Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate vs. Sage 500 ERP

Sage is not at all well suited for small companies who want an agile, nimble setup for quick moving situations and mobile use. These type of companies should look elsewhere such as a SaaS offering from another vendor. In addition Sage is very expensive both in its initial outlay and ongoing support. Medium and larger sized companies benefit from a Sage install much more than the smaller constructor. Having the modules all work in unison is important when a company is of a certain size as is having the long tenured support structure. In addition Sage requires the terminals services setup to use it remotely and the larger companies are more likely to have the infrastructure and support for that type of setup

Incentivized

Sage 500 ERP is great for companies with core accounting needs, distributors, and discrete manufacturers. Some areas, such as process manufacturing, would require a companion product from an ISV for the software to be truly functional. Some areas, such as construction or retail apparel, may simply not be well-served.

Incentivized

• There are a lot of ways to drill down into information. The ability to run inquiries that can be easily exported into Excel is incredibly useful.
• The help desk is very helpful. There are multiple ways to get a hold of someone and it is extremely useful.
• The knowledgebase articles are very helpful and provide a lot of great detail.

Incentivized

• Sage is the one-stop-shop for all of our needs. We're able to control contracts, subcontracts, and field reports from the program.
• Another strength is the ability to database all the information and export it to excel. This makes data-based investigations a breeze.
• The ability for Timberscan to be imported to Sage is a huge help with invoice management. Prior to this it all had to be done manually and slowed the process to an essential halt as there are thousands of invoices per month.

Incentivized

• Lack of data validation and controls
• Extremely limited report configuration without significant customization
• Too many arbitrary limits like vendor name that forced partial names into the address
• Very outdated UI
• Very siloed forcing users to open different applications for different functions

Incentivized

• The biggest concern/complaint of Sage 500 users is speed. Some of the screen take a while to load.
• The user interface needs some refreshing. Screens need to be updated to take advantage of shortcuts and to be more intuitive.

Incentivized

It's too pricey for our size of company.

Incentivized

Sage is somewhat easy to use as far as its simplicity, however, when I first started using it I really wished there were more training materials available. As I did research to figure out what resources were there to learn how to use the paid software, all I found were courses you have to pay for. In my personal opinion, I don't think you should have to pay to learn how to use a software you bought.

Incentivized

They have a very quick, responsive team that assists. They also have great higher-level engineers who assist in more complicated matters and all in all, you need a support team that is quick to respond when you are in the middle of business crises.

Incentivized

The online training courses are not up to date. We experienced technical issues with two of the classes.

Incentivized

Keep your database and application in different servers.
Install Microsoft Office on your application server so you can use some of the data analysis tools in Sage.

Incentivized

We currently have Sage in place which handles the majority of our business needs on the back end, but compared to some others that are on the market like Builder Trend, it does lack the client facing side of the house. To make it a better product, a client facing portal would be best so they can be up to date.

Incentivized

500 seems much smoother at handling some of the basic accounting tasks, for example both issuing and later reconciling checks in Dynamics AX seems a little tedious.

Incentivized

• The accounting functions (AP, AR, GL) are mature so it does a great job with core financials. The reports are flexible so it does a good job of providing flexibility in report writing. The application is written for a workgroup so multiple people can use it at the same time. The transaction detail is strong so that a transaction can be rolled back if necessary.

Incentivized

• Positive: The program allows for a lot of data entry and splitting of information. It has the capability of replacing multiple programs and therefore saving cost.
• Negative: The modules are cumbersome and not user friendly at all. As a result not many user are comfortable using it. This means that the program is not being used to its capacity.
• Negative: Although the program has the capacity to be great, the user interface destroys that potential. Sage needs to seriously work on their program to simplify it. It's as if it still uses Command-line entries from 1995. Needs to be updated ASAP.

Incentivized