I would have two questions that obviously would lead to more. Despite already owning QB which program will best suit the needs of the company? a full analysis would be wise. And the second question, what is converted for the $500? Until these are answered it is hard to list the pros and cons. However, one pro to staying with Sage 50 is familiarity for the users. You can just start a new company file and transfer the customers, vendors and chart of accounts. Add in your inventory, then add you trial balance. Because the old transactions are not transferred to the new company you will be able to delete old customers and vendors with whom you no longer deal. If you use payroll the employees can also be transferred and it is best to do this at year end. For Payroll purposes you will want to keep the old company file running for T4 forms etc. 

If it is determined that QB is the best solution and cost effective we are back to what do you get for the $500 and how long is the learning curve.

Good Luck.

Hi,

To add to what Alwyn has said

banks1 said:

Does it make sense to just start from scratch and not move any data over ? Of course we will still have sage in case we need to reference old data.

I feel your pain, when I started with the company I'm with now, they had been using Sage 50 for 6 years and the inventory system was completely out of control.  

We decided that having the sales and inventory history at our fingertips was worth keeping it, and we made a fresh start by without completely starting over.

banks1 said:

When we upgraded to 2017 the sales rep made many claims that were not true, Such as Unlimited numbers of price lists, when in fact the limit was 100.

The limit in Premium is 100, the limit in Quantum is 1000.  The number of priced items is unlimited, and with different discounts for different customers, the pricing possibilities are almost unlimited.   But not the number of lists.  However, maintaining 5000 items x 100 lists x 10 seconds per price is almost 35 weeks of 8 hour days.  My understanding is that the base QB has one list.

banks1 said:

Also the company was started 10 years ago the owner had put Inventory items all under services.

Sage 50 allows changing any 'service' item to an 'inventory' item, as long as there are no open Purchase or Sales Orders with that item on. 

Be forewarned that inventory reports across the transition will look a little odd because the accounting is different.

banks1 said:

Our accountant says the General ledger is a mess and we do have a lot of old customers and clutter .

You'll have to clean it up anyway, or you'll be just moving the mess to a new home.  One good place to start is by marking the Accounts, Inventory items, and Customers that are no longer needed as 'Inactive' and then you'll be more organized regardless of the next direction you take.  

Also, duplicate Customers or Vendors can be merged in the software, and if your accountant has the Sage Accountants' Edition software they can merge any G/L accounts that should go together. 

banks1 said:

Now the new manager wants to switch to Quickbooks and already purchased the new software.

Politically, if you think you will be the lightning rod for everything that doesn't go well with keeping Sage 50, better to go with the boss's idea and just switch.  My opinion is that even if there were no functional difference, it's easier to stay with what you know, and in any case the problems you describe aren't caused by inadequate software.  But that's not a hill I'd die on.

It's possible to make a mess, or to be neat and organized, in any software.  Sage 50 tends to be more rigid and structured, so it's a little harder to make corrections but perhaps also a little harder to make a mess.  For example in Sage 50 you can decide whether or not to allow 'negative inventory'.  With 'negative inventory' off in Sage, you can't sell inventory that wasn't received, so when receiving payment for future shipment of a special order you have to take a 'deposit' that is attached to the Sales Order. 

In QB you can't turn 'negative inventory' off to prevent someone from selling a half pallet of something that you don't have, so anyone can make a mess of inventory quantities, by picking the wrong product they're most likely picking the wrong price and wrong cost.

Getting it right depends on good attitude and training of the people making entries, regardless

banks1 said:

I have been talking with a few company's about converting the data file from sage to QB.

Our experience with that was pretty bad, we ended up with unusable garbage data.

I hope that also helps, please post back.