Sage 2013 - why upgrade

You have never been forced to use Sage stationery. With both L50 and payroll, there were always plain paper equivalents, or ways of changing report layouts so you could use plain paper.

I haven't used Sage 2013, or even looked at it, so they may have made this task easier, but it isn't 'new'.

It is new in so far as the new 'plain paper' layouts have lines and boxes already on them for printing to plain paper - whilst is was possible to do this before, it wasn't the easiest thing to do particularly if you wanted a box around the whole 'Details' section.

As for reasons to upgrade, I guess it depends on what version is currently in use - if an existing customer is using anything pror to v2012, the upgrade could be worth it for the increase in speed alone...

John

Hi 

I am a member of the sage 2013 user group.   Sage 2013 is a lot better then Sage 2012 .  You have not said whether you are practice or a business.   If you are a practice then you may not think so.

The main thing for me as a practice is the Verify Button(2012) Prepare for Audit Button 2013  under the Financial Reporting is a huge improvement on the 2012.  It highlights such a huge amount prior to you doing year end , monthly accounts or year ends .  A very useful tool.  I do a lot of training and this not well used as it could be especially in a practice.

If you are in business , then yes it is worth changing.   Some of my clients have already changed and our delighted with the major changes in the reporting structure and the ease of use and better explanation  of the reports as this is an area business have always struggled in picking reports. Most of these reports have been there for years, but not very obvious. As many know I have mention this many times , when someone says a report is unavailable.  My clients have also been very happy that all the Financial Reports TB , Profit and Loss , Balance sheet individual or all drillable.  Also every screen can go straight to Excel without having to preview and export which is another great feature. 

There has been a big improvement in the drillable function. 

Also there is  a lot of mention of sage not having certain reports for example in Cash Accounting for Vat.  Been able to print the Aged Debtors Net Vat Total and the Creditors the same so that you can reconcile easily.  On the SOAP website there are quite a few reports in the sage library that are useful to different business.  So the SOAP website for sage is actually very useful.  Mind you that comes with your cover anyway but you should take a look at the library as there are very good reports that can be copied and pasted.

I said this to sage that for me the main difference and biggest overhaul was the change in the Invoicing Module using a Product invoice, This is a huge improvement.  They felt is was the Vat .  It is really up to the individual on that as everyone sees things differently

I am happy to say this is also the main feedback from clients .  The Vat is a lot easier , but it is mainly the invoice module changes my clients have been really happy with.  

Kind Regards Sarah Douglas Douglas Accountancy and Bookkeeping Services Glasgow 

is that there is little advance warning of what is coming in the forthcoming upgrade

a) I think this prevents a lot of users from jumping ship because they know what they have right now, and they are kept on tenterhooks for something new in the release, that may be of significant benefit.

b) microsoft (and Apple) advises (or perhaps "leaks") news of updates years in advance. They almost create a feverish excitement about the upgrade. And what will be appearing in months and years to come. Sage almost denies that there will be an upgrade - right up until July and then they call constantly thereafter to persuade you to upgrade. Why can't they just create some "excitement" and intrigue in advance? Every few months I ask the support staff "so what is new in your next upgrade" and they almost all deny that there will be a new release.

c) There appears to be no consideration of loyalty when it comes to the upgrade.

You may be a company that has used sage for donkeys years, but the cost of buying the package off the shelf today appears to be the same cost to an existing company who has been using the software for many years; has upgraded several times; and possibly even pays for support every year.

d) Several years ago there was a rumour that Sage was going the SQL database route. Of course, that never materialised and my guess is that is why Sage now does not give advance notifications as they don't want to look like eejits.

e) Sage has bought a number of other accounting software-related companies over the years here and abroad, and I have always hoped that they would start building some of the new features from the other applications in to one strong, powerful, more robust, application. Tasbooks and Peachtree accounts to mention just 2. Surely the company in general would benefit from a more consistent and uniform approach to various editions of their software.

f) I have used a number of sage versions over the years and my company currently uses version 2010. Despite threats from Sage about them discontinuing support next year, I see very little reason to upgrade to 2012 or even 2013 as there is no significant "must have" feeling about the next version. And I also still use Version 12 for one of my other clients and Sage performs perfectly well. Last year they offered a discount on version 2011 and 2012. This year they have offered a discount on version 2012 and the as yet, unreleased 2013.

g) We use multi-currency for some customers and I would really like a system where one could create one single customer or supplier account (instead of 2, 3 or more accounts) and then invoice, pay or receive multiple currencies. This would cut down dramatically on situations where a customer set up as GBP suddenly deciding that they want to pay us in EUR or USD and the faffing about transferring between currency accounts to finally pay an invoice - and then finding the Sterling value to be vastly overstated while the currency account itself reconciles perfectly.

And why I cannot transfer €1200 between accounts, rather than £1526.31 at an exchange rate of y. It leads to unncessary rounding errors

Other accounting software packages handle multi-currency perfectly (yes, ok! they lack other features!) but my point is that Sage is the stalwart in the pack, and should be pushing to improve.

I like many things about Sage but many modern business persons cannot deal with the way data is entered and handled. Sage, to me, is almost "olde worlde" in the world of accounts, and soon the new upstarts of Xero, Quickbooks, and many others, will take more converts.

And I always wonder why, after so many years, are there still so many other companies like adept, providing add-ons etc. I think its great that they do offer their things, but why doesn't sage try a little harder in implementing some of the ideas into a single package.

Ok. I'm over my little niggle for the day.

Thanks

M

I also have most of those Sage niggles myself and find Sage 50 so frustrating. Every update I hope they may have made some of those small but longed for changes that would make day to day order and invoice processing so much smoother, but they never do. Like you say "olde worlde"

The lastest upgrade promised easier invoice emailing, but all it has done is introduce a feature that we already had a work around for. To use this new feature we would have to create all our invoice reports from scratch and go into each customer record and copy the delivery address email into the email 2 box! 

But, worse of all, this upgrade has caused a data corruption that means we are now having to retype a hundred or so invoices and sales orders from the last two weeks. It's not something a backup can  solve. I know this won't happen to everyone, but buyer beware. I suspect a versioin based on SQL would have been easier to fix. This is just crazy though, Sage are helping the best they can however due to the way the data is created, there is a limit to what they can do.

Rant over :(