margins, and scale faster without overhauling their existing systems. Since acquiring Anvyl in 2024, Sage has rebranded and expanded the solution to create Sage Supply Chain Intelligence, an offer that gives more SMBs greater control and collaboration across the first mile of their supply chain.

Sage today announced the global expansion of Sage Embedded Services. 

Initially launched in the UK, Sage Embedded Services is now available across North America and Europe. enabling banks, fintechs, and software platforms to seamlessly build accounting capabilities directly into their products. This allows their small businesses and sole traders customers to save time, stay compliant, and make smarter business decisions. At the same time, it empowers platform partners to deliver branded accounting and related capabilities without the complexity or cost of developing their own solutions from scratch.

Sage Embedded Services aims to equip platform partners with capabilities that deepen customer engagement, drive loyalty, and unlock sustainable growth through enhanced user experiences.

The expansion responds to a growing demand from small businesses for simplified business management capabilities embedded directly into their ecosystem within the applications they already use in daily operations.  It enables access to key financial tools, like bookkeeping, reporting, and compliance, without switching platforms or disrupting existing workflows.

Why it matters for platform partners

Sage Embedded Services offers banks, fintechs, and software providers a powerful way to differentiate their offerings by embedding accounting and compliance tools directly into their own products. This enables partners to meet more of their customers’ day-to-day financial needs while delivering a unified, seamless experience.

For platform partners, this is a chance to:

• Accelerate time to market with Sage’s headless APIs, reducing development time and lowering technical barriers to build and maintain.
• Deliver tailored solutions with modular accounting capabilities, matching their specific customer needs.
• Boost customer engagement by making their apps more useful, sticky, and central to daily workflows 
• Unlock new revenue streams through monetizable, value-added features

Built for small businesses and the platform partner ecosystem

Sage Embedded Services is designed specifically for organisations that build digital products used by self-employed individuals and small businesses such as online banks, fintech providers, and industry specific software companies. The service is modular, allowing platform partners to directly embed:

• Multi-dimensional general ledger
• Real-time financial reporting
• Customisable insights and analytics

Depending on the region, additional functionality such as carbon accounting, collaboration with accountants and more may be available.  Platform partners have complete control over how these accounting capabilities appear and function within their products, ensuring a seamless, brand-aligned experience for their customers, powered by Sage’s deep experience in bookkeeping, accounting and tax compliance.