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.”

If you are already using Sage 50 Accounts and need help, there are four free resources available to you already.

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.

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.

If when you are running a report or layout in Sage 50 Accounts 2010 from a previous version, you may get the following message:

“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

If you are running Sage instant Payroll with either Windows 7 or Vista, before installing the new tax year updates, you must make sure you are logged onto the current Sage Instant Payroll software as an administrator, otherwise you may encounter problems.  There is more information about this on the Sage website, so if this affects you please search for Ask Sage Article 11921 from their website.

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)

From Monday 21st June 2010 The Sage Construction Software range will not include the diary or fax modules, both modules are being withdrawn from sale, any existing customers will however continue to be supported but development will cease.  Neither module has had significant development for a number of years and the uptake on them has been very low for some time.

As members of Sage’s Business Partner Action Comity for the construction software range, we are aware that there has been talk about integrating Microsoft applications with the construction software, particularly Microsoft outlook, so we hope this will encourage the Sage development team to push it up the priority list, as it would add useful functionality, especially for those who use Outlook as a simple CRM system along side Sage Construct already.

In addition, the reasons the Fax module is not used very often is probably due to the reduction in business faxes which are sent these days, Construct will already PDF documents and add them to an email, this in most cases is much more practical for most companies.  There is a 3rd party module available called Spindle, this will provide automatic faxing direct from Construct if required.

So, all in all, we see this as a positive move by Sage, so they can focus on development of the core products, hopefully to include MS Excel integration sometime soon.

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.

A very common question is why don’t certain transactions appear in the unreconciled transaction list.  If you know the transaction number , first sort the unreconciled transaction list into transaction number order.

If the transaction still isn’t listed, open Financials, select the transactions and check the following columns:

• Type – Is it definitely a bank transaction? It may not be an actual bank transaction you are looking for.
• Accounts / Nominal – Has the transaction been posted to the correct bank account?
• Date – Only transactions posted on or before the bank reconciliation end date are listed.
• Bank – To appear in the unreconciled transactions list this column must contain an N.

Transactions could also be grouped with other transactions, this is most common with bank payments or receipts.  Usually transactions can be grouped if they are entered at the same time and have the same date and reference.

The Sage Day Works module for Construct, with both Sage 50 and 200, will be withdrawn from sale on 21st June 2010.

Anyone already using these modules will continue to be supported either by their Business Partner or directly by Sage, as they have been previously, they will also be entitled to upgrade to any future developments.  So license and support for any existing customers will continue as it has done to date, we do not have a date that the support will be discontinued, and at this stage do not expect it to be in the foreseeable future.

This decision has been made due to relatively low usage of the module compared to the core product and Estimating, so the focus for development can be on these core products.  The Day Works module is for companies who need to bill construction work on a cost plus basis, so although it’s not been announced, it’s quite possible that this functionality could be integrated to the core module in the future if customer demand is high enough.

We will keep you updated as and when we hear any more.