Likelihood to Recommend Sage is great for portability and exchange with external accountants as it is widely used and people will be able to read your data in. It's a very good and complete solution for a little business where one person can handle all of the accounting. I doubt that it scales well to large companies with several in-house accountants working at the same time.
Read full review It's a really great system for small to medium organizations that are willing to spend some time thinking about how their workflow can be improved by designing processes which will allow them to streamline and automate their business. For people who are not serious about making a commitment to bettering their business, Workbooks may not be a correct fit. For instance there are a lot of features which many people think they don't need, but they haven't really spent the time to figure out what the needs of the business are. The nice thing about Workbooks is that you can turn off things you don't need, and then when the business demands, they will be there for you to utilize.
Read full review Pros It has the capability of "Single Click" processes that allows you to turn Quotes into orders, instant invoicing and track A/R in the Order Screen I can email Sales Orders directly to my Customer and also remind them of past due from a single screen. I can track Project, Closeouts, Over Seas order by setting up Jobs and clicking the job name in Order Entry. You can use recurring entries and copy and paste on the P&L, using masking for department reporting and budgeting You can use the BI feature and export into Excel in Pivot format and utilize Timeline and Slicer to see the company overall performance by months, day or years Read full review Sales process management from enquiry to delivery of product This was previously on as many as 4 systems using excel and legacy applications such as the written word in log books Automatic reporting for financial compliance: once built, the reporting process reduced the workload on a monthly basis from 2 days to 20 minutes The FD loved it The overall capability of the package enabled the sales force to rapidly pull our pertinent data for a sales call, plus managing time and resources better for increased efficiency Business development and focussed marketing became so much easier, we noted that the process paid for itself many times over Read full review Cons 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 There really isn't all that much, what I would like to see is an app to use on iDevices. Our sales team all have iPads for presentations etc. While Workbooks works rather well with HTML 5, I would still like to see an app. I know it's in the making, but haven't seen anything of this as of yet. I am sure that would increase productivity even further (if it's of the same standard as the main environment). Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review the product works. support has been good or great so far all has been great and we hope to get more from the product. we purchased for an initial year then renewed for a longer term, we have no regrets with this.
Read full review Usability Sage delivers what it promises. The whole accounting package is user friendly and can be easily picked up by a novice. The support is second to none. They always keep us abreast of new technologies and/or changes to accounting that would impact us. The range of reports fits both small and large companies.,
Read full review Reliability and Availability Workbooks CRM never let me down.
Read full review Support Rating Although I have only needed to call tech support on three occasions through out the entire time of usage, each time my problem was quickly resolved by people who were obviously well trained and easy to understand. Sage 50 Premium Accounting is a reliable and "bug-free" product that is regularly improved upon.
Read full review Online Training Workbooks online trianing does what it needs to; but some training will always be better suited to face to face..
Read full review Implementation Rating Sage 50 is a strong accounting software package. It will work efficiently if it is installed correctly. If one puts garbage in, one will get garbage out. Also it is important to train the staff to use Sage 50 properly. It is also important to set up security for each user.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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
Read full review We felt the high amount of customisation available from Workbooks was much more beneficial to us than the offerings from the larger CRM companies. We also liked the smaller company mentality of Workbooks as it reminded us of ourselves. Ultimately the price also paid a factor as Workbooks was more affordable for what we needed.
Read full review Scalability 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 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 Allows us easy management of leads and clear visibility of opportunities for the sales team User levels allows us to lock down various parts of the system to only allow them to view or edit certain areas Allows us to manage customers in one piece of software and avoid having to use separate software for support, sales and operations Read full review ScreenShots