The Upside of Sage Accounting
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I use Sage Accounting for all accounting applications within our business. As land developers, we rely heavily on the Job Cost functions of the software, but also use the G/L, A/P, and Cash Management functions as well. We use Sage for all of our daily, monthly, and yearly accounting tasks, including tracking invoices and payables, entering budgets, managing contracts and change orders, tracking receipts, and monthly reconciliations. Also, we use the Sage products to produce almost all of our financial reporting. Specifically, it provides job cost reports for all active development jobs, tracking original budgets, contracts, and actual costs. We also use the reporting for tax return preparation and rolling multiple entity reports into a combined, company-wide financial statement. We use the data and reports within the Sage system to analyze potential acquisitions, review and manage current jobs, and look at the performance of past jobs as a way to review performance.
Pros
- Job cost accounting, tracking, and reporting.
- Allows for easy setup and accounting of multiple entities, that can then roll-up to combined reporting.
- The various modules work well together, so the data entered into the job cost module works seamlessly with the accounting payable and cash management modules.
Cons
- Some of the particular Sage products we use do not work well on cloud based platforms.
- There could be improvements of importing data into Excel spreadsheets.
- Some of the designing and editing of reports can be cumbersome.
Return on Investment
- The job cost reports allow us to analyze and compare each individual job, allowing us to make sure we are achieving the profit margins we projected and require.
- The reports of previous jobs provide the backbone for all of our due diligence efforts during the acquisition phase. Without those reports, we would not have the necessary data to make cost estimates for future jobs, or spot errors made on previously jobs that need to be fixed.
Usability
Alternatives Considered
QuickBooks Desktop Pro, QuickBooks Online and Yardi Construction Manager
Other Software Used
Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Bluebeam
