Closing the reporting gap: How Brilliant Link extends Sage Intacct to give CFOs decision-ready data

A gap remains between what systems can generate and what executives need to make decisions. (Image source: 123RF)

---

Despite the AI and analytics capabilities of advanced finance systems, most CFOs still need to spend time pulling the necessary data from various sources and formatting it to meet the unique reporting needs of their organisations. A trusted partner that understands their business can help them enhance, integrate and configure their systems to give them all the data they need at their fingertips.

This is according to Rahana Vally, Director at Brilliant Link, which positions itself as South Africa's leading Sage Platinum Partner.

Vally says finance platforms such as Sage Intacct offer strong out-of-the-box dashboards and reporting, which work well for standardised businesses. But as businesses grow and diversify, their requirements become more complex.

She says CFOs and executives often require highly tailored board packs, management reports and KPI views. “CFOs who should be focusing their efforts on strategy end up having to extract, manipulate and reformat data manually,” she says. “This creates inefficiencies, delays and the risk of inconsistency.”

She notes: “The CFO's role is not necessarily meant to be purely operational. The CFO is meant to be a strategic advisor. But the only way they can give the right advice is if they have the right information and the insight as to what's happening across the business. They need a bird's eye view of what's happening, with the ability to drill down into the details so they can see the underlying data and then make an informed decision at the click of a button.”

Vally believes a gap remains between what systems can generate and what executives actually need to make decisions.

“Brilliant Link is a strategic partner that closes the gap between system capability and executive decision-making, ensuring that finance leaders receive the right insights, in the right format, at the right time – without manual effort,” she says.

Vally says Brilliant Link closes the last mile of finance automation and helps CFOs move beyond visibility to actionability.

The Brilliant Link approach extends the capabilities of Sage Intacct by automating reporting and planning, with tailored outputs for leadership. This offers more confidence in data, faster decision-making and greater business impact.

“We understand the challenges CFOs have; we then help to automate those processes in a way that actually gives them the time to become more strategic,” she says.

“We design systems for how CFOs actually work, enabling tailored outputs instead of generic dashboards,” she says.

Brilliant Link enables organisations to go beyond standard reporting into customised, automated and insight-driven outputs, such as board pack automation and advanced reporting suitable for multi-entity organisations, groups with subsidiaries or businesses requiring complex consolidations. These tailored management packs might include automated KPI tracking or planning, forecasting and scenario modelling. For CFOs, Brilliant Link enables budgeting automation, rolling forecasts, what-if analysis and predictive analytics.

Vally says: “We go beyond the operational aspects to understand what outcomes the customer would like to see, what management reports and KPIs they need, and what they are currently having to do manually. Then we work backwards from that to automate processes and integrate systems, where necessary, to align the solution with the business.

“We partner with our clients to become the trusted technology advisor in their business,” she notes. “When the C-suite requires specific information or has a bespoke requirement, we can either address that directly within the solution or integrate a specialised tool like Velixo or some sort of BI tool to assist. We also help them harness the AI capabilities that come out of the box with Sage Intacct, guiding them on the use cases within their business. But AI is only as powerful as the insights it delivers, so we ensure that it is deployed in a way that really supports executive decision-making.”

Complex reporting requirements rarely come from one place. They build up across multi-entity structures, multiple dimensions such as department, project, location and fund, and the very different questions each leader needs answered. Brilliant Link’s approach is to map each requirement to the role that consumes it, then automate the output so every person sees a view built around their decisions, rather than a generic report they have to rework before it is useful.

For the CFO and the board, that means consolidated board packs and KPI dashboards, with the ability to drill from a headline number down to the underlying transaction. For financial controllers and accountants, it means live management packs and a faster close, with accounts payable, accounts receivable and cashflow views that refresh automatically instead of being rebuilt every month. For department, project and entity heads, it means dimensional reporting by department, project, location or entity, so operational owners get the slice of data that is relevant to them without waiting on finance. The same underlying data serves everyone, but each role receives it in the format that lets them act.

One of the tools Brilliant Link uses to deliver this is Velixo, a self-service reporting, budgeting and data automation add-in that connects Excel directly and bidirectionally to Sage Intacct. Instead of exporting data and rebuilding spreadsheets, finance teams pull any Sage Intacct dimension, book or object straight into Excel, refresh the figures in real-time, drill down to the transaction and push budgets, forecasts and journal entries back into the ERP, with no data warehouse and no manual exports. Because it lives inside the Excel teams already know, adoption is fast and reporting stays flexible.

Brilliant Link is South Africa’s back-to-back Velixo Partner of the Year, recognised in both 2024 and 2025, and the only South African partner to earn the award in consecutive years. That depth of expertise is what turns the technology into outcomes. Because the team understands both Sage Intacct’s data structures and how each client actually reports, it configures Velixo around real business questions rather than generic templates. The result is that reporting tasks, which once took hours, are completed in minutes, the month-end close accelerates and leaders across the business work from a single, live version of the numbers.

“Brilliant Link isn’t just a Sage Intacct implementer; we are a strategic enabler of intelligent, automated, executive-ready finance insight,” Vally concludes.

What does Brilliant Link do for CFOs using Sage Intacct?

Brilliant Link extends Sage Intacct by automating reporting and planning and delivering tailored outputs for leadership. This includes board pack automation, management reporting, KPI tracking, budgeting automation, rolling forecasts, what-if analysis and predictive analytics, so CFOs receive decision-ready insight without manual data work.

Who is Brilliant Link?

Brilliant Link is South Africa’s leading Sage Platinum Partner. The company positions itself as a strategic finance-technology advisor that closes the gap between what finance systems can generate and what executives actually need to make decisions.

Why do CFOs still need help if Sage Intacct already has dashboards and AI?

Sage Intacct offers strong out-of-the-box dashboards and reporting that suit standardised businesses, but reporting needs grow more complex as organisations diversify, add subsidiaries or require consolidations. Brilliant Link configures, integrates and automates these systems, and helps teams apply Sage Intacct’s built-in AI to the right use cases, so the right insight reaches leaders in the right format at the right time.

What is Velixo, and why does Brilliant Link’s award matter?

Velixo is a self-service reporting, budgeting and data-automation add-in that connects Excel live and bidirectionally to Sage Intacct, letting finance teams report in real-time and push budgets and forecasts back into the ERP without manual exports. Brilliant Link is South Africa’s back-to-back Velixo Partner of the Year (2024 and 2025) and the only South African partner to win the award in consecutive years, which means clients work with the most experienced Velixo team in the country.