Sage 50 Payroll Annual Licence Plan

This is a new Sage 50 Payroll proposition offering for businesses with up to 25 employees (including leavers in that year).

The software is the same as the current Sage 50 Payroll offering however customers will buy it on an annual licence plan.

There are 3 annual licence plans available – Explore, Exchange and Extra. All are designed to meet the specific needs of small businesses at competitive prices.

New Sage 50 HR

Sage 50 HR is a simple and intuitive HR solution that keeps all employee data at the users’ fingertips. It’s benefits include;
• Quick and easy entry of employee’s holiday and absence
• Up to date performance details and development needs for employees
• Automatically and easily create statements of employment for employees including working hours, holiday entitlement and notice periods
• Comply with legal requirements by attaching documents such as work permits, right to work and CRB checks to an employee record.

Features in both P11D Standard and Professional

Sage 50 P11D Professional Features only

Sage 50 P11D 2010 goes on sale from January 17 2011, and incorporates all the legislation changes needed to be fully compliant for 2010/2011 tax year expenses and benefits submissions.

This year sees several legislation changes that Sage 50 P11D 2011 incorporates, making processing and submission of the returns quicker and more accurate than a manual process. And as ever, Sage 50 P11D 2011’s calculations have been tested by leading tax specialists Ernst and Young.

Important: Sage 50 P11D is not Windows 7 compatible and is not included as a supported operating system on the system requirements

What does Sage 50 P11D 2011 integrate with?

Sage 50 P11D 2011 will import data from current tax year versions of Sage 50 Payroll.

Legislation and other changes applicable from 6^th April 2010

The new release of Sage 50 Payroll, version 2011 will be available from Monday November 15th.

New Features of Sage 50 Payroll 2011

• The new features included in the latest release include:

• New Report Designer

• New Starter Management

• New Leaver Management

• New Pay Element Management

• New Salary Sacrifice Pension Scheme

• New Automatic Backup & Recover Feature

We hope to get our hands on a copy just before it begins shipping, so will update the blog with our findings.

If you would like to buy a copy from the start of November this year, please visit the Sage 50 Payroll section of our online shop for up to date pricing and to place orders.

New Features in Act 2011

The latest version of Act has been released this month and has just started shipping, so here is an update of the latest features available:

1. Getting Started – The installation and features to get you up and running have been improved, such as the simplified database creation and opportunity to expand it at a later stage. You can also import customer details directly from Microsoft Excel. The new layouts make it much easier for the Act user to navigate the program.

2. Mapping Imports – Fields can now be matched, so importing data is much more logical and faster (i.e. you can match “client name” field to Customers Name”)

3. Integration of MS Outlook – You can now synchronise data from Act and Outlook to keep both contact details and activities in your calendar.

4. Security – The security of who can do what on the software has been improved, so you can limit, for example, who can attach documents to a customer.

5. Mobile Integration – Act Mobile enables users to have access to all critical data from both mobile phones and not just Blackberry. All activities, prior conversations and contact details are available. Essential for those who spend most of their time away from the office.

Sage have just announced the new accounting integration feature for Act 2010 is now available to download for existing customers, you can go to sage.co.uk and log in to your account if you would like to download it immediately.  It will also begin shipping today, although there may be a backlog so you could have to wait a few days for delivery.

In order to enable the new Accounting Integration, you will also need to download and install the Sage 50 Integration update for Sage 50 Accounts  (once installed you will then need to enable the new Sdata framework in Sage 50 Accounts by going into Tools> Internet Options> SData Settings and checking the Sage 50 Accounts box).

Note: ACT! Premium for Web does not contain the new Accounting Integration functionality. The DVD you receive is labelled as 12.20 but contains the software version 12.0.

To use ACT! Premium for Web in the same environment as ACT! Premium 2010.20, you must apply the ACT! Premium for Web 2010 Service Pack 1 update, available from the Sage website

A few tips on making sure your Sage 50 Payroll 2010 is set up right for the payroll year.

1. Make sure you are using the right legislation for the new tax year by checking the Help/About menu.

2. Check employee tax codes, as although there were no general increases in L suffix tax codes, your employers may have had P9 notices from HMRC for specific employees, containing tax codes to use in the new tax year. Please be sure you actioned any notices.

3. Checking small employer relief status (if eligible) is just a case of making sure you have marked the relevant check box within the software, this will help in recovering the right values for statutory payment such as maternity and paternity pay.

4. Remember that your year end returns for 2009/2010 must be submitted to HMRC by 19th May, or you are likely to receive a penalty from HMRC.

From 01/04/10 Sage will be applying their lifecycle policy to Sage Payroll v12 and 2007.  So from March 31st 2012 support will be withdrawn for both versions.  Even if you do not have support with sage for either product at the moment, it could still affect you as you would not be able to buy Sage Cover for them in the future.

The software is under constant development, so as the years roll on, older products are discontinued.  This enables Sage to focus support on the latest products, whilst enabling the development team to take advantage of new technologies.

Your software will not stop working, it’s just the support which will be withdrawn, this will happen in a phased approach.  Please also consider that once support is withdrawn for a particular version of Payroll, there would be no guarantee that a simple upgrade could be run if you did decide to upgrade much later, as testing will not be done once a product is effectively obsolete, so you could find that you have to manually transfer any data.

There are some special offers available for those who wish to keep using these versions for the time being:

Until 31/05/2010 you can get 10% off the price of an upgrade or sage cover extra (this is valid for 15 months and entitles you to upgrades free of charge) Plus a free £50 voucher for any authorised Sage training course.

During the testing of Sage 50 P11D 2010 on Windows 7, several major issues have been identified, these will take significant time to develop and test before release.  Therefore a decision has been made to release the 2010 version of P11D for Vista, XP and 2000 only.  The alternative would have been to delay the release, this was decided against.

It is assumed at this stage that next years release will be fully compatible with Windows 7, but please do check this when the time comes, either with Sage directly or with Ledger Services.

The current pricing on our online Sage software shop is due to increase from next month.  Therefore if you are planning to purchase any of the Sage 50 range of products in the near future, you only have one more day to take advantage of the discounts available.  Prices will be going up again from 5pm tomorrow.