The latest version of Sage 50 Accounts 2011, introduced this month, answers some long-standing customer requests with new automatic bank reconciliation features and support for the VAT flat-rate scheme.
Rather than bringing a battery of minor improvements to the market, the product development team focused on users’ priorities to improve their overall experience of Sage 50 Accounts, said product manager Robin Moore during an online demo of the new features.
Bank reconciliation
Judging from recent conversations in the Sage 50 Accounts discussion group on AccountingWEB, the new bank reconciliation module will have the biggest impact.
As a long-standing wishlist item, improvements to bank reconciliation didn’t make it into the 2010 version, but have finally made their appearance in the 2011 edition. The module lets you download data from the bank statement for an individual account into Sage 50, from which you can then click and match transactions on the statement to those in Sage. The adjustment dialogue has been altered to make it easier to post different adjustments on either payments or receipts. The Export to Excel option has also been changed so the unreconciled balances report looks more familiar to users.
The default Bank Rec report options now include two formats for reconciled transations; versions of the bank statement sorted by date, reference or transaction number; retrospective bank reconciliations (summary and detail) and the unreconciled transactions report already mentioned. Following user requests, these reports can be output as PDFs to retain a record of the reconciliations as they were completed, and in the case of the restrospective report, the total for unreconciled items will show up as a hyperlink that lets the user drill through to the individual transactions.
VAT module: support for flat-rate scheme
When you start up a new company in Sage, the Set-Up Wizard now provides the Flat Rate VAT options for both invoice-based and cash-based businesses, alongside the existing options for Standard Rate VAT and VAT Cash Accounting. The program will ask you to specify the standard rate of VAT.
If you choose one of the Flat Rate options, you will also need to enter the percentage rate for your industry within the Company Preferences dialogue box, and this is also where you need to enter any rate changes – for example when the standard rate goes up to 20% on 4 January 2011.
When you are ready to complete a VAT return, the program gives you an option to reconcile/don’t reconcile and if you proceed, it will then allow you to file the return online, as with existing versions of the program.
While demonstrating the new functionality, Sage 50 Accounts associate product manager Phil Thornton pointed out an extra enhancement in the shape of the Cost/Benefit button on the on-screen VAT Return. Clicking this options shows the difference between what is being paid under the Flat Rate scheme, and what would be the amount payable under the standard VAT regime.
“That’s pretty much it,” said Thornton. “Everything is pretty much the same on invoices, journals and so on. The only place you see a difference is in the VAT return where you’ve got a field for the Flate Rate scheme percentage. With the Cost/Benefit button, we just show what each option costs, and the difference. The key was not to overcomplicate it.”
Webstore integration with Sage Pay
The groundwork for closer links to Sage Pay were introduced in the 2010 editon of Sage 50 Accounts Webstore, with the addition of an automated “Pay Now” link on electronic invoices. This feature would then feed details of the individual transaction through to the bookkeeping program.
With the 2011 upgrade, a step-by-step Wizard now lets the user download all transactions made via the online Sage Pay system (formerly Protx).
The user can choose which data to download by date and if you set it up to do so, the import routine will automatically match payments from customer it recognises to their user accounts. The program can be set to create new accounts for unmatched customers, or you can match them manually. In some cases where a trader completes a lot of business online, they may prefer to set the download up so that the transactions all go into a single “web sales” account, Thornton said.
A report can be generated within Sage 50 Accounts for the downloaded sales, and once they have been transferred, the transactions show up as normal in the Invoice list.
Charities: Funds account reporting
Product manager Robin Moore said that a significant amount of the 8,000 or so wishlist requests the company has received in the past year have come from people seeking improvements for those working with charities, including some concerted lobbying from within the company. “As part of our prioritisation process, a lot of charity features showed up quite high on the list,” Moore said. The results are now evident in Sage 50 Accounts’ overhauled Funds module.
To begin with, if the company is identified as a charity within the Set-Up Wizard, the program will activate the Funds functionality. Within the module itself, the basic dialogue screen has been rejigged to look more like a “mini-ledger” as Moore described it. Some of the key functional buttons along the bottom of the dialogue - P&L, Balance, Activity, Transfer – have been converted into main menu icons and the main part of each sub routine provides a simple grid for a quick tabular review of relevant data, or data entry for new activities or funds.
In the P&L and Balance Sheet views, the user can use the Control-Click mouse option to select multiple funds to produce quick summary reports for grouped funds.
Links to other Sage services
In the user interface got all the attention last year, there are only a few minor additions this time round, such as the control-click option just mentioned. But the addition of a new Sage Services bar at the bottom of the program’s left-hand “task pane” points to an interesting new approach.
Clicking this part of the screen brings up a menu of different services, from the user’s main Sage Account details, to Sage Cover options, a wishlist request option, Support bulletins and several variants of the company’s information advice lines, for example on health & safety. One option (illustrated below) includes a “Report of the Month” download for Sagecover users which in July and August included net creditor/debtor analysis reports.
All of this material is served up from the web, but in a browser window within Sage 50 Accounts itself. “The whole point of this is to expose services to users through the desktop they know,” said Thornton. It’s hardly an earth-shattering innovation, but an interesting insight into how desktop software developers like Sage are trying to retain “ownership” of their customers, even when they surf online.
Other minor modifications and enhancements
Product manager Robin Moore said that Sage is keen to record and respond to user requests, particularly where they contribute to their overall efficiency. He highlighted several other small additions in the 2011 edition that fell into this category:
- Nominal ledger journals “Ex Ref” – an extra field added so users can add their own internal reference.
- More Initial View options – When setting up Sage 50 Accounts, the administrator can configure each user’s default view to the Quotations module, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Manage Payments, or Chase Debts to cater for a wider variety of roles within the organisation.
- Archive Company Data Before Year End – Addressing a sensible request to make it easier for users to back up active data as the year progresses.
- One click email option – Within the Quotations, Invoices, Purchase and Sales Orders modules, clicking the Email icon will call up a default layout and dispatch the document to the contact with a single click.
“It’s a big program,” commented the product manager. “We’re really trying to improve the user experience and increase efficiency and effectiveness. Even the simple email quote option has taken out a number of mouse clicks - somebody doing that regularly is going to get a benefit. A lot of these enhancements are about improving what we’ve got.”