Software options

Software options

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We're currently run SAGE CTpbO, SAGE Taxation Suite, SAGE Line 50 and SAGE Accounts Production.

We are looking at the possibility of getting SAGE Practice Solution and would be interested in the following please:

1. Feedback - Positive and Negative

2. Alternatives to SAGE Practice Solution that wouldn't involve ditching our pre-existing SAGE products because they can be integrated with those programs.

Thanks.

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By DMGbus
22nd Feb 2012 13:44

Be careful

I don't know if Sage Practice Solution (SPS) ever will work perfectly.

It don't work that well at the firm work in - but at least most of the very considerable problems incurred a couple of years ago with SPS implementation have been overcome now, with just a few daily issues now.

Here's today's problem:

Set of Ltd Co accounts.   By default, I am told, the SPS database will populate directors names as full christian names rather than sensible initials plus surnames.  So, every Ltd Co client has to have manual intervention to put the sensible initials in rather than full christian names as a direct result of using SPS.

A set of accounts that I am currently reviewing was presented with (names changed to preserve confidentiality):

Directors

A B Jones

C D Smith

Company Secretary

Mr A B Jones

The annoying bit here was WHY is A B Jones shown somewhere as A B Jones and somewhere else as Mr A B Jones on the same page / set of accounts.  Answer seems to be database in Sage Accounts Production re-populated by SPS.

One of January's problems:

A sole trader business became a partnership a few years ago.

Whenever personal tax is opened for the individual concerned the long-ago ceased sole trader is additionally shown as well as the current partnership - despite entering cessation dates in Sage Business Tax and Sage Personal Tax - my theory is here we have SPS at play, presumably there's a hidden routine to tell SPS to stop re-inventing the no longer existant sole trader.

Early problems with SPS:

An issue several colleagues have encountered in Sage Accounts Production (SAP) is that SAP with  directors loan accounts and individual partners capital accounts within a Ltd Co or Partnership set of accounts will get transposed - correct name with wrong balance alongside it - again an SPS horrible database problem is at play here.   Similarly an iXBRL set of accounts wrongly showed the secretary (who's not a director) as a director and the director as secretary recently - I really hate the SPS database for causing this!

Training essential:

A lot of it, I guess, is down to (in)correct use of SPS (and lack of expensive training).  So get Sage to quote the cost of adequate training - absolutely vital.  Anticipate a year or two of trauma after introducing SPS with old data having to be "cleansed" / causing problems.  Better still get Sage to quote a fee for them to sort out all this hassle with cleansing old data to ascertain true cost of SPS implementation.  PS. We got criticised by Sage in this context as we were keeping "too many years" old accounts data in SAP!

Individual packages and integration:

Remember once into SPS it will be far more difficult to choose "best of breed" individual alternative packages as the integration will prevent this or at least make it more difficult.   I regard SPS a akin to an addictive drug in this respect.

It is my understanding that a difficulty SPS programmers have is that they're trying to integrate several different programmes that they've acquired from diverse sources and it isn't that easy to do (so I'm told).

Even though allegedly integrated, we still have to manually input lots of data into Sage Corporation tax such as start and finish date of previous accounting period and company number  (remembering to include or exclude leading zero in both packages - Sage CT & SAP - to avoid validation errors).    If properly integrated then I'd have thought that all data in SPS database / accounts would feed through to Sage CT automatically and correctly - it most certainly does NOT in my experience.

 

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By taxhound
22nd Feb 2012 14:15

Don't use sage...

Ditch sage.  It is a pain IMO.  Use VT for bookkeeping and accounts, BTC for SA and CT and moneysoft for payroll.  These products all work and are very easy to use.

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