Sage 50cloud Accounting

Sage 50 is an easy-to-use piece of accounting software aimed at SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), and it is one of QuickBooks' major competitors.

It's fairly easy to find people who are familiar with Sage 50. That's a plus for small businesses looking to find an employee or outside service provider to take care of their books.

If you are looking to do the books yourself, Sage 50 is relatively easy to learn. They have thorough tutorials available to walk you through the basics.

Major transactions are grouped together under tabs on the left-hand navigation panel. The various workflows--receivables, payables, inventory and services, employees and payroll, and a 'company' category--are all shown graphically. Each task within a major area is represented as a labeled icon, making it is to start a new transaction from this screen. The 'company' link is a catch-all category, including general journal entries, the chart of accounts and tools for managing your data and accounting tasks.

Virtually every report that a small business could need is available in Sage 50.

I found Sage 50 to be glitchy in the past. I have spent too many hours on hold or on a call with their tech support.

I use the payroll-included version of Sage 50. I also have a support package. In all, that's not competitively priced. If it weren't for the fact that some clients have been using this software for years and are reimbursing me for the cost of the software, I would not be using it. QuickBooks is a better value.

I loved this program in that it seemed to be made for accountants, unlike some software that seems to be made for non-accountants. There are a lot of great reports to choose from, and each can be easily formatted to whatever file type you need. The payroll is awesome and easy to use.

Updates can sometimes cost you functionality, which can be a real problem if you are in the middle of payroll. Payroll information is only available for the current and previous calendar years, which is tough when you are undergoing an audit or due diligence. Some reports have limited time range parameters, so if you have a fiscal year that doesn't fit into those parameters, it can be annoying to run more than one report and combine the information. Also, there was one formula in the tax functions that didn't provide the correct number for some states, you had to enter it manually, which made us provide incorrect information and pay penalties because of it. I tried to do a data transfer from one company in sage to another, and several files were corrupted and didn't make it over. At one point, I needed to have two companies open at once, and the windows did not title which company was which. I literally had to go into the the menu drop down to figure out which company was which. They looked identical, so it was a real pain.

Very intuitive, easy to perform everyday tasks , Has very important sales charts, In the main frame we have all the necessary information, we don't need to go around opening several menus.

In my case, I cannot reconcile with my accountant , It is not easy to layout invoices is not a very easy process

The software on paper looks impressive, there are many features within Sage that assist the smooth running of the financial side of the business. The ability to run multiple accounts and currencies is ideal for companies that trade internationally. The bank reconcile is straight forward and effective. The reporting options are comprehensive and can be configured to suit the needs of your business.

What really lets this software down is the implementation. We moved to cloud software to support more remote working and it has been an absolute nightmare. We have had daily issues. Data is continuously 'out of sync' which throws users off the system. We have found that we have lost data which for accounting is just unacceptable and not sustainable. We have lost quotes, invoices, bank reconciliations. Having to get staff to check their data entry and repeat work just defeats the point of having the software and undermines the principles of any book-keeping system.