Banyan Infrastructure vs. Accounting Software: Powering Project Finance, Not Just Bookkeeping

In infrastructure project finance, there is often confusion between specialized platforms like Banyan Infrastructure and traditional accounting software such as Sage Intacct or NetSuite. While both are essential tools, they serve very different purposes.

Banyan Infrastructure is a project finance management platform that automates the full lifecycle of infrastructure investing to help you increase capital velocity, reduce risk, and cut overhead cost. Accounting software is a vital tool for bookkeeping, compliance, and day-to-day financial transactions. This article will cover the differences between the two and how the two can work together helps teams maximize efficiency and ensure project success.

Let's clarify the differences and explore how they work together to ensure project success.

What is Banyan Infrastructure?

Banyan Infrastructure is a purpose-built project finance management platform, purpose-built platform to streamline the entire project finance lifecycle.

• Underwriting and Diligence: The platform streamlines the due diligence process, centralizing data, documents, and counterparty collaboration to ensure a thorough evaluation of project risks and opportunities. With templates and best practices, as well as standardized risk analysis, this allows for optimized decision making. 
• Portfolio and Fund Management: Banyan Infrastructure provides robust tools for monitoring and managing portfolios of projects, offering insights into asset performance and risk. Banyan Infrastructure allows you to aggregate and drill down on your infrastructure investments based on their portfolio structure or custom tags.
• Reporting and Compliance Management: Managing regulatory obligations can be time-consuming and high-risk. Banyan Infrastructure centralizes and automates obligation tracking, allowing for clarity and accountability on key tasks and milestones, so you never miss a deadline.,
• Full Ecosystem Collaboration: Banyan Infrastructure enables seamless communication and collaboration with all counterparties, including borrowers, contractors, investors, and limited partners, providing transparency into all ongoing activities and performance, and fostering trust.

Banyan Infrastructure is a sophisticated platform specifically engineered to manage the entire lifecycle of complex infrastructure projects. It goes beyond the basic bookkeeping functions of accounting software by offering advanced features for workflow automation, risk analysis, compliance management, portfolio and fund management, and more.

Where Accounting Software Fits In

Accounting software is a vital tool, and it excels at:

• Recording and tracking day-to-day financial transactions
• Generating financial statements and ensuring regulatory compliance
• Managing accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and basic financial operations
  

However, traditional accounting software cannot fully address the specialized needs of complex project finance, including:

• Multi-project portfolio management
• Workflow automation, counterparty collaboration
• Advanced financial and risk analysis for renewable infrastructure projects

Bringing it all together: How Banyan Infrastructure and Accounting Software Work Together

Fortunately, project finance teams can leverage both a project finance management system and an accounting tool. In fact, your accounting tool can integrate directly with your project finance management system to provide accurate, up-to-date financial insights specifically designed for renewable infrastructure.

The benefits to integrating into a project finance management system include:

• Single Source of Truth: Manage your portfolio from one platform that includes all of the data you need across your CRM, loan servicing, and SCADA data.
• Enhanced Insights: Combine specialized project finance data with accounting metrics for a holistic view of portfolio health, risk, and opportunities
• Streamlined Reporting: Instantly generate comprehensive reports for internal teams, investors, and regulatory stakeholders

By integrating accounting software with Banyan Infrastructure, teams gain actionable insights, transparency, and optimized workflows, improving decision-making across the full project lifecycle.

To learn more about Banyan Infrastructure schedule a demo today.