Sage 50 vs 200

PGM

Has anybody used both of these packages?

We're deciding whether to spend the 20 or so thousand needed for the company to upgrade.

Part of me still thinks how can it cost so much?! On the other hand its a good piece of software and will be used for many years to come.

Advice from someone in the know would be appreciated, thanks :001_smile:

Poodle

Hi PGM

I had experience of Sage Line 100 some time ago when the company I worked for upgraded from Sage financial controller or what ever it was called then.

The reason why the company upgraded was that there were many departments invoved and the existing software could not create management reports very well and a lot of time was being spent creating these manually each month. Reports had to be written externally, at a cost, and took at least a year for all of the glitches to come out.

The other reason was that the old version of Sage could not cope with the value of assets held on the Balance sheet.The estate of £10m had to be shown on several nominal lines

100 was also modular, this was not explained to us before we purchased. Basically it did not work in real time as Line 50 does. All of the ledgers had to be updated to post to the nominal ledger (like the invoicing on line 50), a pain if you forgot and you were trying to reconcile a control account.

Something else, and I am not sure where Sage are with this, we had to purchase and have the software installed by a Sage agent with whom we then had to refer to for any support, not directly with Sage.

I have to say that the support started to become expensive and was not always available or knowledgeable. I am lso aware that the company that we used back then has since gone out of business and so if you make such a huge investment through a third party then part of your tender considerations should be the financal security of the company that you will be working with.

As I said this was a while ago but hopefully will be of some help

Poodle

PGM

Thanks Poodle,

Its the same case with 200 having to go through an agent. I suppose you could compare it buying a car from the dealer instead of the factory, but is it really necessary?! They must think so, I just don't understand how much more complex than 50 it can be...

To be honest 50 seems fairly adequate, in the same way using Windows 95 is adequate. We're not struggling with 50, just aware that 200 would improve each module.

Currently we analyse projects using excel, and I don't see that changing too soon. So its another reason to question upgrading. Along with the higher annual maintenance costs which you mention.

SummerOaks

Sage 50

Am a Sage 50 reseller and would recommend if you are functioning OK with 50why spend all that money! Make sure you have latest version as they are adding things all the time.
I had a retail outlet with 40 branches change from Oracle to Sage 50!!!! and it worked. The staff loved it.