Has anyone else got the same issue with Sage that their pricing isn't consistent? It just seems unfair to me.
Sage charge me £xxx for new clients per month but for the exact same service they charge my old clients double. Sage said if I cancel the subscriptions of the old ones and add them on again I can get the cheaper price. I couldn't save the data though so they said to export all the data then start from fresh on the new subscription. I know I could probably re-import everything but it's a hassle.
They won't change my current subscription price and keep the data as it is. I know they are doing it as they know it's a hassle to cancel then set up again so they can keep my old clients paying more.
I'm only a tiny practice so they aren't interested in me but just wondering if they do this to other people. For clarity I have around 50 Xero clients, 25 Quickbooks clients and now just 1 on Sage just for this reason, the rest are just small tax returns etc on excel. I could easily grow my Sage client base based on their new pricing but I never recommend Sage as this seems harsh and I refuse to charge one client more than another for exactly the same thing. I know it's just 1 client for me now so I could change pretty easily but it would an absolute nightmare if you had a lot more.
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We have had exactly the same problem with Sage. We now use Freeagent which is brilliant for small businesses and very reasonably priced. Support is excellent and they genuinely want to work with accountants
All the 'mature' software co's do much the same.
My main beef with Sage back when it was about the only option was they made it so far to use you pretty much had to buy sage support.
Ie they seemed to deliberately make the software obtuse, just to sell that package.
this late 90's and early 00's when there was no the help you can find now in the internet on how to fix stuff.
This brings back memories. Do you ever remember the error that didn't allow you to open the Sage Line 50 data
You had to search your computer for the watermark.xml file, delete that and then Sage opened ahahaha that was so random
Sage charging for support to fix an error that was their fault. If you didn't know this error then Sage forced you to pay. They did it to a client without me knowing so they had to pay a yearly support contract. I had to then e-mail all clients to notify them of the error and come to me first before calling Sage if it happened
I assume you were cheaper than Sage
This brings back memories. Do you ever remember the error that didn't allow you to open the Sage Line 50 data
You had to search your computer for the watermark.xml file, delete that and then Sage opened ahahaha that was so random
Sage charging for support to fix an error that was their fault. If you didn't know this error then Sage forced you to pay. They did it to a client without me knowing so they had to pay a yearly support contract. I had to then e-mail all clients to notify them of the error and come to me first before calling Sage if it happened
I thought it was ‘Queue.dat’, which thought you were still logged into the software
I have one large and one small client on Sage. I or they extract their data into Excel every year and I adjust it with csv files that they import.
Neither client wants to change to Xero, both for very strange reasons that don't pass muster in the modern world.
The larger client has to pay me far more than if they were using Xero, but that's down to them.
The small business world will always gravitate to the most successful offerings in this area, and Sage isn't one of those.
I think you're going in the right way here.
Moving clients away from sage due to blind arrogance in still charging and demanding payment for a cancelled subscription.
I stopped using Sage for client bookkeeping years ago for this very reason. All my clients that I carry out bookkeeping work for are all on VT+ now. I still have to pay Sage a huge amount of money each year to enable me to access the Sage data files for 3 or 4 clients who have not migrated on to cloud software yet- usually once per year for their accounts information, it's hard to pass that sort of over the top charge on to the clients who are already paying Sage a kings ransom for their software. Their pricing structures are hair raising and for that reason I would never recommend Sage to a client looking for bookkeeping software. Once you are on their software they take that as a licence to double their charges - as they did to one of my clients last year, or push out unrealistic price hikes two or three times per year. I was contacted by a client on Sage last week telling me that their Sage subscription had just gone up by 22%. How can Sage justify price hikes at that level?
I stopped using Sage for client bookkeeping years ago for this very reason. All my clients that I carry out bookkeeping work for are all on VT+ now. I still have to pay Sage a huge amount of money each year to enable me to access the Sage data files for 3 or 4 clients who have not migrated on to cloud software yet- usually once per year for their accounts information, it's hard to pass that sort of over the top charge on to the clients who are already paying Sage a kings ransom for their software. Their pricing structures are hair raising and for that reason I would never recommend Sage to a client looking for bookkeeping software. Once you are on their software they take that as a licence to double their charges - as they did to one of my clients last year, or push out unrealistic price hikes two or three times per year. I was contacted by a client on Sage last week telling me that their Sage subscription had just gone up by 22%. How can Sage justify price hikes at that level?
Their attitude is they can so they do