Hi everyone!

As Andy shared a bit about himself, I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself too!

I’m Annie, and I’ve been with Sage for nearly 10 years now (time really does fly!). I started my journey here in support, focusing on Sage 50 Payroll as a technician. From there, I moved into leadership roles and worked with our cloud products, including Sage Business Cloud Accounting and Payroll. After a few years, I transitioned into the digital space (where I earned the fun nickname Digi Diva) and spent 4 years leading the Digital Knowledge team for the UKI region.

Today, I’m the Global Community and Standards Manager – and I absolutely love it! The digital world is always evolving, which keeps me on my toes and learning something new every day.

Outside of work, you’ll often find me walking Myles, my mischievous pug (who Andy can vouch for as quite the character!). I’m also an avid swimmer, I’m in the pool 3-4 times a week – usually at 6 a.m., though I’ve yet to summon the courage for a sea swim!

Our Community Hub is a fantastic place to connect, share insights, and learn how others are making the most of our software. I’m always happy to chat about digital tips or anything else you’re curious about, so don’t hesitate to reach out!

Now, I’d love to hear from you – feel free to introduce yourself and share a little about your journey with Sage!

Hello everyone! 

Following on from Andy and Annie, I thought I'd take a minute to introduce myself. I've been with Sage for two years now, starting out in 50 Payroll as a Tech Support Specialist. Since July, I've been part of the Knowledge and Community - Standards and Audit team as a Knowledge Content Specialist, and I absolutely love it here. I've definitely found where I want to be!

Outside of work, I enjoy doing yoga and, unlike Annie, I dive into the North Sea for a swim – the thrill is unbeatable!

That is, if I have any spare time, as my partner and I are currently renovating a new house. It's a challenge we've taken on, and it's definitely not for the faint-hearted, ha! 

I'm super excited to hear from all of you and learn about your interests. I encourage you to post your own bio too – let's get to know each other better! We'd love to hear from you and find out what you'd like to see from the Community.

Hi, I'm Jackie and I'm new to Community Hub. Am Treasurer of our church but not an accountant.  Accounts were done manually, then new treasurer took over and computerised us using Sage Instant for about 3 years.   I took over 9 years ago and went to Sage 50 and did amendments to make life easier with reporting - we have a small team, all retired, working with me and we use remote access.  Have managed to cope learning by reading sheets, but now we want to use our Charities Option to make life easier for our Gift Aid Secretary particularly who has manually done HMRC requests and is wanting to retire after 14 years.  We also employ 2 people and use Payroll Accounting.   Also want to make life easier for my successor when that happens possibly in next couple of years.   Trying to work out how to use the Hub is a new challenge too.   It is a nice feeling that other people struggle too and I'm not the only one!!    I'm hoping if we can get switched over to Charities Option in Jan 2025 and it runs smoothly, doing the accounts will be easier and quicker!!!  Having digital giving has also been a new concept over the past few years and another thing to learn.    It's just setting it all up - have been wanting to do it for 3 years but not succeeded as time ran out.   Will be good to save time and be able to get back to enjoying the countryside.

Hi Everyone. I first used Sage 50 back in the late 1980's. I was a consultant in accounting systems and had my own Sage consultancy until Covid. I am now working with Sage as a bookkeeper for a toy company.

Cheeky plug. If you have toddlers to buy for, have a look at Orange Tree Toys.

Hi All,

In the early 1990s I was the in-house programmer/user support/system operator (effectively the computer department) for a mail order retail company (using a Pick based system for stock control and the accounts) before being made redundant whereupon I became a coach driver (wanted to "get out and see the world" - being paid to do it was a bonus...).  At the start of the 2010s I studied some accountancy with the OU (including a brief look at Sage) which was followed by doing AAT to level 3.  I became treasurer for my church, using spreadsheets (in LibreOffice¹, converting and improving the excel ones given to me by the previous treasurer) to do the accounts - the new treasurer is now switching to an accounting package (I never had the time to sort it out).

At the end of 2018 I left coach driving and joined my previous employer as a volunteer to get some [proper] experience of accounting and using Sage to start a proper career change; this became an employed position and I worked in the finance office of a HE college using Sage with the Charitable funds module.  Due to having to do extra at work and a lack of spare time, I have had to resign from being church treasurer.  Last year I changed employers to another College whose use of Sage is, shall we say, "interesting" - like my previous employer, it looks like those who set up the Sage didn't understand how the Funds (and Departments) worked.

At some stage I am hopeful that I'll finally have some time to do AAT level 4.

I came to the Community Hub looking for answers to a problem I had, found I could supply answers to others with their queries and stayed to help where I could.

¹I run Linux on my machines at home; using LibreOffice is fully cross-platform unlike excel (the web version is not as good as the desktop version and has serious features² compared to the desktop version which makes it much harder to use and things don't work the same) which meant that whoever took over from me could continue with everything working as intended regardless of the machine (OS) they used.

²From the glossary of an Apple ][ manual (circa 1982): Feature := Bug as described by the marketing department.

Hello. I've been using Sage since the days of backing up to floppy disk.... I'm self taught and very inquisitive, always looking for clever ways of working.

I've been involved in bookkeeping or accountancy for most of my working life, apart from a few years as an IT instructor and database programmer. I now specialise in charity accounts and provide an outsourced finance manager and payroll service to a small number of charities ranging from £100k turnover to £4m. Mostly I use Sage, through Client Manager, but also use different accounts software which I won’t name but it’s nothing, nought, nil like Sage!  It’s all good experience and learning from one can be helpful to another. Much like this group which I’m happy to contribute to but also very happy to learn from. It’s always great to see a problem from a different angle.

Hi Andy, I'm Steve, and my company has been a Sage Business Partner since 2008. When it was a thing, we were a Platinum Partner! Who remembers that? 

I have always found the Sage Community to be a fantastic resource; sharing problems and solutions helps everybody who uses Sage Accounts (and Payroll if you are in that group as well).

Whenever one of my customers reports an unusual problem with Sage, this is the second place I call after trying the Sage Knowledgebase. And I very often find that someone has a suggestion! Often it is you, Andy, who points us in the right direction. So thanks for your service.

Hi, I'm Ken and have been using Sage since 2005. I enjoy helping other users with their queries using Sage althought there is always more to learn.

My background is mainframe programming but redundancy pushed me into the accounting world. I'm self-taught on Sage with a smattering of Book-Keeping tuition on-line. ODBC extraction with Excel has enabled me to achieve better reporting for the audio-visual company I work for.

Outside of work I'm either on my laptop, busy mowing lawns when the grass grows or involved with church. I'm the church treasurer but it's all Excel based - no need for accounting software . I've also been involved with a charity for over 40 years with about 20 years as the treasurer but the reporting got too complicated for me to deal with so I passed the job over to someone more qualified.

Thanks everyone for your replies so far :-) It's great to hear more about your backgrounds and what brought you here. Thanks for staying involved with Community Hub, and Anita Harper  I'll be sure to tag you in the next charities question! 

Hi, I'm Suz, I've been working with Sage for over 20 years now, we are only a small business with 3 in the office and 2 in the warehouse, we import and sell to wholesalers.

I say I've been using Sage, but I really don't think we 'use' it to our best advantage!

So I've decided to come on here to see if we could get some help?

We are just in the process of signing up to WEEE, can anyone tell me if there is a report that we could use to find out our useage?

Thank you in advance