Sage 100

Anyone have a client cancel the SAGE 100 US Payroll subscription early? The client paid the subscription for one year in advance, but then half way, decided to go with an outside payroll service. Will SAGE Software offer a refund of the remaining six months where the number of employee paychecks calculated is ZERO?

I don't think so. I think their terms indicate no refunds. I don't think you can get a refund on a Sage 100c subscription either.

Good Question. My gut feeling is ""no"". If I understood it correctly, month to month subscriptions can have the number of employees reduced each month; but annual only get the one time a year to reduce the number of employees. Now, if you are talking about increasing the number, that is allowed on monthly or annual. Again, this is just how I understood it worked; and I am not sure I am correct.

On the Payroll order form, fine print: **Contract Details:** Requires electronic payments via credit card or ACH/EFT from US bank account (ACH/EFT not valid for Canadian banks). Any freight/shipping charges will be added to the initial payment. Minimum 1 month notice required for reduction in number of employees or subscription cancellation. **All orders are non-refundable and non-cancelable. You may only terminate your use of the service/product in accordance with the applicable Sage end user license agreement or subscription agreement, including any prior notice requirements.**

No refund is pretty standard with these contracts across the industry. I am curious about the reasons they moved on - can you share with us?

@JerryNorman The client is a multi location restaurant chain, with multiple partnership owners, so you can imagine the payrolls are complicated and paid weekly. One person was responsible for all entities and I believe ran out of gas. Management's solution was to out-source payroll to their CPA firm. At this point, the outsourced costs are still an unknown. Will be interesting to see what it will cost them -- outsourced vs in-house.

It doesn't sound like a limitation in SPR, but one in their process? It sounds like the time capture part is the real bottleneck? Anyway, I was fishing for a problem with SPR, and I don't think I heard that.

My guess is $1200 for software cost is pretty reasonable for in house payroll. I would be interested in hearing the cost of the outsourced payroll.

I would recommend to them that they not cancel until sure they want to stay with the outsource option. If they cancel and then decide they want to bring back in house, they would have to pay the upfront fee.

@JaneCavanaugh That is a good idea! But I assume that according to the Payroll Order Form fine print, I will have to notify SAGE 1 month in advance of the cancellation otherwise SAGE will suck the renewal out of the client's bank account.

@Michael. I agree, wait until a couple of months to expiration and then notify Sage. One of my customers that is currently outsourcing isn't sure they will want to continue. So, I had them choose the lowest number of employees for their payroll subscription. Then, once they decide what they want to do, they can either increase the employee count and save the upfront fee, or cancel. Which brings up another thought - I thought Sage said that customers who didn't pay the subscription fee would still be able to view their employee data. Any of my customers that haven't paid by the payroll expiration date haven't been able to do anything in Payroll, including view employee data.

@JaneCavanaugh...One question - are your SAGE Payroll Subscription customers on month by month payment plan, or did they pay for one year in advance? As far as read only Payroll History, I had one client that was on SAGE 100 STD v2015 PU3 and in order for them to view payroll history I had to upgrade their SAGE system to PU5.

@MichaelMcDonald - all but one customer on Payroll purchased on perpetual and paid for subscription for one year. My customer that couldn't get into their data is on 2016 sp1. All is good now that they paid Sage.

There is a patch to enable PR view only. It may now be included in the recently released 2016.5/2017.2.