Item: Sage Accounting
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Sage Accounting

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a contract bookkeeper, I use Sage Accounting for all my new SME clients. I set them up on the system, train them for use, then maintain their books on a monthly basis for them.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Booking vendors invoices
Setting up new accounts
Reconciliations

Cons

Auto Entry app
Payroll

Return on Investment

We have realized a huge time savings once we switched over to Sage Accounting. And Time = Money!

Usability

I deducted two points for the Payroll app and the Auto Entry app. After struggling with both with various clients, I no longer recommend these.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

The reporting function in QBO is convoluted. Pulling reports for either basic business management or for Accounting/Bookkeeping functions are much easier in Sage Accounting.

Customer service for QBO is very difficult to access. Reaching and getting customer support with Sage Accounting can be a bit frustrating but it's not near as bad as QBO.

Other Software Used

AutoEntry by Sage, QuickBooks Desktop Premier, QuickBooks Online

Sage Accounting Feature Ratings

Using Sage Accounting

Users and Roles

1 - Me, I'm a bookkeeper and I use this product for several of the businesses I keep books for.

Support Headcount Required

1 - It's only me in house, however, many of my clients also access their books online.

Business Processes Supported

tracking income and expenses
generating reports
reviewing invoicing

Innovative Uses

increased productivity as I set most GL's up the same
attaching source documents for quick reference

Future Planned Uses

It would be great if you could iron out the problems with AutoEntry as I would like to use the product, but it's been a big fail
Same a above with regards to the Payroll component

Likelihood to Renew

I really like the basic product and remain hopeful that autoentry and payroll will improve.

I'll renew mostly because it is a giant hassle to switch platforms.

Evaluating Sage Accounting and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes -

Different products in several different instances where I replaced with Sage Business Cloud Accounting:

Sage 50 Desktop

Quickbooks Desktop

QBO

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

Over the past couple of years, a main mission for me has been to move all my clients over to digital platforms.

Sage Accounting Implementation

I've done this a few times now, both manually and also by uploading by way of the implementation process. Sometimes it went smoothly (with a very basic set of books), but often the upload creates a mess with the accounts and it takes a lot of time to sort it out.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes -

cleaning up original accounts to ensure a seamless upload

walk through the data upload, often with a support person from Sage

clean up all the "loose ends" where the two datatbases did not match up.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a minor issue with the implementation

Implementation Issues

trying to get support to train end users (business owner's existing staff)
cleaning up data that did not match up
getting components such as payroll and autoentry to work properly - we eventually gave up.

Sage Accounting Support

Support Rating

For this product, the support it OK once you finally get to a person, but it does take time to figure out who your support is, even in a case like mine where I have moved several clients over to this product.

Sage Accounting Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team	Poor followup Problems left unsolved Not kept informed Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care Slow Initial Response