Hi Trish:

To be honest it is dependent upon the number of employees you have, your A/P, A/R, G/J and Inventory entries to be processed and your budget. Sage works on a tiered basis for payroll and EFT (E.G. 1 to 10 employees, 11 to 15 employees, 16 to 30 employees, 31 to 50 employees, 51 to 100 employees or 100+ employees) . The higher the tier the more money you have to pay. If the client wants to work with their own data and store their data on their own computers then the client would have to purchase Sage 50C Premium ( a desktop and cloud version) with payroll. The accountant would have to login to the clients system  remotely to run the payroll for them. 

Another scenario would be to purchase Sage 50  Premium (desktop version) without payroll and load the payroll into the payables module or the general journal from the accountant for every pay period or month. At the end of the year the accountant could either run the T4's from their system or the client could use the CRA T4 entry platform. 

I hope this helps! If you have any questions please let me know!

I understand the options you have provided.  However, It is more that we as accountants would own the file and do the books, they would access remotely the AP or AR modules.  We have the payroll module.  So I am wondering if they need a version that has payroll to be able to remote access the AP and AR modules.

Trish

Are you talking about using the old Sage Drive when you indicated Remote Access (the new name for Sage Drive)?  I personally have never used this method of connecting the file with clients but it is my understanding that as of Sage 50 2020.2 it is now multi-user, so it might be the option for you.

If so, you will need to talk directly with Sage about the licensing of the service.  I would expect the client would still have to get a service contract for Sage 50 Cloud to get the Remote Access, but will not have to have the payroll portion (hopefully, if they sell the Cloud licensing that way).

There are other ways to share a file as well.  You can set up a computer that will allow Remote Desktop Access by your clients and the software would be installed on your computer.  This is a bit more complex and usually requires an IT person to set it up properly for access (especially if it requires simultaneous access by multiple users).  You could also use some of the other programs available like GoToMyPC, TeamViewer, etc. that allow access to a computer so you can host it all in your office.

Yes I am talking sage drive/remote access.  We use to use sage drive for other files but because you could not limit access to certain modules, we did not use it for this particular client.  However, with the new remote access it appears you can.  However, it seems wasteful for the client to buy the sage 50 with payroll when they will never access payroll.  I will call Sage and see if they can answer then.

Sorry I was unaware subsidiary users could not log into a Sage drive file.  I never questioned this as I expected you would not have to have sysadmin access to log into the shared file.  It never crossed my mind as a limitation.

I wouldn't expect the payroll module to be required.  I think you can purchase a subscription to the Sage 50c without payroll but still have access to Remote Access.

Were you able to find an answer?  I'm in the same position with one client - except with the pro version.  Thanks!