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William Hilsum

Does Sage 50c have a future, or, should we start to look at moving away?

Posted By

As the title says - compare to some other solutions, Sage 50 has its quirks, but, it works very well.

We support Sage 50 for numerous clients - a few months ago, we lost a lot of time constantly fixing and restoring files as the new version upgrade caused numerous problems which were eventually fixed. These issues were blatant and constant - not just fringe or rare cases. I really don't understand how this release was allowed to happen.

Next and most importantly - so many items have been removed from the roadmap - 

There is nothing in future other than an advert for AutoEntry, and a link to this forum. (https://my.sage.co.uk/public/help.aspx#/roadmap/sage-50-accounts/the-future)

There is nothing in launching soon other than required compliance updates (https://my.sage.co.uk/public/help.aspx#/roadmap/sage-50-accounts/launching-soon)

I won't lie - the Sage Drive to Remote Desktop Access is a nice update and has been great with so many people working from home - but nearly everything else is again just compliance updates or very little.

Sage 50 has had numerous shortcomings for MANY years and people have raised issues on the forum  however, when you take a look at items that have been closed in date order, other than one that is listed as "by design", not one idea has been implemented for at least 2 years (which I think is the time this forum started). In fact, I got bored scrolling back trying to find the last implemented idea - I believe the only ones I was able to find coincide with the migration and are in fact much older.

You are constantly updating other products such as Business Cloud Accounting - which only costs £30 a month, yet Sage 50 Cloud Professional is £132 and just seems to be stalling - in fact, if you try to buy a new copy of Sage 50, you try to divert us to Business Cloud Accounting:

And if we decline, you still show it as the recommended product next to Sage 50:

The Ecosystem is dying - you created a new forum 4 months ago here  which appears to just be empty. You give API/programming documentation on both SBA and even Sage 200 - however, when I asked Sage about getting API access for Sage 50, it took almost a year of back and forth to get an answer, and only then was I told it would cost me £4,000 a year for access to the documentation.

I was amazed when I saw API listed in the roadmap and I'm rather annoyed it has been removed.

Quite frankly, the only reason I use (and have recommended to others) Sage 50 is due to the integrations with a few third party apps we still need and the ability to restore/backup which makes various "what if" scenarios easy to run - however, it is getting much harder to justify in recent years.

I feel sorry for whoever manages your social media as I have made comments several times over the years, but, I only get the same curated answers back - please can you be honest with us and explain:

Why is Sage 50 the only solution you charge thousands of pounds for access to documentation on?
Why has the API been removed from the roadmap?
On the above - Why has the roadmap been pretty much nerfed?
Are you actively developing NEW features?
Are you going to implement features from the Idea page that the users actually want?
Should we be looking to move away?

Sorry for a rant, and, thank you.

  • 0

    I love Sage 50 and have been using it for many years; probably around 20.

    I have seen and felt a lot of change in this time and it is not for the better, I feel. I have several customers who use Sage from many years ago and they all hate it; this makes me feel sad that people are turning their back on the product which, I believe, was the forerunner to the accounting provider. 

    I posted last week about having to be on hold for over two hours. This was a highly aggravating factor and we never used to have these issue. I fact, a wait time of a maximum of ten minutes was normal, now it seems to be over an hour is the new normal.

  • 0

    Hi William, 

    I'm the product manager for Sage 50 Accounts for the UK and Ireland and wanted to get back to you on the above to let you know that Sage 50cloud Accounts is very much part of our plans. Our most recent update, v27.1, included a significant piece of compliance work due to Brexit and with the amount of compliance changes taking place this year, priority has been given to these updates. However, we are actively developing new features and continue to look at the Ideas page for trending themes.

    The development of an API was pushed out due to other priorities but is still under consideration. I would be happy to talk about your individual requirements directly.

    The next release, v27.2, will be available in June; the main focus continues to be around compliance as well as improving the stability around Sage Remote Data Access. The release after that will be in November, and the scope is to be confirmed where we can start to include ideas from Sage City.

    Tanya

  • 0 in reply to TG44

    Hi TG44, 

    I wanted to let you know that we have recently partnered with Limitless to offer you support with Sage 50cloud Accounts and Payroll, where you can get an answer to your questions in minutes from one of our dedicated Sage Ambassadors.

    Please find more details here: https://gb-kb.sage.com/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?solutionid=210322170056453

    If there is any specific items that you would like discuss further re: any issues your customer have with the product, please let me know and I will contact you directly to arrange a call. 

    Thanks, 
    Tanya


  • 0 in reply to Tanya Pun

    Thank you for your response and I've replied to the email.

    Unfortunately as I said, actions speak louder than words and if you look at the roadmap and releases to date for 50c compared to any of your other products, it's absolutely shocking.

    Again, we aren't talking one or two releases, we are talking other than a single closed item (which was marked as by design), there has been *NO* sage involvement in the ideas forum since the migration to this new platform over 2 years ago.

    Sage 50c is the *ONLY* product you actively push clients away from and recommend another product...

  • 0 in reply to Tanya Pun

    Apologies, but I thought I'd replied. Always happy to chat.

  • 0 in reply to William Hilsum

    Hi William, 

    As mentioned above, the v27.1 release was focused on compliance due to Brexit, but we continue to review feedback and look to add the most requested items to the product. For example, in v27.0, we introduced Customer Alerts, which was requested via Sage City and customer surveys. Prior to this, in v26.3, we introduced the ability to add attachments to supplier invoice and supplier credit transactions.   

    Best regards,

    Tanya

  • 0 in reply to Tanya Pun

    I agree with William and TG44, I am a  bookeeper with several clients on Sage 50c, any time I have queries about Sage 50 with regard to using it for different types of clients or asking about different features I am being directed to moving that client to Business Cloud, yet many of my clients type of businesses and processes will not work as well on the cloud.

    I have actually just posted in another thread about the new issues we are now having with Autoentry connecting with clients data who are using Remote Data Access and also how unreliable it has got with connecting to Sage 50 since it was bought over by Sage.

    It is also that the Client Manager for Sage 50 is not exactly cheap and every year the price goes up and the benefits are less, for instance a couple of years ago we lost the dedicated technical support helpline for accountants and bookkeepers and had to start calling the regular technical support helpline, at one point you were lucky if you got connected within an hour and that was before COVID.

*Community Hub is the new name for Sage City