I recently purchased a Sage 50 Premium Accounting subscription online, and I encountered an issue when I tried to add Payroll to it. My intention with this purchase was to streamline my software and eliminate unnecessary add-ons that the Sage sales team had previously added, which had driven my annual cost to over $2000.

To my surprise, when I contacted customer service to request adding Payroll to my subscription, I was told that it couldn't be done with the retail version. This left me perplexed because I distinctly remember that when I initially bought Sage, I didn't purchase the Payroll version separately. Instead, I bought the desktop version, and Payroll was seamlessly integrated into it.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me understand why this change has occurred, as it seems to contradict my previous experience with Sage.