SAGE 50 5010 Upgrade

Hi Richard and welcome to the Sage 50 Accounts discussion group!

This is a good point to start, although I'm surprised you didn't hear from Sage as we did on AccountingWEB... The bug was discovered after the beta programme had finished and just after I put my review of the application up on the site. The next day I got a call from Accountants Division managing director Greg Ford (who's now chief of the Small Business wing at Sage) telling me about the glitch, which affected the Recurring payments routine in the Banking module.

By the following Tuesday, Sage's programmers had sorted out a fix. According to Greg Ford, only around 300 people had activated the new programme by that point and I think they did quite well to communicate that a problem existed. I guess after dealing with the first wave of the crisis, the follow up emails and calls to those who had not installed the new version slipped by the wayside.

Accoring to Ford, the fix is available via Sage's Auto Updates site. You can check if this has been applied to your system by opening the Help menu and choosing About, and the version number should be c16.00.16.0153

In your situation, having not installed the 2010 version, you should be able to get the update if you've got a Sage online support log-in. If not, try giving their support line a call and ask them to send a new set of discs that include the fix.

Good luck and let us know how you get on - there may well be other members in the same boat.
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John Stokdyk, Technology editor

While searching for something else about Sage 50 Accounts, I noticed an Any Answers query from late September in which an anonymous member reported major problems with the 2010 invoicing module.

Strange warning signs popped up in the data check routine, but Sage told the user no one else had reported any problems within the invoicing module.

Richard - have you found anything else amiss since installing 2010? Or has anyone else in this group? I'm hoping we can help the anonymous AccountingWEB member resolve their issue.
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John Stokdyk, Technology editor

I have recently upgraded a client from 2008 to 2010, the data is on a 2003 SBS server the clients are all XP Pro.

There can be upto 6 users connected at anyone time, since the upgrade everything has got a lot slower.I have spoke to sage support many time's, tried every suggestion they have but still cannot seem to improve the performance.Anti-virus,SMB signing ,Op Locks.

The new/edit on a customer varies from 10 to 20 sec's, saving a customer after editing the memo for example is the same.

If more than one user is in the same module,sales,customer you start to see: ..waiting for account.dta or waiting for salindex.dta until the record becomes unlocked.

Supplier performance is good

Upraded the server's memory, added a new hard drive just for sage data.Spec xeon 2.8GHZ, 3GB RAM, 15000 RPM SCSI HDD, 1GB network connection to the server, 100mbps to client computers.Running accounts 2008 everything was mostly instant?

Any suggestions welcome and thanks

Sam

I find myself drawn into the Sage 50 snakepit again and will try and pass on what I can until more experienced users turn up to help out.

A couple of alarm bells went of when I read your post, Sam.

Replying to a more general Sage 50 query on Any Answers earlier in the year, I reported issues relating to Sage's flat-file database structure, which can only handle a limited number of transactions (100k approx). This can slow the application down frustratingly when users get close to its transaction limit.

But the number of records didn't increase when you carried out the upgrade, so the problems might well arise from the multi-user nature of the installation, which can also cause performance problems. While trying to track down the reseller's site where I cribbed my info from last time, I found a couple more useful references, including one from Steve Blencoe Systems that specifically pointed to problems that cropped up with SBS 2003's SMB Signings (follow the link to find out what I'm going on about). I'm always reluctant to try out unknown downloads, but he's also got a system benchmarking tool called Transfix that might apply in your situation.

I hope this can help you temporarily until the cavalry arrives.
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John Stokdyk, Technology editor

Hi - I'm certainly no expert either but have experienced a similar problem and have complained bitterly to Sage three times, particularly as Sage sales told me how fast the new version would be.

Exceptionally slow tasks for me are data import and bank rec - not just the usual 2010 hanging around but leaving the office to make tea and chat type slow.

My server and pc's are well up to the job, according to Sage, and I've had my IT support carry out all the changes recommended by Sage - my company is a single user but the data is on the server - apart from the network speed, which Sage say should be 1Gbps (it's currently 100Mbps). IT say they can't guarantee I'll see the speed increase that Sage believes is possible so, before I spend the money, I'm going to install and run Sage bank rec on the server at next month end. If Sage are right, that should solve this issue once and for all.

I do have a lot of data as it's never been archived - I'm not used to Sage and like to archive my data when it suits me rather than as part of the year end routine - but don't believe that's the problem as Sage went instantly from fast to slow immediately after the upgrade.

Sage also claimed that a previous upgrade had completely changed Line 50's programming, so I would notice a huge difference from my old version 11. That may be so but I've not spotted any real differences apart from the incredible slowness.

-- Lin

I was concerned to read about the potential problems with the 2010 upgrade and consequently the box is still sitting on my desk.  We have noticed a slow down of our current 2009 version and we have about 49,000 transactions showing on the system.  What happens when the 100,000 limit is reached?  Does it just say "no"?  Our system is on a server with multiple users and we also use an application from Steve Blencowe Systems called Transpose.  This is an excellent programme that also contains a test facility. I don't know if this is the same as transfix, but I can say that we have been impressed with Transpose and Steves knowledge of Sage products.  He also has a page on his website dealing with the performance issues of Sage - see http://www.steveblencowe.com/sageslow.htm

We have had data corruption in the past, which we had Sage clean, which Sage said was due to the network traffice being interrupted as data was being written to the file.  I guess this occurs due to the application not being a database and is not addressed in the latest version.

We also have the 2010 version sitting waiting to be installed. Seeing these problems makes me glad we postponed the upgrade.

We received the upgrade in September. Unfortunately, I suspect it is too late to return the software and get our money back.

Keeping transaction numbers down.

If a lot of the transactions are "old" there is an option within period end to clear the audit trail on every version of Sage I have used (2010 is still in the box). This option wipes out individual ledger transactions that are completed to a date which you can select. Once you have deleted old transactions you will just have detailed transactions from the date you have selected, not the full history from commencement on the ledgers, so make sure you have multiple backups before running this routine. We normally keep two complete years live plus current year and zap the rest.

Once you have cleared the audit trail, you must run the compress routine within the maintenance module to recover the file space.

http://www.ledgerservices.co.uk/news/2009/07/sage-50-sql/

I spoke to Sage the other day to see if there was any progress on their SQL version of Sage 50. Still no estimated release date, which means it will be 2011 at the earliest...

Shame, as this really would be useful, and would solve a lot of the speed issues...

I have used the transfix program before and had nothing flagged.I do know of steve blencowe as my client uses his phoneix product which interfaces with sage.

Been in contact again with sage and trying some more "fixes" If i do come across any that work I will be sure to post back.

I would like to hear if anyone is using it successfully in a multi user setup, and also has a large set of customer records and invoices.As I do have one customer who uses it with no problems, data on the server but it's only a 1 user version.

At the moment I could not recommend anyone upgrading to 2010...

Regards,

              Sam

Sam wrote:

<<At the moment I could not recommend anyone upgrading to 2010...>>

Call me cynical if you like, I find life safer and easier by staying 12months behind with software.........don't get me started on 'windows'

-- Shining light into the black holes of your accounts

We recently upgraded and it was a nightmare, at the same time we decided to put it on a new machine and they repeatedley gave the wrong activation code, promised to get back to us and never did. Within the week there was a big corruption problem with 300+ lines of data missing and incidences of 1 sided entries from journals, my advice post upgrade backup and check the data everyday to detect signs of corruption.

I just wanted to post quickly....

After months of upgrades and support from sage, there is apparently a "bug" in sage 2010 where if you have over 10,000 customers you will get a performance decrease 3 to 4 times worse than you are used too!

This bug will be not be fixed until the next major version....

That's It !!!

I recently returned my 2010 version to Sage because of the speed issues, we have 25,000 customers on file the response times taking up to 20 seconds (glad I tested thourghly before going live..!) . There was no problem getting a refund but they never mentioned the issue with the Customers, they did say that a MySQL version was imminent, do'nt hold your breath though!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I gathered up the evidence presented here and on a couple of other threads in this group and put it to Sage. I got some interesting responses from their support team, which are included in the article Users gripe over Sage 50 Accounts 2010 upgrade. While the experiences of users here are very real, Sage says the overall trend shows no significant increase on previous upgrades.The article includes diagnoses and remedies for the various problems reported by group members.

I am now waiting to hear back from senior executives on some of the more strategic points raised.

I think the key words in the statement from Sage about "no significant increase on previous upgrades", (presumably meaning decrease in speed). This is technically true, but only in comparison to the last couple of releases.

However many users experiencing big problems are moving from v11 or v12, both of which were very fast compared to later versions.  Suddenly users notice a big decrease in speed and performance. This is coming to light now because Sage direct sales are pursuing an aggressive sales campaign to move these users onto the latest, 2010 / v.16 Sage 50. The prospects data size, machine spec. and user numbers are not a factor to consider when outbound sales are trying to reach sales targets. Unfortunately the end result is bad press for Sage and unhappy customers.

speed issues much better with the update