Data Validation with Sage Intacct Smart Rules

Financial reports are only as good as the integrity of the data they are based on.

Data integrity is vital. If data is incorrect, you risk basing financial decisions on incorrect information. The problem with achieving data integrity is that there are often a variety of people entering data (some more detail oriented than others). Therefore, it’s hard to maintain the accuracy and consistency of the data.

That’s when Sage Intacct Smart Rules come in handy. They place real-time rules (warnings or errors) within the system, helping remove inevitable user mistakes without you having to check everything.

In this example, we’ll go through the steps necessary to create a Smart Rule that will prevent a user from continuing (creates an error) if the Sales Rep field is left blank on a customer record.

Creating a Smart Rule

Step 1: Navigation

Customization Services (or Platform Services) > Smart Rules > Add

Step 2: Object to extend

The first screen will ask what area of Sage Intacct you’d like to add the rule to (Object to Extend). Click the drop down and select where you are adding the rule. In our example it will be Customer.

Step 3: Rule properties

Then, you’ll be brought to this screen where you’ll define the rule properties:

• Type — Either “Error” or “Warning.” An error does not allow a user to proceed until the conditions are met, while a warning allows them to proceed but shows a warning.
• Events — “Add,” “Set,” or “Delete.” This is when you want the error to occur. “Add” means if a customer is added and the conditions aren’t met, then we won’t be able to add the customer.
  
  It’s important to take into consideration if customers are being synced from an external system (like Salesforce) and the Sales Rep field is not something that is filled out before the sync, you will receive an error. In this example we are choosing “Set” because we only want the error to happen once the customer has already been added and someone wants to change something about the record.

• Conditions — This is under what conditions you want the error or warning to occur. This might be the most difficult step, so let’s walk through it step by step.
  
  
  
  • First, let’s insert the fields we need to validate. Clicking the “Field lookup” button will bring up the Customer object and all available fields. Our field is “Sales Rep” and the Merge Field is: {!CUSTOMER.CUSTREPID!}
    
    
    

    
    
    

  • Now we want to instruct Sage Intacct under what conditions we want the error to occur. I would like the error to trigger when the field is left blank. We can use this table from Sage Intacct’s Help Menu:

    
    
    

  • So, our condition is: {!CUSTOMER.CUSTREPID!} != ‘’ (Sales Rep field must not be blank).

• Error Message — This can be anything you like. I chose to say “Please fill out the Sales Rep field on the Additional Information tab” to be helpful. You can also include merge fields in Smart Rules.

Step 4: Deployment options

The final step is saving the rule. Note: the name cannot have spaces or special characters.

How we can help

If you are finding incomplete data in reports and think Smart Rules may offer a solution but would like a little help, reach out for a consultation.