Product Comparison

Management Features

Feature IconMSA Other Brands
Separate Accounting System for Each Location Yes No
Accurate Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet Reports by Division Yes No
Roll-up Reporting for Real Management Analysis Yes No
Company Wide Communication System Yes No
Managing the Organizational Structure Yes No

Accounting Features

Feature IconMSA Other Brands
Balance Sheet Reporting by Division (Assets, Liabilities, etc.) Yes No
Rollup Reporting Yes No
Personal Settings Yes No
Unlimited Users at No Extra Charge Yes No
Multiple Simultaneous Tasks in a Single Browser Session Yes No

Developer Friendly

Feature IconMSA Other Brands
Accessible data through web service APIs Yes No
Read/write access allows you to develop custom integrated solutions Yes No
Fine-grained security controls per API call Yes No
Live “Call & Request” test-bed for designing and testing API calls without writing code Yes No
“Developer Center” with complete documentation and example code Yes No
Data access in XML and JSON formats Yes No

Large companies can spend weeks and even months gathering and collating financial information. This lateness of information hinders a company's performance. Had they known the facts earlier they could have made adjustments sooner thus increasing their bottom line. With IconMSA all this information is available a few seconds after it's requested. No one has to prepare something and send it up the chain of command. It's always there for the chain of command simply because they used IconMSA. No need for manual collation of figures. No need to prepare special monthly reports. Just go the tier reports in IconMSA and run them whenever you want. Want to see how the states fared this month or this year. Just run a graph of income and expenses by division or for all divisions. Instantly, you will see where things are going well and where things are not going so well. Any time, any place. In seconds. That's the power of IconMSA.

Most systems provide some way of assigning income and expenses to a profit center but they do not carry it through to the balance sheet accounts. Thus, preparing any type of balance sheet reporting by Division/Profit Center cannot be done. IconMSA manages this for you so your accounting system can mirror your company structure. Companies do have multiple divisions and they do want to know how each division is performing. Both from a profit and loss basis and a balance sheet basis.

Every user the database administrator creates is given a password. The user, through use of their personal settings, can change the password so it is personal just to them. This also protects the database administrator from accidently giving this information out. If a password is forgotten, the administrator can push a button and the password will be sent to the email address the user created. Everyone is protected.

Each person can control the default accounting year they are working on. One user can be working in one accounting year and another person can work in yet another. They can set the default day of the month for the session they are in. They can establish the colors they want to use for displaying graphs and the system will remember them.

The Manager of Accounting can close a year thereby prohibiting any further transactions to be entered. Yet, if something comes up, the year can be reopened, the adjusting entries can be made and the year re-closed.

A web based system is much more safe than any desktop system. System crashes, theft, power outages, program updates and upgrades, managing local area networks are just a few of the many areas that a desktop system administrator has to be concerned about. With IconMSA these problems go away. We do nightly backups, have mirror sites hundreds of miles apart, have power protection including three days of diesel generator support. There are no updates or upgrades and everyone is always working with the same release.

Large companies want help and they would like every site to do things certain ways. That's where IconMSA can help. Built into the product is a company wide help system that all users have access to. Questions can be asked by any user as well as searched for. Company wide guidance can be disseminated as they see it.

When IconMSA was developed we recognized that people get interrupted and are asked questions forcing them to go to another part of the system to retrieve an answer. When they return to their work, they find that any data entry they had on the form was lost. Not so with IconMSA. With IconMSA a user can go to another module and upon return will have their form in tact as it was when they left. This is a huge benefit as well as a time saver which users will quickly come to appreciate.

IconMSA was designed to work within a hierarchical structure much like an organizational structure. IconMSA names these management levels tiers and each node on a tier it calls a tier unit. Sites on the bottom tier, tier 0, are called Base Units. IconMSA manages anywhere from one to six tier levels. Each tier level is given a name and every tier level (except the top tier which can have only 1 unit) may have an unlimited number of tier units. A tier unit does not have to be a physical site. You could, for example, have financials rolled up for all sites in the state of Texas but not have a Texas wide office. If, for example, a national company wanted financial reporting at the national, region, state and city level. They would create a 5 tier system and could call tier 4 (top tier) Home Office, tier 3 could be called Region, tier 2 State, and tier 1 City. Tier zero, the bottom tier, is automatically given the name 'Base Unit' although each base unit is given its own name.

Given this definition, a city would be able to get a complete set of financials (in print form or graph form) for all base units reporting to it as well as a combined set of financials of all units. The state of Texas could get a complete set of financials for all base units in the state as well as a complete set of financials by city and a single set of financials for the entire state. And so it goes up through the tier until it gets to the top tier.

Any units financials can be viewed only by those units it reports to. What this means is that a Base Units financials cannot be seen by other base units nor can one city see the financials of another city, etc. up through the organization.

For larger organizations having many users, it's comforting to know that IconMSA does not impose any limits to the number of users having access to the system nor the number of users logged in concurrently. Given the example above and the size of the company, there could be several hundred or several thousand users of the system nationwide.

IconMSA also provides a complete staff position feature which allows the company to define reporting relationships and assignment of people to these positions. This creates a powerful communication tool for quickly communicating with groups of staff members throughout the entire organization.

Some products provide for multiple locations , but each location does not get their own separate accounting system. Consequently, there is no privacy among locations and it means that every transaction entered must be assigned to the correct location. For companies having 20, 40, 100 or more locations this can become a huge problem. IconMSA eliminates this problem by providing each site with their own accounting system totally separate and secure from all other sites. Each site controls who has access to the accounting system and the type of access they have by each form in the system

There are several situations where other accounting systems can get out of balance by Division or Profit Center and while the entire system is in balance, the Profit Centers aren't. That's why they cannot provide a Balance Sheet by Division/Profit Center. For example: Let's say a large company processes thousands of invoices a month and during entry is assigning these invoices to three different Divisions. When, at the end of the month, a batch of invoices are partially or fully paid off, the system doesn't automatically split the payment check by the three Divisions the original invoices were prepared in. The accounting system is in balance but not by Division. IconMSA manages this process for you so you can be assured of accurate financial reporting.

In business, executives and staff must be able to communicate quickly and efficiently with staff located at other sites. That's why we created a communications module built into IconMSA that allows for the definition of staff positions throughout the hierarchy. As an example, let's say that at each base unit there was a position called 'Site Manager'. This position could then be defined in IconMSA as a site position. Using IconMSA, the CEO at the home office could issue a memorandum and communicate to all 'Site Managers'. Let's further say the Site Manager at a base unit in Syracuse was replaced by a person called John Doe. The home office may not even be aware of the change, however, when the next memorandum is sent out, John Doe would get the memorandum instead of the previous 'Site Manager'. No extra effort was needed by any other tier for this change to be recognized. It all happens automatically when using IconMSA. This is a powerful tool for large organizations trying to maintain up-to-date information on staff assignments, email addresses, and phone numbers. It isn't even necessary to print personnel directories because the information can be obtained faster using a few mouse clicks (although directories are available). With IconMSA, emails, phone numbers and mailing labels are just a few clicks away.

In business, one thing every manager can count on is 'change'. Some sites will prosper while others will falter. That is why IconMSA includes a complete site management system which allows each tier to add or remove sites and even relocate a site to a different tier, provided the receiving tier accepts the transfer. Sites can be reassigned as needed without any loss of accounting information and will automatically be rolled into the correct tiers when new financials are run. Naming conventions for the five management levels can be anything you choose. A world wide organization may want a 5 tier system with tier names such as World, Country, Region, District, and Zone.