General Consultant Discussion

Client forwarded me this maintenance renewal invoice which is over $1700 more than last years. Notice that support is broken out separately from maintenance. So let me get this right, the client gets 5 ""free"" cases for $3060 ($612 per case). Now that's a bargain. Fu cus again.

is this the corrected one??? February and March renewals were all Focused Up and had to be redone. Double check with your ""Customer Support Analyst"" AKA Business Care Renewal person. Sounds like this is from the first batch.

Thanks Jeff. I remember reading that now. I hope you are correct and it is a mistake. I called Sage and someone is supposed to get back to me.

Let's hope. Two years ago, one of my long time clients got a renewal bill that was 50% higher than the year before and I didn't catch it. They were so pissed they switched to QuickBooks. They were underutilizing MAS and thought QB was a better fit plus a lot cheaper, but still the screw up was what pushed them over the edge into QB's world.

I don't blame them. I would be pissed too.

Broken out separately to reduce taxable sales from service

Understand about sales tax... however at $600 per incident it is a miracle anyone is renewing.

I found with the focused up rates, the amount owed was HIGHER, not lower than quoted

I am a little puzzled why you have 2 lines on the invoice when my customers only have one????

Do most of you invoice your clients for the Sage Business Care or do you let Sage invoice your clients?

In MN, only 20% of maintenance is taxable if it includes both support and product updates, so they break it out into two lines.

Oh Thanks @ThereseLogeais I don't trust anything we get from them lately . @MichaelPruet yes we bill most of our clients .

I let Sage bill them and they send me a commission check each month.... at least they do for now.

We just had a situation (still checking) where it appears a customer double payed for maintenance. They paid us once. Then we think they paid Sage as well and it seems as if Sage opened up a whole new Silver Support plan for them with duplicate start/end date (in other words did not just give them an additional year). Sage is still checking. It's now rather sad because the constant turnover means that every quarter there is some new type of screw-up that Sage is making.

Response from Sage: ""Customers who have been with Sage since 2003 used to only pay maintenance on the first 5 users of their system anything over 5 was no charge. In 2011, we changed our policy to begin charging maintenance on all users. However, we realized that this would be a large price increase, so we decided to make it a 5 year program. Year 1 we charged 20% of the maintenance for users over 5. Year 2 was 40%, year 3 is 60% (this year) year 4 will be 80% and year 5 will be regular pricing for all users. So, we are not raising pricing 20% per year, we are bringing ""grandfathered"" customers up to standard pricing over a 5 year period. "" My response to Sage: I don't care how you want to phrase it. Call it a change in policy if you wish. The customer calls it a price increase and that is what should concern you (at least it should). The bottom line is this customer will pay 20% more for the user license maintenance each year for the next 5 years."" Now I get to explain to this client why the maintenance on the user licenses will increase 6-fold over the last 5 years. fu cus again. To Summarize the Sage Response: There was NOT a price increase. There was simply a change in policy. All of the most loyal customers that have been using MAS on or before 2003 are now being aligned with the new policy. Are you effin kidding me?

Yea but haven't they seen a 20% increase in the rate of feature set expansion each year? ;)

For sure. Love the 100 ""Premium"" version's job costing, payroll, work order, and mrp modules. Thanks for re-investing the product maintenance.

What? Does this mean you ""Love"" the Std and Advanced version of JC, PR, WO, and MRP modules????

lol....not exactly. I got a demo of SYSPRO today. The mrp and manufacturing modules looked awesome..... it is an understatement to say it blows Sage 100 mrp and manufacturing out of the water.... completely different level of sophistication, and yet easy to use. I must have been in denial because after seeing this demo I am, for the first time, worried... This is similarly priced and they are targeting the same market as Sage 100.

@Doug It's smoke and mirrors, believe me. I just sent a letter of resignation as a reseller (for 5 years) for Syspro this week. Talk to me before you go any further with them.

Here's the positive side to the increase in maintenance - you make more in commission! (for now) In California since no physical product is delivered, sales tax is not applicable. I think this is the Silicon Valley lobby.

Good to know John. I would like to know more about what issues you had with them.

John, I've lost to them a few times on the sales side, even when I'm in with Epicor. They come across as easier to use and they quote alot lower. What are some of the problems? I will tell you, other than an after the fact assembly type company, putting a new sale on MRP/WO is not doing them any justice compared to what competition is out there

I'm out of town on a project, but here are some things that have been frustrating with Syspro: 1. They sell direct in competition with the channel. I know Epicor does this, but Syspro acts like they are not as preditorial as Epicor, but they are. 2. Simple things like sales order or invoice forms are not easily customized, especially when there are many custom fields. They require programming. 3. Many features we are accustomed to, such as creating VI type jobs for imports or global changes in files are not possible, except for licensing another program to do this. This really bothers clients, who expect these would be standard features. 4. Support is not all that good at what they do. (I guess this could be said about most publishers.) 5. I find the system, especially in the manufacturing area, to be overly complex and not at all intuitive. 6. The standard out of the box system has screens that are terrible and confusing. All new installations and even preparation for demos require ""tailoring"" to make them appropriate for the prospect or client. 7. All terms are still South African without any plan to change them for the US. This confuses clients - like ""stock take"" for physical inventory. I can go through others at MOTM, but that's a start. We had one installation which was very painful and eventually the client told us it was too confusing for them. We demo'd Sage 100 and they immediately loved it and have been happy for two years with it.

@JohnHoyt - this would make an excellent presentation - maybe in the session that talks about alternatives

Happy to.

A client of mine was just hit with a 25% increase. From 9K to 12K. Might be the breaking point for them. Unfortunately, they are using Job ops and PR....... NOT very happy right now.

@DougHiggs - what was the date of the notice? Reading the fine print, they can call before the renewal date to ""discuss"" or update payment info but further down the finer print states they'll be taking money out of customer's account/chg cc in three business days. Three business days seems too short.

The renewal notice was sent January 21, 2014 . Interesting money would be taken in 3 days because they don't expire until March 7, 2014.

Unfortunately, when Sage signs up the customer on a direct pay plan, We the reseller are out of the loop entirely.