Sage 50 for SQL

The long awaited release of an SQL version of Sage 50 Accounts is on it’s way and scheduled for release in February 2011, It is to be called Sage 100. Although this will undoubtedly cause confusion with those of us old enough to remember the name Sage Line 100, this is a completely new product. Perhaps for this reason Sage will review the name and change it before the official release.

Here’s what Sage have to say about Sage 100 or Sage 50 SQL

“Sage 100 is an exciting new development for Sage UK and it’s a premium offering for expanding and growing small to medium sized businesses. It fulfils a need for a niche group of customers with key issues surrounding users and larger volumes of transactions. We have identified that the needs of these customers places them between Sage 50 Accounts and Sage 200, and Sage 100 addresses this need.

* Sage 100 will support businesses with processing departments where several users enter similar information, for example a team dedicated to entering sales invoices.
* It offers up to 25 users the ability to process at the same time while keeping the familiar look and feel of Sage 50 Accounts. This means that users won’t need to take it in turn to enter transactions resulting in real productivity and efficiency gains.
* Existing Sage 50 Accounts customers can easily move to Sage 100 plus there’s no requirement to retrain staff.

When will it be available?

We are really pleased to let you know Sage 100 will launch in February 2011 and in the mean time our teams will continue to work hard ensuring the software meets our customer’s needs.”

The release of Sage 100 is likely to provide much larger user counts because of it’s SQL database, along with much higher transaction volumes, so this should prove to be a fantastic offering for those who have outgrown Sage 50 Accounts, but would prefer to keep the familiar interface, rather than moving to Sage 200. We will keep you updated as soon as we know any more, so bookmark our blog and check back often.

Sage 50 Accounts 2011

Sage will shortly be releasing a new version of their Sage 50 Accounts range. This will be called version 2011 and contain several new features and enhancements to existing features that may be of benefit to your business

Ledger Services Ltd belong to a scheme at Sage called the Sage Accountant Partners, as such we’ve had an exclusive preview of what is contained in version 2011. We are therefore best placed to advise whether you can benefit from this latest release.

New Features

The UK Flat rate VAT scheme

This scheme was introduced by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to simplify VAT for small businesses. Your software now supports this VAT scheme from recording your day to day business transactions, producing your VAT Return through to paying HMRC.

Bank reconciliation
While reconciling a bank account you can now add customer receipts or refunds as well as supplier payments and
refunds to adjust your records. The Retrospective Bank Reconciliation report has been updated so that it now looks like a bank statement. A progress bar is displayed while your software is performing a reconciliation.

Emailing documents
So that sales orders, purchase orders, invoices and quotations are emailed to customers and suppliers with just one
click making the process seamless.

Sage Pay
You can now import your web sales from your Sage Pay account to Sage 50 Accounts. By downloading payments from your Sage Pay account your software now creates invoices and updates your accounts for you.

Charities (non-profit organisation)
A Profit and Loss and a Balance Sheet report can now be generated for each fund. Also, by choosing the chart of
accounts for Charities when you install your Sage 50 Accounts, your software is automatically set for the needs of a
non-profit organisation.

Sage Services (UK only)
You can now access a range of services directly from your software. Use the link to register online with us to create a
Sage Login. Then record your login details in your software to access the services seamlessly (Tools > Internet>Options> Sage Accounts tab).

Favourite views
You can now set the software so that each time it opens it displays the area you use most often. You can also set your
financial ledgers to display in list form, as a process map or as dashboard information.

Practical changes to several areas
- The Disputed Items window now displays transactions for the first account highlighted from a list of customers,
which can be selected from either the Chase Debt of Customer List.
- Journals now include an Ex ref column, which you can use to add more details about a journal.

We are waiting for confirmation of release date at the moment, however we expect it to be early in September, in line with the usual Sage 50 Accounts version updates.

There has been another slight delay to the release of Sage 200 2010, however the software should now be available from 30th June 2010. Sage have made the following statement:

Sage 200 2010 has been in use in a live environment with our five hand-held customers sites since April, the sites have provided great feedback and the product has been very warmly received. We’ve invested a lot of development time in Sage 200 2010 and our commitment to delivering stable and reliable software is paramount in ensuring delivery of high quality products for our customers and Business Partners.

In the final rounds of testing we identified some issues which have now been corrected, however correcting these issues has required R&D to create a further final build of the 2010 software. As a new build has been created, R&D must now restart full regression testing which takes a number of days.

Therefore, to accommodate the additional final testing, we have taken the decision to revise the launch date to Wednesday 30^th June.

This allows us further time to work with our hand-held site customers, and also allows us to further extend our in-house testing using our stringent testing processes.”

Sage 200 2010 now incorporates the same report designer as Sage 50 Accounts, Sage 50 Construction and several other products, with a few extra features.  It will provide great opportunities for ongoing development, but some existing reports may need some changes.  If you have amended one of the reports it will still work.  After upgrading to Sage 200 2010, just copy customised versions of reports from the backup area into the relevant folder, the software will detect it and pick up the older reporting framework.  The same applies for completely bespoke reports, even if they are not originally based on one of the existing Sage reports.

The old reporting framework will be retired, although we do not yet know within what time frame.

The new features include

• New look and feel
• A join editor built in to the report design surface
• Edit reports from preview mode
• Derived fields will be treated the same as standard datyabase fields
• The data model can be used for desktop workspaces and mobile fields and views

The extra features to those already in Sage 50 Construction and Sage 50 Accounts are:

• Sub-Reports (e.g. CRM data embedded in a Sage 200 Accounts report)
• Improved Excel importing
• Loading and saving of criteria values
• Special dates in criteria (e.g. today, yesterday, month/year to date)

The next annual realease of Sage 200 was originally scheduled for launch in the spring of this year.  However, the recent launch of Sage 200 BI has impacted the development schedule of the 2010 release.  Therefore version 2010 of Sage 200 is now delayed until June.

This decision has been taken to ensure the release of a stable and reliable platform, so testing can continue with the added new BI module. If you have any questions about Sag 200 or any other Sage software, please get in touch.

You can now download Sage 50 Accounts, Plus and Professional 2010 (or 2009 if required because you are running other software which is not yet compatible with the new 2010 version).  If you would like to download and install the software immediately, please first visit our shop and place an order, make sure that in the comments box, you mention that you would like to download Sage 50 we can then forward you the required URL and your license and activation keys. 

You will still receive your boxed product as usual in 2 working days, but this will allow you to get up and running quickly. 

Please bear in mind this is not a free download or torrent service, you must first place an order and pay before we can send you either download details or your Sage product keys, it’s simply an additional service available to anyone who buys any of the Sage 50 Accounts products from Ledger Services.

For the duration of September 2009 Ledger Services are offering even bigger discounts when you buy Sage 50 software through our online shop!

For the next 2 weeks our prices have been slashed, but please bear in mind that these prices can’t be held for long, so they will be going back up for October.  So if you are considering buying Sage 50 Accounts, Plus, Accounts Professional or Payroll please visit the shop before October to take advantage of these huge discounts.

Sage 50 Accounts, Plus and Professional 2010 is now shipping throughout the UK.  For the last month or so, anyone who purchased any of the Sage 50 Accounts products, would have been given a download link to access the 2009 version, with the 2010 version to follow, so you can expect your new 2010 software very soon.  However please be aware that there is a backlog, so you may not receive your boxed product for around another week.

All new purchases will automatically have the 2010 version shipped direct on our usual 1-2 day delivery timescale.

We have also applied further discounts for the remainder of September, we believe we are currently offering the cheapest Sage 50 Accounts in the UK, so please visit our shop for pricing and ordering information.

The links below will take you directly to the Sage website and show videos demonstrating some of the new features in Sage 50 2010, they are presented by Sage’s own technical staff.

Sage Pay Integration

Generate Barcodes within Products

Importing Data into Sage 50 2010

Sage will be withdrawing support for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with the release of Sage 200 2010. Microsoft withdrew mainstream support for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 in early 2008 and are due to withdraw ‘Extended Support’ in 2013.

In addition, Microsoft released SQL Server 2008 in April 2008. Sage 200’s development policy is to only support the current and prior release of this database platform with it’s software applications therefore from the 2010 release we will support Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008 only.

We recommend customers use Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard as this is required for those customers utilising BI, and it is the latest version