Has anyone tried Sage Online

Search Google for 'Sage Live' ....

Obviously Sage OnLine has come a long way in the last couple of years, however, with their first internet offering 'Sage Live' - not only did they join the party well behind everyone else but they also had an embarrassing security issue

http://www.kashflow.com/blog/sage-live-security/

http://www.accountancyage.com/aa/news/1763588/sage-withdraws-web-software-security-scare

So originally security was not really synonymous with Sage

Interestingly enough they seem to have dropped the 'Sage Live' badge (attempting to bury it) in favour of other branding for their product. Clearly not their finest moment .....

Even their first attempt at Sage OnLine had little functionality and was only one grade above a 'form filler'

Nevertheless, the Sage brand still attracts customers for on-line which is extraordinary when one looks at other players in the market who have a better reputation, more robust track record and have been doing it for a great deal longer

I have seen a demo and it was poor

Online50 has been offering Sage 50 online for so long (over 10 years) people think we are Sage - but we are not.

Regarding Security

We are independently audited to the international standard for information security each year - ISO 27001.  So in almost all cases we are more secure than it is possible for a small business to be with their own financial data.

Our service is offered by a number of the Top 20 Firms having first subjected us to significant scrutiny by their information security teams.   

Regarding Speed

For three years we have been offering a 'dataset challenge' - if a company's dataset runs more quickly on their internal network than on our system we will send them a bottle of Champagne.  We have never sent out a bottle yet.

For one business in order to run a specific report, everyone had to log off Sage for half an hour because otherwise all the software would crash.  They moved to us and although there are times it slows slightly, everyone is able to carry on working.  We have a number of anecdotes to this effect.

Live Demo

Please give us a call and we can schedule a live demo.  You can see our live system and get a feel for the speed for yourself.

Regards,

Russell Dickens

0207 536 7736

I think we need to clarify if the OP is talking about Online50 as per Russell's post or Sage 50 Online which is offered by Sage...

John

I was talking about SageOne

@RussellD

Have just been caught out by changes to the AWeb T&C's which were buried somewhere in the site

For information - see

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/community-rules-and-moderation-policy

Clearly advertising OnLine50 is frowned upon

Or that as well - we could go round in circles all day unless the OP comes back then :)

John

I have definitely decided to go down the online route with clients who have outgrown spreadsheets and I have been looking around for a couple of months.

I saw a demo of the Sage One ledgers version and have decided to go down this route. Cashbooks doesn't offer sufficient benefits over free spreadsheets.

I abandoned Sage about 12 months ago for overpricing and poor service so it pains me to have to admit that I like Sage One.

@JC

I am a newbie - my apologies.

I seem to remember from previous questions/posts from this OP, that they a bookkeeper.

I may be wrong, but as they also ask 'do you think I should ask my clients for their approval. ' I think this indicated that they would be using the service to do the bookkeeping of multiple clients.

IMHO these online services are aimed at businesses who manage their own bookkeeping, as described by RussellD above, with the added advantage that the Accountant can log in at any time to view their accounts.

My answer to the original question is simple. If you are a bookkeeper DO NOT DO IT!

And yes you would have to get approval from your clients. In writing. Not all of them would be happy knowing that their private accounts are being posted online, regardless how good the security is. Some of mine won't even use internet banking because they don't trust it.

Sorry if answer a bit all over the place, got a streaming cold and brain not working

Personally, I found RussellD's contribution useful and informative. As it was "relevant to the original post" I am inclined to think that it was entirely within the Community Rules.

I have seen posts in the past where a discussion directly between providers and users has given great benefit to AWeb members and, it seems to me, to be exactly what the site is best at.

I have also seen posts where an advertiser tries to hijack a thread with an off-topic post just to get some free publicity.

As RussellD's post falls firmly into the former category, I would encourage him to continue such posts when he feels he can help and enlighten us.

I have used Sage extensively for many years and although I gripe sometimes, it is a really good product for bookkeeping.  (Digita for Tax)  Some of my small clients want to do their own bookkeeping, if an accounts package is required other than spreadsheets, some people just cannot seem to get on with Sage.  The simple wording ie of cash in and cash out works better for non accountants, and 2 of my clients seemed to grasp SageOne quickly.  Unfortunately, the program is awful.  It takes much longer to input data, and I do a lot of data sorting, and when you down load the transactions, they come in 2 separate lines if VAT is included, so therefore it is useless to me.  You cannot enter payments on account. etc etc.  I have had to take the two clients off the progam after selling it to them and take the financial hit, as well as rekeying all their data onto a different package.  You are also in a contract for a year, so 12 months is the same price as sage instant.  I now use another Accounts Cloud based solution, which only costs £5 per month and no tie ins.  You can input and export data and have many users, better reports. I am really surprised at Sage, with their knowledge of accounting, how could they have got this so wrong.

What did you switch to?

Sage has a big problem….

If they don’t have a “web base” system then they lose lots of new customers to someone else and are seen as being behind the times.

If they make their web system too good; they lose revenue from their desktop software, established customers paying for support each year, (while not needing any support) this is a great cash cow.  

If they make the web system easy for new customers to understand then current customers hate it.   It they make the web system so current customers feel happy with it, then new customers will not choose it.

Current customers expect any new “version” of the software to do everything the old version could from day one, but then the new software lands up with the same “mindset” as the old software.

Sage’s programmers are not expert on the web, as they write desktop software, however if they bring in new web developers, these new developers don’t come with the understanding of the customers’ needs that their current developers have.   (I expect the current managers are not even able to know if a web developer is any good when interviewing for the new web developer teams.)

There was another software product with these problems some time ago, Lotus 123, we all thought it was the best, and then within a few years the world had moved away from it.   But every time they tried to create a windows version, they got bad reviews, as it was not possible to both keep current customers happy (with the old UI they liked)and make it good for new customers.   (Excel had many years on the Mac to learn how to do a windows type interface for a spread sheet, before we ever saw it on Windows, but as there was very little overlap in customers between the Mac and Windows it did not have a problem with history)

So history is just repeating itself, Sage started when we moved from “mini computers” to desktop computers, I expect in 10 (or 20) years’ time when we move from the “web” to the next thing, some other company will be having the same problems, while Sage is thought of in the same way as we think of Lotus 123 these days.

I remember with Lotus 1-2-3 how I could type the keys needed to perform an action without thinking but if I had to think what to do it took a lot longer.

Presently a lot of cloud accounting software has some good ideas but they do a lot badly - eg. FreeAgent only has a nominal code for all sales invoices outstanding when you put in opening balances - there's no customer balances or invoices outstanding. Whoever came up with that idea?

You are coming to the new with the mind-set of the old.

The target customers of FreeAgent don’t know what an “accounting code” is, likewise most of the current users don’t have a “big area of pain” that would be solved by having “customer balances or invoices outstanding” reports – otherwise FreeAgent would have added such a report.

(FreeAgent is aimed at companies that use spreadsheets or nothing at present for book keeping, not current users of another system.)

When I was running a small company, I used to keep paper copies of all unpaid invoices in one file, then when they were paid, write on the date of the bank transaction and put them in main file, (I started a new file every 3 months, so that it matched cash vat accounting well).  Apart from year end, there was no need to record the details on the computer of an unpaid invoice, as they did not affect the vat calcs.

Thank you Keith. 

Having worked on Sage's own hosting of 50 online I only have bad experiences.

It's an annual subscription almost as expensive as buying the software outright but with the added "benefit" of being a couple of versions older - I think they're still running 2009 online.

Then there's the problem of getting people set up with user accounts. They do have a set of instructions, but they seem to be outdated and you have to guess your way to get users logged on.

Then there's the time-lag when it comes to working on the software - I often experienced having to wait half an hour or more to pull a single report like debtors, creditors or financial statements.

I've not tried RusselD and his side - his promises are pretty good though! - but am only talking about Sage's own hosting.