Sage Line 50 Financial Controller: Opinions?

botvot

Hi all

Our company is about to migrate to Sage Line 50 Financial Controller Accounting Package. (We are currently using AS400, TAS and Micropay Professional.)

I would appreciate some feedback on how you find the program over all? Is it easy to use? Are there gaps which need to be addressed? Have you experience in other packages that you would rather recommend?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

hermit

botvot wrote:

Hi all

Our company is about to migrate to Sage Line 50 Financial Controller Accounting Package. (We are currently using AS400, TAS and Micropay Professional.)

I would appreciate some feedback on how you find the program over all? Is it easy to use? Are there gaps which need to be addressed? Have you experience in other packages that you would rather recommend?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Hi, in my previous job I had used SAGE Line 50 for 5 - 6 years. It was a start up company and I had to setup the program and the company on the system etc... so have a good knowledge of the program etc...

I have only ever briefly used TAS so couldn't give a full comparison of both. In general I found SAGE Line 50 easier to use. To be honest it depends on the kind of company you operate. Sage is very good for stock control and Management Information Support structures. You may not need these of course. The most recent versions of SAGE Line 50 I have felt have jumped leaps and bounds with the system compared to previous installments.

One word of warning with SAGE though - if you are using it on a number of networked machines it can be a real nightmare to maintain and upgrade. Everytime I did an upgrade client machines lost Line 50 and Server connections. It took a few hrs to get these back up and running. For the company I was with, not having computers on for a few mins caused a complete shut down almost and caused trouble with customer relations. I thought it may have been myself that was causing the problems so I got some IT specialists to do one of the upgrades and the same thing happened...

One other thing ... SAGE support is atrocious (Sp?). We paid for support services but all they would give was phone support. They actually refused to come out to us when we had a problem..

All in all though the program itself is very good. you can create SOPs (Sales Orders) and directly create an invoice from same at end of month. Same with purchase orders you can email or fax directly from PC to supplier once connected. Its Banking options are very good too.

Again it depends on the kind of company you operate and what your requirements actually are...

botvot

Thanks for your detailed comment, Hermit, much appreciated.

Bessie Burgess

Hi
Sage support is crap - i agree !
Do you know if it is possible to save bank reconciliation in draft if not finished ? i know opening and closing balances have to match, but say I am doing a full month, can I save as draft all my data which I have input and then come back to it, or do i have to start and finish during the same session ?

Any comments welcome.

thanks
Bessie


quote=hermit;53539181]Hi, in my previous job I had used SAGE Line 50 for 5 - 6 years. It was a start up company and I had to setup the program and the company on the system etc... so have a good knowledge of the program etc...

I have only ever briefly used TAS so couldn't give a full comparison of both. In general I found SAGE Line 50 easier to use. To be honest it depends on the kind of company you operate. Sage is very good for stock control and Management Information Support structures. You may not need these of course. The most recent versions of SAGE Line 50 I have felt have jumped leaps and bounds with the system compared to previous installments.

One word of warning with SAGE though - if you are using it on a number of networked machines it can be a real nightmare to maintain and upgrade. Everytime I did an upgrade client machines lost Line 50 and Server connections. It took a few hrs to get these back up and running. For the company I was with, not having computers on for a few mins caused a complete shut down almost and caused trouble with customer relations. I thought it may have been myself that was causing the problems so I got some IT specialists to do one of the upgrades and the same thing happened...

One other thing ... SAGE support is atrocious (Sp?). We paid for support services but all they would give was phone support. They actually refused to come out to us when we had a problem..

All in all though the program itself is very good. you can create SOPs (Sales Orders) and directly create an invoice from same at end of month. Same with purchase orders you can email or fax directly from PC to supplier once connected. Its Banking options are very good too.

Again it depends on the kind of company you operate and what your requirements actually are...[/quote]

jimmycrackcorm

hermit wrote: »

One word of warning with SAGE though - if you are using it on a number of networked machines it can be a real nightmare to maintain and upgrade. Everytime I did an upgrade client machines lost Line 50 and Server connections. It took a few hrs to get these back up and running. For the company I was with, not having computers on for a few mins caused a complete shut down almost and caused trouble with customer relations. I thought it may have been myself that was causing the problems so I got some IT specialists to do one of the upgrades and the same thing happened...

One aspect I'd recommend for this is to install it on a server and use Terminal Services via remote desktop for the clients access. Makes life much simpler.

Ontheball2

Line 50 is very easy to work with once you have everything set up correctly. The hardest part is to migrate all the other balance and accounts from teh old systems on to your new system. If you guys are look for someone to help you with that, I can reccomment KDA Accountants, customer service second to none.

djk1000

Ontheball2 wrote: »

Line 50 is very easy to work with once you have everything set up correctly. The hardest part is to migrate all the other balance and accounts from teh old systems on to your new system. If you guys are look for someone to help you with that, I can reccomment KDA Accountants, customer service second to none.

Recommending the firm you work for eh??

This is from a previous post you made,

There seems to be mixed views from the other guys. In todays market 10,000 is way to much for your level of business. I'm guessing that it is set up as a partnership. I work in medium sized accountancy practise and we would be able to sort you out with a full service for 5,000 Euro. They say you should change your accountant ever 3 years, it is always worth shopping around,

Owen
Owen@KDAaccountants.ie

Please be honest.

PMC999

I used it a couple of years ago in a previous job. Like most off the shelf packages it does the job but in my opinion it has a number of serious weaknesses. My biggest gripe (apart from the dreadful customer support) was that I could not close periods for posting. This caused me countless problems when some of the book keepers posted invoices to prior months which i had already reported on. This may have been fixed in the meantime.
I also found the standard reports to be quite poor. In fairness I never had the time to really research the ability to create my own reports so this may have been my own failing.
As far as I recall you can save a draft of a bank reconciliation and return to it at at later date.
Overall if I were choosing a package today I would go with TAS Books but as other posters have stated it really depends on the type of business your company does and the set up of the accounts team.
Good luck with your choice.

Mr Clonfadda

If you are having problems with sage support, please feel free to contact my company. We can take over your sage contract for free until it expires or there will be a local accredited sage business partner who could help . From version twelve onwards you can save your bank rec's and go back and finish them later