Robin Moore has worked at Sage for more than 10 years, starting off as a business manager and now working as product manager for the accounts category for start-up and small business. Here he shares his views on the software, how new features get developed and his advice for any Sage 50 Accounts customers. 

If you have a question for Robin, let us know in the comments below.

Tell us a little bit about your job

I look after Sage 50 Accounts, Instant Accounts, TAS, Planning for Business and some other Sage 50 products.

It’s a very cross-boundary role – I work with customer services, R&D and marketing. And it’s business-wide, dealing with colleagues in Ireland, the Accountants Division and small business areas.

It’s a really interesting job. It’s hard to say what’s the best bit – there’s lots of them. But I love watching the product go from research all the way through to development and launch. It’s great to be able to see things that are ideas come to life and have a positive impact for the customer. And I love getting to speak to people in the business and seeing customers and partners.

Sage 50 Accounts is always evolving. How do you decide what features to develop?

The products have grown up over 30 years through customer feedback. We know that different businesses use different functionality.

When we’re planning changes to a product, we use research. This comes from a lot of sources:

• the market research we do
• looking at competitors’ products
• from talking to other divisions to see what customers have asked for
• from customer requests, and
• from our support calls.

We get over 700,000 calls a year to our support team. These get logged, which gives us vast amounts of information which we use to make the products better.

Having this much information is a big, interesting challenge. My role is to distill the information down to see what the themes are and make sure we get the priorities right.

When I meet with customers, I talk to them about how they run their business, what the challenges are and what they think of the product. These things are key. When we do any development, these are always the things we ask.

From all of the research, we take the things that have the biggest impact for our customers. There’s only a finite resource for development, so we make sure we deliver things that make the most difference for you.

And the usability guys will also go out to individual customers to check on how the customer wants to use the features. It’s a whole team involved.

So what changes have been added into the latest version of Sage 50 Accounts?

The focus for the new version of Sage 50 Accounts is on VAT. It’s awesome. It’s a major thing that we have been asked for so we’re excited to be able to deliver it. In particular, the ability to be able to trade abroad and still use VAT cash accounting. We knew that customers and accountants wanted this.

We’ve also made improvement the customer experience for VAT processing, so that when you submit it you know your VAT return is right. The software had this before but it was much more of an expert job. Now it’s in one place and much easier and more efficient. We know that it’s one of those jobs that customers have to do, but it doesn’t bring in any money for them – it’s just admin. It’s now simpler so you can get back to running your business.

So that’s VAT sorted. Has anything else changed?

Yes. One of the areas is for stock. A real time-saving is the new feature so you can see the stock levels when you’re on the phone to a customer, without having to change screens. It’s a simple change but really important for our customers.

You can also import your stock take from a CSV files. We know that a lot of our retail customers will be walking through a warehouse with their laptop, typing out the information. Before, you’d have to retype it into 50 Accounts. Now you can just import it, which saves a lot of time.

You can also delete unused stock items without affecting your accounts. For some businesses this is really important. Imagine you’re a fashion retailer. Their stock changes seasonally so you would end up with a lot of stock items that they didn’t need anymore. This led to mistakes. Now you can remove anything you don’t want anymore.

Finally, there’s also a new Live Link feature which lets us send messages to customers within the product. It’s all part of a bigger strategy to provide a better service for customers. Sage is with you on your desk and we’re here for support, not just product.

What’s your top tip for customers with Sage 50 Accounts?

My top tip would be get SageCover, so it’s great that you’ve done that. Sage 50 Accounts is a powerful piece of software and chances are that you’re only using part of the functionality. When you speak to the support people, they’re the product experts. So use them to help you make the product work even harder for your business.

Also, it’s worth staying on the latest version. Our development always focuses on making customers more productive and making the software even easier to use.

How would you recommend people get the most from their product?

People tend to learn what they need and often don’t take it any further. Or there may be quicker ways to do things.

My recommendation would be to look at the software again and ask the question “If I could automate any of my business activities, what would it be?” Then see if you can do that through Sage 50 Accounts. Can the software work harder for you?

Each business is different and has its own way of doing things but for the majority of customers, Sage 50 Accounts could do more. Talk to the support guys for advice.

Some of the Sage software like Instant Payroll is now offered on an annual licence plan. Are there any plans to do the same with Sage 50 Accounts?

You can buy Sage 50 Accounts on subscription, if you’re a new customer. This is a great opportunity, as it makes it easier to get the software. It starts at £50 per month for the product and support, which helps businesses with their cash flow.

If you’re an existing customer, you can change over to a subscription as well.

Can you give us an idea about what’s in development for the next release?

We started work on next year’s release last year, with research and planning. And as the engineers finish building one release, they start on the next. It’s a continuous process.

I’d like to be able to say more about what’s coming. All I can say at this stage is that it’s really exciting. There are a lot of people involved who are really passionate and a lot of time is spent to make sure we please as many customers as possible.

Do you have questions for Robin?

If you've got other questions for Robin, please do post them below. He’ll be popping in to answer any questions you might have, so please share them.