Why Your Construction Dealer Management System Shouldn’t Handle Accounting: The Case for A Connected Dealership Stack
Blog Highlights:
Why your DMS shouldn’t do accounting—and what to do instead.
- A Purpose-Built Connected Dealership Stack: Flyntlok runs operations; Sage Intacct handles accounting.
- Real-Time Sync: Data flows automatically—no exports, no spreadsheets.
- Audit-Ready Financials: Multi-entity, dimensional reporting built for complex dealerships.
- Scales with You: Ideal for dealers with 3+ locations or $75M+ in revenue.
Most construction equipment dealers rely on a Dealer Management System (DMS) to run their business. But when these platforms try to handle everything—sales, rentals, inventory, and accounting—they often fall short where it matters most: financial visibility and control for accounting and operational excellence for the dealership.
This is where a “split stack” approach changes the game: Flyntlok handles operations, and Sage Intacct handles accounting. Each platform focuses on what it does best, with seamless integration between them.
The Problem with All-in-One Dealer Management Systems
Legacy DMS platforms have become bloated, outdated, and often insecure. Dealers using these systems are stuck with:
- Clunky, on-premise interfaces and VPN logins
- Bolt-on CRM or rental modules that don’t communicate
- Rigid, overbuilt general ledgers that are hard to configure
- Known vulnerabilities
Trying to manage operations and accounting in one system often forces compromises in both. You wouldn’t trust your payroll system to manage your inventory—so why trust your DMS to run financial reporting?
Why Accounting Needs Its Own Platform
Financial complexity at equipment dealerships is only increasing. As operations grow across multiple locations including international locations such as Us and Canada, multiple entities, brands, and business lines, the demands on your accounting system grow with it.
When accounting is crammed inside an all-in-one DMS, the cracks appear fast—rigid structures, limited visibility, and constant workarounds. Instead of adapting to your business, legacy systems force your finance team to work around their limitations—wasting time and increasing risk.
Furthermore, the development cost and rapidly changing technology in today’s market have evolved much faster than the legacy DMS can adapt to. If you look at the emergence of AI, cloud based security, and new development platforms it’s not possible for a legacy DMS provider to keep on pace with the innovation happening on the Accounting and Operations platforms a construction equipment provider requires. What dealerships need is accounting software purpose-built for complexity: real-time visibility, true dimensional reporting, and automation that eliminates manual processes. Meanwhile the operational side of the business requires a platform that can handle a single transaction from a lead entry through CRM including sale or rental for equipment, part, or service.
That’s exactly what Sage Intacct delivers.
Flyntlok + Sage Intacct: The Split Stack for Equipment Dealers
The Flyntlok + Sage Intacct integration is built for dealers who want operational speed and financial clarity.
Flyntlok handles operations:
- Equipment & Parts sales and rentals
- CRM to manage all in-bound leads, quoting, and SMS communication
- Full Point-of-sale capability including credit card integration and text-to-pay
- Real-time inventory and unit-level tracking
- Mobile or Browser interface accessible from anywhere
Sage Intacct handles accounting:
- Multi-entity and dimensional financials
- Consolidated reporting across stores and brands
- Clean chart of accounts using dimensions instead of duplication
Data flows automatically between the two, meaning no spreadsheets, no exports, no manual entry. The result? Real-time, audit-ready financials that don’t slow your team down.
Operational vs Financial Systems: Better Together
Flyntlok was built by a dealer who is also an experienced software engineer/entrepreneur who knew the limitations of trying to make one system do it all. Instead of competing with Sage Intacct, Flyntlok integrates with it to give dealers the best of both worlds.
Operational systems should optimize how you quote, sell, and service equipment. Financial systems should provide clear, accurate insight across every brand and location. With the Flyntlok + Sage Intacct integration, you don’t have to settle.
Signs It’s Time For Best of Breed
If any of these sound familiar, your business may be ready:
- You’re relying on an antiquated Construction Equipment such as CDK
- Your dealership has separate applications for CRM, Rental, Mobile, etc
- You’re relying on a third party data warehouse to build and maintain reports
- Your chart of accounts is organized by brand instead of logic
- You don’t have a clear view across locations or entities
- Your accounting team is bogged down by manual tasks
- You’re scaling—but your systems aren’t keeping up
For many dealers, $75M in revenue or 3+ locations is the tipping point. That’s when the cost of sticking with legacy tools starts to outweigh the effort of switching.
Frequently Asked Questions
A connected stack means you run day‑to‑day operations in Flyntlok (quotes, rentals, inventory) while all accounting and financial reporting lives in Sage Intacct. The two cloud platforms sync data in a highly configurable & secure cloud API, giving you speed on the ops side and true multi‑entity financial visibility on the finance side.
Legacy DMS general ledgers are rigid, hard to consolidate, and lack dimensional reporting. Sage Intacct is purpose‑built for complex, multi‑location dealerships—so you get audit‑ready financials, automated consolidations, and drill‑down visibility without spreadsheets or work‑arounds. Additionally, the development cost to maintain excellence in a legacy accounting platform and operational DMS vs modern SAAS platforms like Intacct & Flyntlok is impossible.
The systems connect via secure APIs. Transactions (sales orders, rentals, inventory costs) flow automatically from Flyntlok into Sage Intacct dimensions—no manual exports. Updates run on a near‑real‑time schedule, so finance always sees the latest numbers.
No. During onboarding, historical GL balances and open transactions can be migrated into Sage Intacct, and key equipment / customer records remain in Flyntlok. You retain audit history while moving to a single source of truth going forward.
Most mid‑market dealers go live in 90–120 days. Flyntlok and Sage partners run parallel data loads, user training, and testing so you can keep daily operations running with minimal downtime.
You have been running on a legacy DMS platform and recently faced outages due to security and performance issues. Your staff is struggling to provide you real time financial data by location, brand, or entity. Your tech-aware staff and customer base is yelling for modern interfaces to support online sales, rental, and service work in a single, easy to maintain platform.
Many dealers are paying for multiple tools to support their dealership CRM, Rental, SMS Communications, Data Warehousing and more. In addition legacy platform carry hosting, VPN, and IT support costs. Moving to a single tightly integrated SAAS platform of Sage Intacct and Flyntlok these costs go away. Most dealers see a positive ROI in the first year through faster deal closes, improved productivity, and staff no longer attempting to maintain connectivity across data silos.
See Flyntlok + Sage Intacct in Action
Don’t let your DMS limit your growth. By pairing Flyntlok with equipment dealer accounting software like Sage Intacct, you gain a scalable, cloud-native stack that brings real-time clarity across your entire dealership. See how modern equipment dealers are scaling faster with Flyntlok + Sage Intacct.