HI Kirk,

You will need to use Crystal Report 8.5.  You can contact one of the consultants who have the correct version to help if you don't have access to it or don't have the original Simply 2004 or 2005 CD's.  It was on those CD's under Additional Products.  You can follow the link below to find a consultant close to your area.

http://na.sage.com/sage-50-accounting-ca/support/find-a-consultant

Hope this helps.

Hi Kirk,

Sage 50 2013.2 came with a Crystal Reports report called "Overdue Receipt Report with Customer Name & Phone Number".  

If you installed the sample reports, this one is available from Reports | Microsoft Office reports.  You'll have to scroll down a little, the reports are in alphabetical order by title.

The error message I have received on every attempt to run this report since Sage 50 2010 is:

"Configure Crystal Report Print Engine caused an error:Error in file c:\program files (x86\sage 50 accountant edition 2013\Reports\Overdue Receipt Report with Customer Name & Phone Number.RPT:

Error in formula <memo>. 'If Length ({tCusMemo.sMemo})>0 Then 'A string can be at most 254 characters long'

I figured that if Sage had been shipping a broken Crystal Report with their product for several years, as their one example of what you can do with it, then either it was unfixable since the changes for the 2008 release, or not worth making the effort.  So my advice would be Microsoft Access for building queries and reports, even though I have the ancient Crystal Reports CD.  

MS Access also has the advantage of working well with Excel and other Office products.  Or, LibreOffice Base has many of the features of MS Access, and is free.

hth,

Randy

Randy,

According to the clients that call me, Sage's official point of view is that Crystal is a dead product and no longer useful.  That is probably news to the 4 million or so users of the program worldwide, not to mention the Sage 50 US users who have the 2008 version distributed to them, the ACCPAC users who have been using it for years, the BV users who have been using it for years, etc.

That particular report you mentioned has that problem on some version but not all of them.  I've never looked in it to see what is wrong but I am sure it can be corrected.  It probably has to do with some versions of the program where the memo field itself was set up as a memo field in the database not a string field.  In Crystal 8.5 a memo field cannot have any programming done with it and based on the fact that a formula is referencing that field, it chokes.  That's my best guess.

I didn't mean to communicate that I thought that Crystal Reports is a dead product, rather the integration in Sage 50 has been so neglected for so long that it's not what I recommend someone else get into for reports - unless they're already proficient in it. 

I don't know why the Sage people ship a broken .RPT file with their product.  Perhaps a C programmer tried to do a sort of sizeof() check on the memo field.   It's FT_CHAR, max 255 characters, not an actual 'memo' field.  I tried pasting 296 characters into the field through an ODBC connection, the entry was truncated by the database to 255 characters. 

As you say, that bit of code in the report is worse than useless.  It has been in that report file since about 2010, and I can't positively say that it's never worked, just that I've never actually seen it work.

Randy

I didn't think you did indicate it was a dead product.  I was just providing the information I have as to the logic behind Sage's (lack of) corrections for known problems.  The last I checked there are still bugs in using Crystal with Simply and probably Sage 50 using a Canadian Windows date format.  Some date fields do not get updated properly because the program only exports in US date formats.

In the Access versions of the program, that memo field was an Access memo field, not a string field.  I think the report carried over a bit with the same programming and I believe there is a MySQL equivalent.  I just tested mine on 2013.2 and it works fine but it is now a 255 character string field.

I think it will be a sad day if Sage ever removes Crystal support from the program.  Sage underestimates how many people use the templates for their forms and have customised solutions for reporting.  Only the Canadian programmers of Sage 50 seem to be wanting to stay on the older print engine.  Other Sage products use the updated engine.

Richard,

It may be a sad day, but if nothing is done to maintain the interface to Crystal Reports, the day when it won't be practical for consultants and business users to haywire and duct tape it together, the day will surely come.  Sage doesn't seem to 'get' that software has to be actively maintained and improved, or it just dies of neglect.

I think someone feels that if you want real customizability, you should pay Sage a lot of money for one of their more expensive products.  That strategy might work if all their stuff was cutting edge, or if there weren't other people making accounting software. 

Past orphaned stuff:

 - International versions of Simply Accounting

 - Simply Web Store

 - Integration with ACT

 - PDA integration

Stuff so non-maintained that it might as well be dead:

 - Import / Export

 - Crystal Reports integration

 - Built-in reports

 - Inventory functionality

 - Payroll and T-slips

 - IdeaScale  (you send Sage your ideas for free, they moderate them and everyone can vote.  Please allow 4 to 6 months for delivery.)

Grand Ideas that probably should have been killed off before they were allowed to grow and take root:

 - Completely different and incompatible software in US, Britain, and Canada, sold under the same "Sage 50" name.  Go look at the Chapters website for a book to see how that's starting to work.

Software development is really hard.  In some areas, it looks like Sage isn't really trying to do better, or is actively trying not to.

RandyW said:

It may be a sad day, but if nothing is done to maintain the interface to Crystal Reports, the day when it won't be practical for consultants and business users to haywire and duct tape it together, the day will surely come.

That just might be the day I start looking for something else to do with my life or follow a lot of the other consultants who are switching to other software.  My Crystal 8.5 program has been broken since the install of 2014 and I'm still waiting for tech support to call me back with a solution.  I'm not holding my breath since the last I heard from them was Nov 7 and at that time they only confirmed some of the problems exist only on 64-bit computers. I don't own one. I'm just really hoping they have fixed all the problems I reported in the update next Thursday. 

Love your references but you forgot Simply Mac, Simply Online and US Spanish/English (I consider it different than the International versions).  But we are getting off topic from what the OP posted about so I will stop here. 

I was curious about this report so tried to access this using a current client's file. It is asking for Login name and password. Since this particular client's Sage 50 file is not password protected what other software is this referring to?

By the way I do have the Crystal Report from 2008 Simply Acct'g  and currently using some customized templates.

Smithco

You don't say which version of Sage 50 and if you have multiple files open or not.

If you are running Sage 50 2014 and have multiple files open, use the userid and password from one of the other files until you get it to run. Then make sure the data is correct. 

Thks - I have only one file opened and am using Sage 50 2013 acct Edition. Client file that I mentioned above is the only one opened.

Have you allowed access in the security for third-party products for your userid?  In 2013 you should be able to set it to read-only and have it work. 

ok thks - I will check into that.