The latest version of Sage Construct Advanced, or Sage 50 Construction when linked to Sage 50 Accounts, is now available and has several new reports as standard:

ESTIMATE REPORTS
Tender Summary – Summary of quote

Library List & Library Details – List of libraries & details

CONTRACT REPORTS
Summary Report (Totals) & Summary Report – Summarises costs & sales revenue by cost head per contract

List Order (Totals) & List Orders – Summarises costs and sales revenue by contract

Variation Sections & Details and Variation Detail Only – Reports variation levels with budget and costing information per contract

Variation Order Summary – Reports variation levels with costing, recharge & nominal code information per contract

Purchase Order/Works Order/Timesheet/Delivery Note/Nominal List – Lists transactions which can be reported in various sequences

Plant on Hire – Lists plant currently on hire by contract

CLIENT REPORTS
Applications Outstanding – Reports sales applications and their outstanding value for each client by contract

Client Invoice Summary – Reports sales revenue values for each client by contract

Contract Customer Summary – Summarises costs and sales revenue by cost head per client

Client Retentions – Reports outstanding client retention values for each client by contract

Client List – List of client details

Client Activity – Financial summary per client

S/C REPORTS
Insurance Summary – Lists type of insurance cover per subcontractor

Renewals List – Lists dates of re-newel letters sent per subcontractor

Insurance by Contract – Lists active insurance cover per contract

As always, new reports can be written, however changing and creating these reports in the Sage Report Writer means that small changes to existing reports will be much quicker.

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 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.

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

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.”

1. The F1 Key – Context sensitive, it is available from within the software at any time by pressing the F1 key (this is a common help feature from windows based software). This will take you to the relevant help topic from the sage help files, this is a shortcut to accessing the right information, instead of opening help and searching for a subject.

2. PDF Guides – Some common topics are covered in .pdf format from the help menu, these include opening balances, transactional email and excel integrated reporting.

3. Tutorials – Again from within the help menu, there are tutorials which are automatically installed when you install your Sage 50 Accounts software. They range from how to create new customer records and reconciling a vat return.

4. Demonstration Data – If you go to File/Open/Open Demo Data, you can access the demonstration data which is installed with the software.  Many people like the hands on approach to learning, so this enables the user to try things out without risking your companies real data set.

Of course if you need technical support, you can always take out Sage Cover.

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.

“The specified data source could not be found. Check that the data source is correctly registered”

If you edit the problem report or layout when the message appears, you will likely either see no variables or tables in the in the variables pane, or in data>Joins, you get the message “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”

All you need to do is reset the data source within the layout or report, you can do this by:

Edit the report or layout>Data>Change Report Data Source>New Data Source>select Sageline50v16>OK>OK

Then File>Save>File>Exit

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)