getting too big for sage 50 ...

Bmer82

Hi all

Would appreciate some advice.

the business I work for currently uses sage 50 and is about to go into a period of rapid growth and an increase in complexity. as such we doubt line 50 will continue to be suitable as we are already having gripes with having to do a lot of external manipulation to get the info we need. the question is what route do we go down? line 200 or sage live is a minimum of double our annual cost with an implementation fee of triple our annual cost and despite the expansion we will still not be cash rich. any suggestions gratefully recieved

burg

I'd take a look at Xero. It's not Xero per-se but the numerous add on apps that are available. One of these is bound to be able to achieve what you want and if not directly then you still may be able to achieve it by using something like Zapier of ITTT.

What specifically do you need to achieve that is currently proving difficult?

reader

The automatic bank feed and automatic coding within Xero definitely would make it worthwhile just to trial at least.

Has a good self serve payroll function too which is gdpr compliant.

Also will be mtd compliant too (unlike sage 50).

And, as burg has said, has around 600 apps which can do everything from expenses to benchmarking/forecasting.

You can also do xero certification as well (see the aat magazine)

Bmer82

I did initially look at xero but employee numbers are higher than the software can handle by nearly an additional 100. in terms of information we struggle with anything from the monthly management accounts as have an odd financial year vs reporting year due to being part of a larger group through to forecasting and budgeting everything we do bar the ledger maintenance is done in excel.

burg

You don't have to use Xero for payroll and I wouldn't recommend it. There are much better alternatives out there. Take a look at Moneysoft and Brightpay.

Management Accounts are do-able from Xero with many different plug in apps. With a bit of set up you can create management packs reporting on KPI's and performance vs budget within about 10 minutes.

I've not got any groups I deal with but Xero is pretty flexible and you can manipulate reports in report designer.

I've never been a fan of Sage as it was too complex unless you were a trained bookkeeper. My mum built a whole business around Sage disaster recovery. She would do training courses for Sage which would be a minimum of 1 week. We do a Xero intro workshop in 45 minutes.

Bmer82

Thanks Burg will do. do you know whether it is possible to upload payroll journals between xero and moneysoft/brightpay?

burg

You cannot upload them but moneysoft produces a useful Employers Summary report. We built a template in Excel detailing where to get the info from and gave this to an employer. They then used this to enter journals themselves. This was on Sage but the principle remains the same.

Bmer82

Thanks for the advice guys I have scheduled demos of xero and brightpay.

there seems to be a lot of love around for xero at the moment but have spotted a few community posts that indicate that things like tracking credit control is pretty non existant? is this still the case or has this been resolved now?

burg

I don't find credit control an issue, it's far easier than Sage.

reader

Let us know how you get on with Xero

Bmer82

Just had the Brightpay demo, to say I am blown away with the bang per buck in comparison to sage is an understatement. Everything seems so easy in comparison to the current solution, almost leaves me wondering is it too good to be true?. first thought is that this could revolutionise our payroll function.

burg

Bmer82 said:

Just had the Brightpay demo, to say I am blown away with the bang per buck in comparison to sage is an understatement. Everything seems so easy in comparison to the current solution, almost leaves me wondering is it too good to be true?. first thought is that this could revolutionise our payroll function.

Glad you like it. I'm sure you will be just as impressed with Xero for the bookkeeping side of things.
Does the company not have a proactive accountant who already uses cloud accounting and can demo how much Xero can improve your functions? This is the type of thing we do all the time. We have saved one client £25000 a year from switching from Sage 200 to Xero by adopting automated approaches and them no longer having to outsource part of the bookkeeping function.

Bmer82

We only really involve external accountants come audit time the remainder is done in house. and it has only really been the development of the company that has prompted us to look at things. one of those if it aint broke situations, though since looking at things it appears it may have been broke after all.

burg

Bmer82 said:

We only really involve external accountants come audit time the remainder is done in house. and it has only really been the development of the company that has prompted us to look at things. one of those if it aint broke situations, though since looking at things it appears it may have been broke after all.

Get where you are coming from. If your current accountants do use Xero you may get a better Demo from them than from Xero directly so they might be worth asking.

Bmer82

Well the Xero demo went well and I am now recommending we go down this route with several add ons which when taken as a suite will give us much better functionality at a nice annual saving aswell. Thanks for the recommendations guys!