Sage Intacct 2024 Release 4 focuses on three big themes: AI-powered insight (Copilot), stronger financial control, and a more flexible platform experience. Many features apply globally, and several are particularly valuable for UK finance, project, and nonprofit teams.
Below is an easy-to-digest summary of the key changes, organised into clear sections with practical examples of how they’ll help in day-to-day use.
Sage Copilot & AI-Powered Automation
Sage Copilot continues to evolve with tools that help finance leaders understand what’s really happening in their numbers.
Variance Analysis (Early Adopter, UK supported)
Copilot Variance Analysis surfaces the differences between budget and actuals or prior periods, and notifies budget owners when spend exceeds budget. A UK finance manager can, for example, see that travel spend for a particular cost centre is trending 15% over budget and get an alert before month end, rather than discovering it after the fact.
Search Help with Copilot
The help search is now powered by semantic AI, which understands intent rather than just keywords. If a new user types “how do I fix an invoice someone posted wrong?”, they’re more likely to get relevant steps instead of wading through generic results.
AI-Powered Automation Across Finance
AP Automation now supports tax information for companies using the Taxes application, and Purchasing automation gains further enhancements. For teams processing high volumes of supplier invoices, this means fewer manual coding decisions and more consistent treatment of VAT.
Strength in Financials & Reconciliation
This release makes it much easier to understand how money has moved across customer and supplier accounts.
Customer & Vendor Reconciliation Reports
New Customer and Vendor reconciliation reports show exactly how payments, advances and credits match to invoices and bills. For example, if a customer has paid several instalments and used a credit note, AR teams can now see the full picture in one place rather than piecing it together from multiple screens.
Improved AR Statements
Accounts Receivable statements can now include a running balance and clearer formatting, helping customers understand what they owe at a glance and reducing queries into the finance team.
AP Usability Improvements
AP teams can now send payment notifications to primary and secondary vendor email addresses, act on more bills at once with enhanced Pay Bills filtering, and void or review payments more quickly. For busy AP teams, this directly reduces admin time and speeds up supplier communication.
Tax, Control & Compliance
R4 delivers several enhancements that help UK organisations stay compliant while handling increasingly complex tax setups.
Override Tax Schedules in Purchasing & Order Entry
Users of Advanced Tax or VAT solutions can override default tax schedules on transactions and even set schedules to inactive. This is particularly useful when dealing with cross-border or special tax treatments, such as reverse charge situations or projects spanning multiple jurisdictions.
Tax Details for Submissions
You can now mark tax details as “Reporting” or “Not reporting” so that certain adjustments are automatically excluded from tax submissions. This reduces the risk of including internal correction entries in VAT returns.
Custom Tax Submission Workflow (Early Adopter)
For organisations using custom tax solutions, a new submission workflow streamlines filing and keeps everything within Intacct rather than relying on manual exports and spreadsheets.
Platform, REST API & User Experience
The platform continues to mature with improvements aimed at admins, developers, and everyday users.
Enhanced Lists & User Labels
Configurable lists let users personalise views, apply advanced filters, and work with record details more efficiently. Updated labels in areas like Company, Fixed Assets, Inventory, Order Entry, Projects, and Purchasing make navigation feel more intuitive, especially for new joiners.
REST API Expansion
The REST API continues to gain more functionality, offering a more modern, robust integration framework than legacy XML-based connections. Organisations integrating Intacct with CRM, expense tools or data warehouses will see more reliable and scalable syncs.
Translation Management & Additional Languages
Bulk translation management makes it easier to support multi-language deployments. Canadian French and Spanish are now available as language preferences, and UK English spelling and terminology are better reflected across the system—useful for international groups who still want a locally familiar feel for UK-based users.
Company & Admin Quality-of-Life Updates
Customer ID is now visible on the Company information page, custom email domain validation improves email deliverability, and additional permissions give more granular control across AP, AR, GL, Inventory and Time & Expenses.
Contracts, Projects, Grants & Construction
This release brings tangible improvements for organisations that work with contracts, retainage, and project-based billing.
Automated Service Periods for Contracts
Service period start and end dates can now be automatically included on invoices. A SaaS or services business, for example, can show “Service period: 01/01/2025–31/03/2025” without manually adding it each time, improving clarity for customers and auditors.
Retainage Without Construction Subscription
Retainage is now available within Project Costing & Billing and Grants Tracking & Billing, so nonprofits and project-based organisations can hold and release retention from AR/AP without needing Sage Intacct Construction.
Bulk Actions for Contract Schedules
On the Manage Schedules page, you can clear or deliver revenue and expense schedules in bulk, and sync updates from renewal templates to existing contracts. This is especially helpful for organisations managing large volumes of recurring contracts or renewals.
Construction Enhancements (EA)
Construction users can now print summarised and non-summarised time and materials details on project contract invoices, capture project scope and schedule details, and track change orders/requests directly in Intacct—reducing reliance on external trackers.
Fixed Assets, Inventory & Operational Efficiency
Operational teams also see meaningful improvements in this release.
Fixed Assets Management Improvements
You can now override posting dates when manually posting depreciation, giving flexibility when aligning depreciation entries with specific cutoff dates. Asset records also gain notes, enhanced lists, and a smoother import experience, making it easier to manage asset registers at scale.
Inter-Entity Inventory Tracking
Entity-level valuation report details now make it easier to see inter-entity transactions. A group with central purchasing but local stock usage can better understand which entities hold inventory and how value moves between them.
Supplies Inventory
For teams using Supplies Inventory, replenishment and tracking improvements help ensure critical consumables stay in stock without over-ordering.
Reporting, Training & Adoption
Finally, R4 invests in better reporting, communication, and user skills.
ICRW & Narrative View Enhancements
Interactive Custom Report Writer (ICRW) now includes enhanced Construction, Purchase Order, and Order Entry reports, plus a new Narrative view where users can add commentary to their reports. This is ideal for month-end packs where finance needs to explain variances alongside the numbers.
SaaS Intelligence & Dashboards
SaaS Intelligence gains further enhancements, giving subscription-based organisations more insight into recurring revenue, churn, cohorts and other SaaS metrics—all within Intacct.
Accounting Specialist Certification & New Training
Sage has launched the Accounting Specialist Certification and added new training courses and videos. For UK organisations, this is a strong way to build internal expertise and ensure finance teams are fully leveraging the system.
