Sage moves to patch 2010 accounts bug - update

Posted by John Stokdyk PM | on Wed, 16/09/2009 - 13:00 11873 4 comments

Programmers at Sage HQ in Newcastle are working to fix a bug in Sage 50 Accounts 2010, which was went on sale last week.

Sage Accountants Division managing director Greg Ford alerted AccountingWEB.co.uk on Thursday that some test users had experienced problems when creating a new Recurring entry in the 2010 edition’s Bank module.

This issue only affects people who have upgraded to Sage 50 Accounts 2010, not users who are installing the program for the first time. Amending existing recurring entries works perfectly in the new system, but when a new recurring entry is added, it can over-write the first recurring item in a list. No historical transactions are lost and of course actual direct debits or standing orders, for example, are completely unaffected by this, Ford informed readers of our Sage 50 Accounts 2010 review.

According to Ford, the flaw was discovered by a beta test site after the assessment period had closed. By the time the bug was reported, around 6,000 copies of Sage 50 Accounts 2010 had gone out the door - a relatively small number in the overall Sage 50 universe. From its activation records, Sage estimates only around 300 customers had actually installed and activated the new version. Sage immediate set about contacting those affected and turned to AccountingWEB.co.uk to help notify potential users.

“If you or your clients have received the upgrade to 2010, we would recommend that you don’t upgrade, as per a communication we’re sending out today, until you’re advised the correction is available to be applied by our auto-updates mechanism,” Ford said.

Continued...

Sage

Anonymous | Wed, 16/09/2009 - 10:43 | Permalink

Anybody else got deja vu with this?

This happens, to some extent, almost everytime Sage release an update of "Line 50".

It's why our practice never updates immediately/until we have to because a client's adopted it.

Over the last 5 years Sage has seemingly shifted all focus to sales with little care for (especially existing) users.

Unfortunately it's the market leader and has a captive market which it abuses. How many years have we been waiting for a proper drill-down facility, flexible contra routines and easily manipulated management reports (which other software provides as standard nowadays) whilst we're given a new "front-end", presentation whistles & bells and very little of practical use.

My favourite extra was when then introduced a pie chart of the (whole) balance sheet???????????

Sage 50 Accounts 2010: Update from Sage

greg.ford.sage.com | Wed, 16/09/2009 - 10:48 | Permalink

After piloting a fix with a number of business users of Sage 50 Accounts 2010 I'm pleased to share this has been successful and the fix is being made via Auto Updates. The download is available again and we are in the process of communicating this to our Accountants community, Business Partners and of course our mutual clients and customers. An easy way to check the auto update has applied is to validate the version number by opening the Help menu and choosing About, and the version number should be c16.00.16.0153

Finally my thanks to AccountingWeb, accountants and business partners for their support through this process and my apologies for any inconvenience.

Greg Ford

Managing Director, Sage Accountants' Division

Sage

Tim Robinson | Wed, 16/09/2009 - 13:36 | Permalink

How about the "upgrade" a few years ago when Sage started hiding the Financials screen under the Company tab? I complained about this at the time and then the following year they made it even harder to access by only showing either the nominal OR the Financials at the same time.

But since most of us have been using it so long it is difficult to move away - for instance I downloaded Microsoft Accounts twelve months ago and wanted to get classroom training on it, but there is none in my city.

Sage v Pegasus

Anonymous | Fri, 04/12/2009 - 16:59 | Permalink

With the winning by Pegasus with their Opera version, I am looking forward to Pegasus again regaining their position as one of the serious competitors of the UK market. I go back to the 1980s with using Pegasus's DOS version. I was very disappointed to see the time that they took to come out with a Windows version. By default therefore Sage took the lead - and there were some good facilities within it.

(I can never understand how Sage has continued to market a product with such a peculiar page-scrolling system.)