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Review: Sage Instant Accounts version 14

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7th Apr 2008
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Sage recently launched its improved Instant Accounts Software, which now comes with free health and safety advice for the first year. Other improvements include improved VAT management of e-payment and list submissions, and the facility to receive card payments from customers (subject to additional charges.

Another useful feature (though hardly unique) is a practice company which can be used to try out features and procedures before using them in your company accounts. This release has other features designed to make the software easier to use. A new welcome page provides a central resource base, linking to software simulations, help files and documents. Judy Pepper considers whether these additions would convince her to adopt the program

Sage Instant Accounts: Key points
Entry-level edition of Sage's flagship accounting package, capable of VAT and credit card payment management. Good for someone who may advance to Sage 50 over time, but not an intuitive experience for the novice user.

Strengths

  • Straightforward installation with help information, wizards and on-line tutorials
  • Process view diagrams aid navigation for new users.
  • Sage brand and market presence - companion applications are widely used and known, so advice and support are easy to find.

Weaknesses

  • Inputting transactions can be time-consuming, with little built-in prompting for nominal code options, and weak search facilities
  • Some minor irritations in with chart of accounts options.
  • Error correction handled by separate module - good for keeping an audit trail, but may complicate corrections for novice users.

Pricing

  • £115+VAT.

Installing Sage Instant was straightforward and initial impressions were good. The “Getting Started” screen appeared to offer lots of helpful information, on what to do first with links to on-line tutorials and help documents. The new process view diagrams also seemed quite helpful. At a basic level this appeared adequate for simple processes, but when I started using my local charity accounts to test the software in more detail, I started struggling.

Using the bank account wizard I managed to add a bank account, but the defaulted nominal code wasn't added to the chart of accounts. The program raised a warning that this default one was outside of the “range for my general ledger” chart of accounts, but offered no obvious help as how to avoid the issue. Fixing it was no beginner’s task, as I would need advanced knowledge of the chart of accounts module to sort out the resulting missing entries. It seems reasonable to assume that using a wizard to set up a bank account, should be simple, and would only allow you to add a bank account that would be included in your chart of accounts.

The wizard advised me that I could input my opening balance as one figure, or as several. Excellent, in that case I could enter several for the net cashbook balance, the bank balance, and then each uncleared cheque amount separately, to make the next bank reconciliation nice and easy. Unfortunately there only appeared to be space for six transactions, so that stopped me in my tracks.

There was an option to add the opening cash balance as more than one transaction, so I attempted to enter our uncleared cheques separately, which would make subsequent bank reconciliations easier. However there were insufficient lines to add all 10 cheques.

The default chart of accounts for a charity didn’t have a major heading for subscriptions (which seemed surprising) or publications - our largest sources of income. It took a while to work out how to change the headings that were there, to ones more applicable to our charity.

Transaction input was far more unwieldy and time consuming than our usual software. Most modern software will react to typed entries and show you a list of accounts which match the string you enter - which demands no knowledge of supplier account numbers or nominal codes. This look-up facility is sadly lacking here, and the search facility was not much better. I couldn’t get it to do a wildcard search, or find any help on the search function at all.

The nominal codes are listed in numerical order, so you really need to know your coding structure before you start posting a batch of anything. There is probably more scope for error as it was not clear when choosing a nominal code what type of account you were selecting, for example computer expense account rather than computer asset account.

Entering a batch of transactions I had to continually change a strange default date of the transaction rather than it defaulting from the last transaction. I also couldn’t enter quantities on the sales invoices, for example four books at £20, and would have had to show this in the description.

Error Correction is done in a separate module, which gives a good audit trail, but is more convoluted and complicated than our current system. Clearly it is not always an advantage to be able to change entries, but for a business where only one person processes transactions, this is a definite plus point, especially when you are finding your way around a system.

Clearly there are advantages of selecting a Sage product. It's widely used, employees and accountants are familiar with it, and there is plenty of advice around. For a business that starts small, but is going to grow, it’s ideal to start with an accounting package that can grow with the business. As an accountant familiar with larger systems and other SME bookkeeping programs, however, I found Sage Instant Accounts awkward and time-consuming. No doubt with a more thorough reading of the manuals and a little more work, I could have found the answers to the problems I encountered - but the one thing that small business owners and managers rarely have is time to spend on researching accounting techniques.

Small business software users are often shaped by the first package they use - and thousands of businesses successfully learn bookkeeping and grow with Sage. But as a non-Sage user, I did not find Instant Accounts an intuitive experience and wondered how a user with little or no accounts experience would fare. It would also be wise to get an accountant to set the software up to avoid pitfalls later on. Unless they were determined to commit themselves to the Sage brand, a sole trader or very small business would probably find a cheaper and easier solution with QuickBooks, MYOB or one of the emerging breed of easy-to-use online accounts systems.

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By richardterhorst
16th Apr 2008 17:28

Sage v 14
Coming from a non-Sage environment - Pastel, Evolution, Quickbooks, Accpac, MYOB etc. I got a culture shock.

Sage COA is horrible to work with and time consuming. For the rest there seem to have been an absence of logic in the program design with items all over the place and having to jump between modules for many transactions.

I am surprised competitors have not managed to topple Sage from being the leading UK accounting software and can only put it to conservatism as many SME accounting products readily available in the market place are far superior.

Personally I would recommend Pastel with Evolution for the SME needing more sophistication or ME.

Incidently its ironic that Pastel is now owned by Sage or the other way around. It depends who you ask.

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By cwarnell
10th Apr 2008 18:16

couldn’t enter quantities on the sales invoices?
I'm not using v14, but unless there's a bug in that version or there has been a serious deprecation in functionality, entering quantities on the sales invoice is a cinch.

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