General Consultant Discussion

Doesn't Sage release some kind of bad news on April 1 every year? I wonder what it will be today?

I'm fairly certain Wayne will let us know as soon as the announcement is made.

Would this be it? http://s216551651.t.en25.com/e/es.aspx?s=216551651&e=7288&elq=2ac0cf176e314ccca3dab8c1b3bb5ad7

Wayne got me for a split second with the floppies! And @ThereseLogeais , I guess that means there is still a Sage 100 Online user out there!

This may impact people even more deeply - both a 3% price increase and a move from pricing based on modules (I bet that is high 80 or 90 %) to pricing based on user bundles.

Another pointy stick in the back to move to subscription. I mean incentive!

Has anyone ever heard Sage refer to **customers who bought a per-module license as being ""grandfathered""**? If so I would be interested in the Sage announcement if you have a copy - tx.

@WayneSchulz - see bottom of page 2 - is this what you are looking for?

Also, does anyone know why if all maintenance is being charged at the user bundle rate why Sage still publishes a per module price list?

No, that's the user bundles. I believe what Sage is talking about here is that they will no longer charge maintenance on the per user module and instead will charge it based on the per user bundle. Double check me on that and I'm still confused because their updated price list still shows per module as available for sale which makes me wonder can people buy per module and be forced to pay maintenance on user bundle price??

The language is confusing for sure.

Notice the 'boiling the frog' technique with online pricing. SaaS is going to become the new 'Triple Play'

Yes it is @RobertWood and @WayneSchulz. Here's what I remember about the use of the term grandfathered. The document I attached above was the first time Sage claimed customers had been grandfathered in at not paying maintenance on user licenses for numbers 6 and beyond. This announcement today now calls Module-Based renewals grandfathered, and those will be ungrandfathered on 7/1/16. The price lists for module-based customers is there because those customers still need a way to add user licenses, modules, etc. However, resellers are NOT allowed to sell module-based (perpetual) systems to NEW customers. @MarkChinsky and @RhondaMcNamara are correct, and this is just Sage pushing subscription at all costs.

@BrianKelly - quite possibly though I'm unsure why the Sage 100 perpetual licensing doesn't also carry the ""add ons, not available for new sale"" which the SBE does.

SBE - small business editiion? That hasn't been available for sale in years. Sage removed the minimum user requirement many years ago. However, there are still customers on the SBE product that would have to upgrade/migrate to one of the standard products - Sage 100c, now - if they wanted to add anything to their systems.

Nope, it says add-ons only. I just pulled this from MySageSell

I know our policy has been to ""eyeball"" the Sage maintenance this year vs last year and for large changes we request an explanation because if we don't we've found the customer sits on the invoice until the due date then THEY ask us. Given the above changes, I foresee this impacting every Sage customer except those on 100c. I don't think there's any way to explain it to customers and I doubt Sage will give us a detailed breakout. This has the potential to be a very big headache during renewal time.

Tentatively what we think we will do is send a personal email pointing out the difference (to show we are paying attention), attach Sage's announcement of price hike and then provide the name, email and phone of a Sage contact to speak with for any questions on the details behind the invoice. As of yet I'm not sure how broadly the second hidden increase is going to impact people. I do know it's a huge pain for those of us who invoice the customer directly because we get the first line questions about the increases and recently more and more customers have paid close attention. Luckily I don't have many users to explain the tiers to.

Oh nice! When did Sage slip that in? Sage is talking out of both sides of its face by allowing add-ons to SBE since there is no minimum user requirement anymore. I don't have any customers left on SBE, so I guess I never noticed it.

So there are probably a large number of customers (49% per Mike Ritchie / Sage Summit 2015) that will see: 1. Payroll tiers price hike 2, 3% Sage 100 price hike on SLP 3. 3-20% Non-grandfathered catch up price hike (TBD on scope) I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree but I think that we can expect Sage's renewal rate to slip from the claimed 90% to something like 80%.

This is another reason why I caution that you can no longer run an analysis between Sage 100 and 100c. Just price new deals at 100c or you're going to get caught in the myriad of pricing hikes Sage makes to even out the 100 product so that it costs more than 100c. Running an analysis requires assumption that the cost of 100 perpetual will stay predictable but I think Sage today has shown will not be the case.

Apparently Sage defines a long term customer as someone who likes to be in an abusive relationship...

Will those customers now on module based pricing get any modules they don't have right now that are in the user based bundles?

Sage is sick in the head with the price increases. The customers are bleeding and Sage simply doesn't care.

Yeah. It's ridiculous.

@PhilMcIntosh that's a great question. If they had IM and SO but not PO, they would end up getting it because its in the Disty bundle, one would assume.

Back in SOTA days the upgrades were sold, not handled through M&S. Back then a certain exec coined the upcoming Inventory, Sales Order and Purchase Order upgrade as **Im** **So** **Po**or after buying this upgrade.

Oh, the humor of it all.....

I'm typically the last person to understand things, but today I came to understand the info about ungrandfathering the module based sales, so I'll share. If you bought module based after 4/2012 you can stay as is. If you bought module based before 4/2012, you will get the 3% increase.