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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    QuickBooks Online Advanced

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AQuickBooks Online Advanced is a SaaS-based accounting software designed to scale with growing businesses. It includes the functionalities of QuickBooks Online, as well as more robust business analytics, customization, and resource management.N/A

    Sage 50

    Score7.6 out of 10
    Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
    Sage 50cloud Accounting (formerly Sage 50 Accounting) is accounting software designed for small businesses. Sage 50cloud Accounting (formerly Sage 50, and formerly Peachtree) lets businesses invoice customers, pay bills, manage inventory, control costs, and pay employees. The solution includes high-level dashboards and in-depth reports.

    $61.92

    per month per user

    Pricing
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Sage 50 Pro Accounting
    $61.92
    per month
    Sage 50 Premium Accounting
    $103.92
    per month per user
    Sage 50 Quantum Accounting 3 User
    $177.17
    per month per user
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Annual billing plans also available for all products.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Considered Both Products
    Intuit
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    We switched from Sage 50 Accounting because it was not truly cloud based, and in order to upgrade there were additional fees.
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    QuickBooks Online Advanced is our first choice, we love using this software, it does everything we need and also it is a great choice for great majority of our clients. It also evolves and the new features are always great. Xero, for example, does not listen to user feedback …
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    QuickBooks Online Advanced is on par with Xero, and both are market leaders in the Online Bookkeeping solutions. Multi-dimensional reporting is better than Xero but Xero has better WorkPapers, Hubdoc app and allows for online filing of accounts to Companies House and to HMRC. …
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    Sage was a better fit for established, growing organizations whereas QuickBooks Online was a simpler system for startups and small to mid-sized businesses. In one of my companies, we had a CFO who preferred the product due to the customization. Our bookkeeper, in a smaller …
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    At my last job we used Sage 50. It wasn't nearly as easy to use and had less features and cost more.
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    QuickBooks is better than Sage 50. Better design and easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    QuickBooks is so much easier to use than anything I have worked with before.
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    QuickBooks has been a significant upgrade over Sage50. We have not encountered any of the stability or licensing issues we encountered with Sage. The software is also much faster and easier to navigate. There are certain pieces of information that used to take much longer to …
    Incentivized
    Chose QuickBooks Online Advanced
    QuickBooks is much easier to use and train on. It makes dealing with your company's taxes a breeze. Reporting on your financial information is easy. Much of the functionality in the software is intuitive and easy to figure out. Other software reconciliation features aren't as …
    Incentivized
    Sage
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    150 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    15 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    134 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    10 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    153 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    15 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    124 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    131 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Features
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Customization
    Comparison of Customization features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    7.9
    116 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Sage 50
    6.8
    14 Ratings
    11% below category average
    API for custom integration7.796 Ratings7.311 Ratings
    Plug-ins8.0101 Ratings6.313 Ratings
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    8.4
    210 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Sage 50
    7.8
    29 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Single sign-on capability8.4184 Ratings6.924 Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.3206 Ratings8.626 Ratings
    Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    8.2
    225 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Sage 50
    8.2
    32 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Dashboards8.3212 Ratings8.430 Ratings
    Standard reports8.5225 Ratings8.932 Ratings
    Custom reports7.7216 Ratings7.231 Ratings
    General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
    Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    8.2
    233 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Sage 50
    7.3
    35 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Accounts payable8.4220 Ratings8.934 Ratings
    Accounts receivable8.5219 Ratings8.633 Ratings
    Cash management8.5193 Ratings7.933 Ratings
    Bank reconciliation9.1223 Ratings8.433 Ratings
    Expense management8.5206 Ratings8.531 Ratings
    Time tracking7.7110 Ratings7.115 Ratings
    Multi-currency support6.557 Ratings4.012 Ratings
    Multi-division support7.297 Ratings5.816 Ratings
    Regulations compliance8.3103 Ratings6.215 Ratings
    Electronic tax filing8.8127 Ratings8.218 Ratings
    Self-service portal7.9121 Ratings5.513 Ratings
    Primary and Secondary Ledgers8.297 Ratings6.89 Ratings
    Intercompany Accounting8.099 Ratings7.610 Ratings
    Journals and Reconciliations8.4199 Ratings8.822 Ratings
    Enterprise Accounting7.988 Ratings7.69 Ratings
    Configurable Accounting8.4111 Ratings8.111 Ratings
    Centralized Rules Framework8.985 Ratings6.67 Ratings
    Standardized Processes8.4151 Ratings7.916 Ratings
    Fixed asset management00 Ratings7.122 Ratings
    Global Financial Support00 Ratings5.76 Ratings
    Localizations00 Ratings7.58 Ratings
    Inventory Management
    Comparison of Inventory Management features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    6.2
    91 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Sage 50
    8.4
    21 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Inventory tracking6.291 Ratings8.121 Ratings
    Automatic reordering00 Ratings7.912 Ratings
    Location management00 Ratings8.010 Ratings
    Manufacturing module00 Ratings9.09 Ratings
    Order Management
    Comparison of Order Management features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    6.8
    150 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Sage 50
    7.5
    25 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Pricing6.8110 Ratings8.420 Ratings
    Order entry6.599 Ratings8.422 Ratings
    Credit card processing7.2129 Ratings7.014 Ratings
    Cost of goods sold00 Ratings7.421 Ratings
    Order Orchestration00 Ratings7.58 Ratings
    End-to-end order visibility00 Ratings6.69 Ratings
    Order exception Resolution00 Ratings7.28 Ratings
    Payroll Management
    Comparison of Payroll Management features of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Sage 50
    Feature
    QuickBooks Online Advanced
    -
    Ratings
    Sage 50
    8.5
    19 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Pay calculation00 Ratings8.318 Ratings
    Benefit plan administration00 Ratings8.013 Ratings
    Direct deposit files00 Ratings10.014 Ratings
    Salary revision and increment management00 Ratings8.014 Ratings
    Reimbursement management00 Ratings8.014 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Small Businesses
    QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
    Score4.2 out of 10
    QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
    Score4.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    MYOB
    Score8.3 out of 10
    MYOB
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Score5.4 out of 10
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Score5.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.9
    (235 ratings)
    8.4
    (45 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.8
    (20 ratings)
    9.1
    (14 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (16 ratings)
    8.6
    (15 ratings)
    Availability
    8.1
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.4
    (10 ratings)
    9.1
    (5 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    CPA Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (4 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.7
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    QuickBooks Online AdvancedSage 50
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Intuit
    Well suited for a larger company with many classes that need to be differentiated. It is relatively intuitive to use, whether you have used other versions of QuickBooks, or any other accounting software. Easy to dig into your accounts from wither the Balance Sheet or the Profit and Loss when trying to analyze performance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    Sage 50 Accounts is well-suited for small to medium-sized enterprises, where there is a moderate number of expenses and invoices that need processing, typically by a company with a smaller finance team. Sage 50 is probably less suitable for a large organisation that needs to handle a higher volume of transactions and manage significant stock levels.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Intuit
    • Budgeting is easy to input. Our entities have multiple departments, so using classes to separate and report the results of each department is important.
    • Reports are easy to customize to provide meaningful data to the board and department managers.
    • QuickBooks Online Advanced has a large market share of accounting software in use, so it is relatively easy to find new employees with prior experience with QuickBooks Online Advanced.
    • Able to open both entities at the same time, which is helpful due to the number of transactions between the two entities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    • We can build "templates" for recurrent charges/invoices. This saves some time and also ensures that we always use the right accounting rubric.
    • A lot of additional information can be filled out such as client information (name, address, ...) which makes the software a little more complete.
    • If you don't need an updated version every year (my case) then the software is not too expensive. The pro version that I'm using was just a little over $300.
    • I really like the banking statement consolidation which allows you to ensure you got the right information registered.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Intuit
    • Continued growth around AI usage and tool.
    • There are still some reporting gaps that make setting up custom reports not absolutely top-tier.
    • There can be a lot of UI clutter as different features keep getting turned on. Can become harder to navigate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    • Sage 50 could use some improvement in the Invoicing Module to allow for more flexibility in the design of the Invoice fields. The report customization tools could use some upgrading for easier use.
    • Fixed assets management module needs to be included with unlimited number of fixed assets.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Intuit
    It has become second nature to use Quick Books at the company. If you need a report you log in and pull the report. It helps expedite reconciliation of bank accounts, the automation of most tasks make it easy to get mundane tasks completed quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    I use this rating simply because I have a thriving Sage 50 consulting practice and will continue to keep my expertise in the product. I have consulted on both Sage 50 and QuickBooks for over 25 years so I have to maintain expertise in the solution as well as accounting and verticals.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Intuit
    QuickBooks Online Advanced is highly usable and intuitive for most day-to-day financial tasks. Its interface is clear, and core functions such as invoicing, reconciliation, and reporting are easy to perform. While some advanced features like report customization or integrations can be less straightforward, overall the platform offers a smooth and efficient user experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    I think Sage 50 is a trusted product and is reliable from a product delivery and support perspective. They have deep domain expertise in the non-profit space and should be a consideration for new non-profit startups or existing non-profits looking to migrate from other platforms. Overall, I believe that Sage 50 does many things well with few limitations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Intuit
    In the 5 years I have been using it, I cannot recall there ever having been an outage or not being able to access the system. Sure, there are issues with internet speeds sometimes that are unrelated to Intuit but it is a very reliable system.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Intuit
    Since we do not integrate the software with other systems, I do not have any issues with speed related to that. Pages tend to load pretty quickly, but there are times when reports or other pages take a little longer to load than usual. It is not an overly frustrating amount of time, though, and it happens infrequently.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Intuit
    No answers on this topic
    Sage
    They were very knowledgeable of the product, understood my timeline was limited for a software issue and allowed me to get back to my day to day work. The dial into your computer is great so you can monitor what they are doing and learn some tricks yourself
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Intuit
    The online training is good enough.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Intuit
    I did not participate in this part particularly much. The implementation was simple and easy to perform. There were not any major issues that arose during the process. QuickBooks has made the processes pretty streamless and I believe they had anticipated many difficulties ahead of time. This was easy enough
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    We implemented Sage 50 Premium Accounting in house, not using any third party or professional service. It was a relatively trouble free process, but can be tricky. Just read all instructions carefully, especially if you need to load the program on a network with more than one user
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Intuit
    QBO is great because it does accounting very well, and it can integrate well with everything. I appreciate that it has third-party integrations with many other software companies, so we can focus on doing our accounting through QuickBooks while adding other software as needed through those integrations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    As we did the conversion almost 10 years ago it is hard to answer this question. At the time it was the ease of being able to produce both cash and accrual financial statements and reporting that led us to pick Sage
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Intuit
    Software is very flexible
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    I define scalable from two perspectives; 1) the scalability to handle more bookkeepers/accountants using the product, and 2) the scalability to handle increasing customer/vendor/employee and transactional data. Sage 50 does a good job on both fronts. From the single users operating a micro-business accounting for customer invoices and bill payments only, to the multi-staff, multi-location, multi-departmental complex transactional operation. Although Sage 50 is quite expensive for that smallest user, it is quite inexpensive for the larger business entity. So, for the new enterprise expecting rapid growth, Sage 50 is the application of choice.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Intuit
    • Spreadsheet sync reduces manual data entry significantly. Exporting data into my customized Excel workbook that has complex formulas and macros for automating makes uploading changes and reconfiguring easy and convenient, saving a lot of time.
    • Automating AP approval has reduced lost paper copies, improved internal controls, and reduced audit findings.
    • Having banking connections has improved cash flow management, streamlined credit card expenses and reconciliation. I have found that utilizing it for my primary operating account actually makes things more difficult and can easily double-post payments, so I avoid using it on the checking account. It has been well for the credit card account, though.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sage
    • Sage definitely needs to do a better job with customer service. I have had to use them only a handful of times and it was not a great experience but not the worse I've seen. They didn't make us a priority and I felt that they didn't have a sense of urgency. They did address my lack of satisfaction and I can see that they are at least aware of the issues and they are trying to correct them.
    • Sage is exactly what we need in my current organization and I wouldn't change it for another system. I have used quite a few in my lifetime and I would say that it fits our needs.
    Read full review
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