Sage - rant

Sage Pricing

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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.

Replies (16)

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By bernard michael
14th Oct 2021 12:07

'twas ever thus!!

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By Louisemunro320
14th Oct 2021 12:20

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

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Replying to Louisemunro320:
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By Andy556
14th Oct 2021 12:35

I've never used them but I'm all about customer service so I might look into them at some point :)

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By MissAccounting
14th Oct 2021 12:33

Just wait until they start messing with the GoProposal pricing in the same way!

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Replying to MissAccounting:
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By Andy556
14th Oct 2021 12:37

There are a lot of nervous accountants out there at the minute over this. Only time will tell, surely they can't do anything in the near future though so you'd assume for at least the next year or so it will be fine.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
14th Oct 2021 14:51

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.

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Replying to ireallyshouldknowthisbut:
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By Andy556
14th Oct 2021 15:05

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

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Replying to Andy556:
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By bernard michael
14th Oct 2021 15:16

Andy556 wrote:

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
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Replying to bernard michael:
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By Andy556
14th Oct 2021 16:16

It took 20 seconds to fix so I was free

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Replying to Andy556:
ALISK
By atleastisoundknowledgable...
15th Oct 2021 21:52

Andy556 wrote:

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

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Replying to atleastisoundknowledgable...:
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By Andy556
16th Oct 2021 17:00

I never had a Queue.dat issue. Sage Line 50 was pretty reliable to be fair, I barely had an issue with it for the years I used to use it.

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By Moonbeam
15th Oct 2021 15:26

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.

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By JD
15th Oct 2021 19:51

Moving clients away from sage due to blind arrogance in still charging and demanding payment for a cancelled subscription.

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Replying to JD:
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By Andy556
17th Oct 2021 20:05

Clients are free to use whichever software they prefer and I will go along with any decision they make, therefore that's why I use different software providers including the one client on Sage. I just don't recommend Sage currently as my clients talk so if one says they pay £££ per month and the other says half of that then it looks bad on me. If clients have made up their mind already then I won't stop them let alone just randomly cancel their subscription.

Are you suggesting I'm ripping my clients off or Sage are still charging for cancelled subscriptions? Neither are true I'm afraid. Sage stop charging when you cancel so they don't charge for nothing. If you're suggesting I'm ripping my clients off by charging for something that I don't pay for then that is pretty disgusting

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By Jimess
18th Oct 2021 12:29

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?

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Replying to Jimess:
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By bernard michael
18th Oct 2021 13:17

Jimess wrote:

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
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