If you are a user of Sage Software you are probably already subject to a bombardment of promotional telephone calls and a flood of literature. However you may still be feeling confused about the level of product you should be using.
So what criteria should you use to decide which is the best Sage accounting product for your business?
The difference between Sage Line50 and Sage 200 is not always that clear, so if this applies to you then please read on.
On the financial side, Sage 200 offers many features which differentiate it from Sage Line50. For example, Period Control allows you to define how you will control period reporting and accounting. With Sage Line 50 you can have 12 periods but only 1 can be open at any one time. This mimics typical modular accounting practice but it is possible that you need the sophistication of Sage 200 to have any number of periods open at the same time. Similarly, with Sage 200, the Sales and Purchase ledger offer a choice of transaction reporting period’s definable from 1 day to 365 days.
Sage 200 also offers multiple cost-centres and departments which allows financial analysis at multiple levels. Sage200 Foreign currency functionality allows you to pay, receive and invoice in any currency and without the need to have a bank account for every currency.
Question: Would you benefit from period control and/or the ability to analyze your financial information to a much greater depth and/or improve the way you handle foreign currency transactions than Sage Line50 offers you?
Answer: Sage 200 is probably the product for you.
The commercial mode is where Sage 200 really comes into its own. It offers multiple stock locations, batch and serial number tracking and the ability to define stock locations at bin level as well as a wide range of other defined criteria.
Question: Would you benefit from the ability to correctly define your stock holding including bin locations as well as Batch and Serial number tracking?
Answer: Sage 200 is probably the product for you.
The database for Sage 200 is Microsoft’s SQL server which is an extremely robust database featuring many of the benefits which allow safe storage of a large number of transactions as well as allowing a large number of users . If you have a user count in excess of 6 then Sage 200 offers advantages in operations because of the absence of locks. In Sage Line50 other users have to stop processing while files are locked and certain operations take place.
Question: Have you experienced problems with data corruption or indexing or feel that Sage Line50 locking is hampering your efficiency?
Answer: Sage 200 is probably the product for you.
If you have answered yes to any of the questions above then serious consideration should be given to adopting Sage 200 as your core accounting system.