General Consultant Discussion

Sage 100 Maintenance on Grandfathered User Licenses It was my understanding that back in 2010 (?) Sage needed more money so decided to start charging Maintenance on User Licenses that they hadn't charged before. But to soften the blow to our customers, they were going to increase the Maintenance on User Licenses by 20% per year so that the full maintenance would be charged by the year 2016. In reviewing my customers with more than 5 users, instead of maintenance going up by 20% of the User License, maintenance has gone up this year anywhere from 19.2% to 25% of the entire last year's total maintenance. When I called Sage at the request of several customers, my Customer Account Manager says she doesn't do the pricing but she has a memo entitled Grandfathered Pricing that says in part, ""Instead of attaching a lump sum increase to the grandfathered accounts we have increased their business care pricing each year with a cap of 25%."" She says their folks are taking that to mean 25% of the whole maintenance. I don't think that was the way I understood this to work. But she says that they will be willing to look at the issue if I can provide the original documentation to support my claim. Any hoarders still have the announcement?

I always understood it to be a maximum increase per year of 25%, but I don't have any documentation of this.

Given the world of Sage, the odds are better that they screw things up then remember what they said two years ago.

@HaroldWestover - file:///C:/Users/brian/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/FSRWGSXX/Un-Grandfathering%20Partner%20Announcement.html I had this same conversation with Sage almost one year ago, and I got this link from my RAM (or whatever they are called now). Be sure to copy the entire link starting with ""file

@BrianKelly can this be saved as pdf instead and attached? tia

I guess I should have stated, ""be sure to copy the entire link starting with the word file and paste into your web browser"". It is a web page, and from there it most definitely can be printed or saved as a pdf.

It doesn't like me.....

@BrianKelly I get a file not found error when copying the link starting with and including file:///

Well, of course it does. Silly me, I did not see in the link that when I opened the html file it was referencing back to my temporary directory on my local PC. Sorry about that. Here is a pdf and the original html file as attachments.

Nice to know that they eliminated the GF clause for the reseller benefit..

Thanks @BrianKelly added to Evernote under 90 Minds Pricing and Literature.

I am somewhat certain that there is at least one more document that discusses Sage desire to soften the blow to the end user by spreading the maintenance increase for previously grandfathered licenses more than 5 over a 5 year period (20% per year). Sage does agree with the part about the 5 year plan.

Whichever it was - 20% or 25% - this was quoted as the maximum maintenance would increase from year to year, since the way they calculated it may yield something much higher. This did not mean they always increased by the maximum. I do, however, appreciate the logic of 20% over 5 years. Now we just have to hope logic is in place at Sage.

I know this discussion is about the details of Sage's policy but the result (of this and other changes) is that most of our customers never pay the same for M&S for two consecutive years.

And the amount is always strange, as if 47 cents makes a difference to Sage.

I ran into the same thing about 2 weeks ago and here is the explanation I got emailed by our Sage CAM. GRAND FATHERED PRICING This customer account is considered a Grand Fathered account (customers who purchased prior to 4/2003). Customers who fall into this category were only charged maintenance and support for the 1st five users and given pricing credits. The company realized that this structure of pricing was not conducive to the Sage (not only were we not charging for maintenance and support beyond the 1st 5 user but we were giving these customers pricing credits). As of 2011 we begin to change that pricing structure to streamline the pricing among all customers. Instead of attaching a lump sum increase to the grandfathered accounts we have increased their business care pricing each year with a cap of 25%. This year will be the final increase in 2016 and all customers will be aligned to the same pricing. I hope this explanation helps you to understand your pricing.

@BrianRice and I believe customers will never pay the same amount again going forward. Before Joe Langner left, I remember one of the partner webinars where I believe Sage has now built-in an annual 3% increase as policy. I can tell you from our short time as an Infor partner that Infor charges a 6% increase and it is built into their maintenance agreement and new sales contracts.

How can there be a 3% increase in maintenance only, when it is based on 25% (Gold) of the current list price of the software? This must be based on the list price being increased by 3%.