Time to ditch Sage?

Time to ditch Sage?

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I have been in practice for over 12 years and have always used Sage for everything. We are a small practice and costs seem to be escalating every year. Having become very familiar with Sage Client Manager, Sage Payroll, Sage Accounts Production, Taxation and CT, I have taken the view that if it works why change it? Now they have introduced their new CT software which involves conversion and a learning curve which in itself is time consuming. I like the way that SAP integrates with Taxation and CT but I'm sure there must be other integrated, user friendly and cost effective solutions out there. I have seen good reviews of Xero and VT for accounting but not sure how they might work with accounts production and taxation solutions. Any suggestions please?

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By pauljgoodman
01st Aug 2015 19:58

VTT

Xero is cloud -based, which is its major feature, whereas VTT is not. However, I switched to VTT accounts preparation combined with VTT+ bookkeeping a couple of years ago. I am a sole practitioner, operating on my own, with smallish clients, and I wish I had switched to VTT years ago.  It is effortless compared to what I used before  (CCH Viztopia).  It is so easy to enter data, and really easy to correct postings.  I think for some systems, corrections are deliberately difficult, to create a trail so you can see what has been changed.  With VTT, you just do it...for me, one of its best features.  Plus, you can import bank transactions into it and the destination accounts set automatically after a learning period.

You can click to copy the end result into TaxCalc for sole traders.  For limited companies, there is no such transfer.  But the lack of integration doesn't bother me. 

The cost of VTT is modest, and I think TaxCalc is also competitively priced, although I haven't researched this for several years.  Having made the one big change when the product I was using proved too expensive and out of date, I would be reluctant to make another change, but so far, I am very happy with these two programs  

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By Manchester_man
01st Aug 2015 22:03

I too use VTT and VT accounts production a d have dome so for over 10 years. Over 10 years the annual cost has never increased.

I have used SAP, iris fully integrated, CCH pro crap and I can say that iris was the only one that I liked. CCH is just a miles behind, Sage AP was very very time consuming, particularly the formatting of accounts (same for CCH actually).

Iris is very good, particularly when you use the full integrated package, but a colleague recently received a quote for fully integrated and the quote was £40,000. Yes 40 grand. That is for a small firm, one partner, 3-4 users Inc practice management.

It is well out of range for many and VT used in conjunction with tax calc or btc is a good choice.

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By mabzden
02nd Aug 2015 11:44

Gbooks worth a look

I use gbooks, which is cloud based and reasonably priced. It does most of what you're looking for although at the moment it's more aimed at final accounts production, tax returns etc rather than bookkeeping. There's a decent degree of integration, particularly between Accounts Production and the CT/Personal/Partnership tax return modules.

 

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By qhas
02nd Aug 2015 13:28

Sage
Sometimes I wonder if the guys at Sage ever read the bad press they get here . And if they do whether they really care . I have yet to see one rebuff from anybody at Sage or may be they PM the critic

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Replying to Tax Dragon:
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By tadbourne
02nd Aug 2015 18:08

Sage
I totally agree with you and I don't expect to hear from them. Too busy working on the next price increase!

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
02nd Aug 2015 14:02

more choice then there has ever been.
If you are looking to move from Sage there is loads of choice.
iRis is probably market leader but probably as expensive as what you currently using if not more. I didn't think it was as expensive as the £40k mentioned above.
I use Digita which is fully integrated and better priced than IRis and I think it's excellent. Digita actually owned the CT that sage leased from them so you will find it easy to use of familiar with Sage.
The PM module is very powerful and can save you a load of time if set up right.

BTC also do a complete suite for about £1000 which is a great price and I do t think the price increases as your client numbers increase.

Many use VT on here but I tried and don't like and if you have come from a complete solution you will find it clunky but it is cheap and will save you a lot of money.
Whatever you chose you need to consider if there is any conversion route for your data as that is the hidden cost of transfer if you have to re type all info and somehow have to store your old data as Sage lock it so you cannot access it.

With regard bookkeeping I use QBO for in house jobs, it's cloud based so can gradually migrate it onto clients toes if they are inclined and I am using Xero for bigger clients who want to do own bookkeeping. Vt is cheap but not something for the future if you are not already using it. I would look for a cloud based bookkeeping product.
For me software choice is biggest dilemma facing small practices now. You need to have an eye on where you want your practice to be in 5 years and then put the systems in now to handle it as you don't want to change every few years.

If you look at the practices that embraced Xero 2 years ago they have grown hugely in that time on the back of it

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By taxwizard
02nd Aug 2015 22:01

Quickbooks and xero

Quickbooks and  xero customer services are first class and pricing reasonable.  Sage are terrible and just greedy charging for everything.  

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By Puffin63
02nd Aug 2015 22:06

VT BTC and Cloud Packages

I use VT including their final accounts package and link this to BTC which offer practice management solutions plus tax return and corporation tax return solutions they also now have a full accounts production solution the whole BTC package cost me just over £100 per month VT is £183 per annum for payroll I use moneysoft payroll which is extremely cost effective.

I also offer Quickbooks  online for clients and have now registered with Exact and Xero which means we can offer the top 3 cloud accounting packages 

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By rjoconnor81
03rd Aug 2015 10:50

Moved two years ago and never looked back

We moved a couple of years ago.  This will be our second tax year on the new software.  We haven't looked back and can't believe that we stayed with Sage so long.  We use VT for accounts, BTC for practice management, tax etc, Moneysoft for payroll, Eureka for time recording and Vectis for Company Secretarial.

 

There was a small adjustment needed in the way we work, but for the cost saving you will not miss the integration.  

 

Just be aware that sage require three months notice to leave them and don't offer a read only license.  We bought BTC in the September with Sage licence ending in the June.  This gave us lots of time to bring over the data and PDF all relevant information.  We also saw a lot of "tactics" from sage to try to get us stay against our will (as such).  

 

BTC will do a data conversion for you, but we decided not to take them up on this and to use the transfer as a way of cleaning/clearing out our data. 

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Replying to paul.benny:
Red Leader
By Red Leader
03rd Aug 2015 11:24

£40k?

I pay IRIS about £4k per year (not £40k) for up to 200 SATRs and 100 a/cs.

Whatever software you choose, leave Sage, run and don't look back!

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By janetmb
03rd Aug 2015 12:24

We switched to sage last year and having tried it, can't believe we stuck with sage for so long.

The cloud based packages with bank feeds are absolutely the way to go for the smaller businesses, the cost is minimal compared to sage.  No costly licences, all the help is included in the very reasonable monthly price. 

We especially like the way corrections can be just done without leaving red lines all over the place, every one makes mistakes or needs to go back and rejig something from time.

As someone above said, we have run from sage with no looking back :)

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By janetmb
03rd Aug 2015 12:24

Whoops my above post should start 'we switched TO Xero FROM sage last year....

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