I'm a new Finance Director for a First Nation that has hired me to create a finance department and consolidate financial functions (their for-profit entities) into the band administration. Historically, the band has hired outside consultants to act as controllers for the various entities.

As I'm getting to know the First Nation, I can tell right off the bat, that Sage 50 is going to be a nightmare for me.

Sage 50 multi-user environment is a joke, and the backup process with several users is just impractical.

I think the icing on the cake was getting the budgets completed. We have over 100 projects in various departments... (we don't use departmental accounting - yet) and there are no 'cost centres'. Much of my budget was extremely manual.

Sage 50 reporting is useless, and my staff have to have multiple Sage instances open at one time. There is no inter-company support.. the list goes on.

Does Adagio support cost centre accounting like SAP does? I have worked with SAP for a while in local government, but feel it would blow the budget for this operation. I need something that isn't an entry level solution like Sage, but isn't going to blow the budget.

Some of our operations at a glance:

Band Governance (Administration/chief and council etc);
Daycare
Medical Transportation
Land & Resources
Public Works
Water & Sewer
Convenience store
Property development corporation (Job costing/WIP/Quotes/Change orders)
100 or so projects from various government funding, that have specific reporting requirements, and must be tracked seperately
Payroll - some payroll would fall in various projects and in various departments

Would Adagio be something that would be a good fit for our operation? We are in a small community, and the issue with Accpac in some of these communities was the significant costs and staff training.

Thank you
Richard Skelhorn, CPA, CA
Director of Finance
Katlodeeche First Nation