Sage News and Discussion

Sage One Has anyone in the group reviewed this or have anyone using it? One of my partners mentioned one of his clients has a Mac, was using Quicken, and it no longer works. He wanted to know if there was something that would work with a Mac. I said there were a number of cloud-based products that only require access to the internet. I mentioned Sage One, but then realized I don't know much about it. In reviewing the Sage website, it turns out there isn't much to know - pretty simple. They do have a free accountant account and they can get 20% off for their clients. AND . . . get a $25 gift cert for every client brought in!

Sage One is Sage's attempt at a pure SaaS / multi-tenant entry level product. I was initially of the impression that it was a global ""write once use everywhere"" product but others have said that different flavors of Sage One exist in different regions. It appears to be much bigger over in the UK than in the US. There is a Sage One Extra (adds multi-currency and other features of which I'm not up to speed on) being introduced overseas and scheduled to travel to North America. I asked Connie Certuccci @ Summit 2014 whether this would be something they'd try to migrate other legacy ERP (think Sage 100, Sage 300) customers from (only those looking to leave for a pure SaaS). She did everything but roll her eyes and make a face -- which to me says that Sage is still a little ways away in NA from really going ""all in"" with Sage One. That's just my interpretation from body language. A few Summits back (I think 2 yrs) I sat with the Sage One people to try to understand this a little better and where the product fit in. At the time it did not even write checks (I think that has since been updated). The pace of development in NA seems very slow for a product which I thought was going to be getting a big push from Sage UK. I'm not sure why Sage One isn't getting a much bigger push in NA. It might be because Sage 50 already has a big market share and Sage doesn't want to upset that apple cart. Certainly we've seen examples of this type of ""walled garden"" marketing in the past where different divisions within Sage are not all fully interacting. Long story short - the best resource for you is Jennifer Warawa - Jennifer.Warawa@sage.com - as you probably saw she also spoke about some exciting new CPA offerings yet to be released (but did not go into specifics).

Thanks, @WayneSchulz. I also wondered about check writing, but found no mention of it. Then I thought in a new, perfect world all payments should be electronic through a bank or direct electronic payment. Personally I can't remember the last time I wrote a check. So I'm not sure if that's a big deal.

@JohnHoyt This is when you want to look at xTuple Postbooks Edition.

@BrianRice So a client could download and use this under the CPAL license at no cost, but would not receive and support, is that correct?

@JohnHoyt - there are xTuple forums to post to (of course no guarantee of a response), or they could hire a consultant...

Correct, it wouldn't include phone support from the commercial publisher but, to @PhilMcIntosh's point, there is an active community forum.

I had an e-mail back from Jennifer Warawa, and there is a dedicated Sage One person in Irvine that can meet with us about the product.

In a partner meeting today I gave an overview of Sage One and said that we could have a Sage representative present this to our group. They all seemed to think that was a good idea. After the meeting one partner told me that QuickBooks is the standard and that nothing else will be adopted by clients or CPA's. Unfortunately I didn't have a buggy whip handy. Sage One is not for those clients that use QuickBooks. It's basically an electronic check book with some additional functionality, like preparing invoices, integration to the bank and credit card integration. We have many clients who have nothing and this would be very helpful. They are the ones that would not use QuickBooks, because it's too difficult.

@JohnHoyt have you looked at QB Online? I don't know if it's less complex than QB but it seems as if there's some benefit to using one solution for the very small and up. The main problem with QB (and really all accounting) is nobody has a product that you can start out as shoebox and migrate up the ladder with automatic data conversion, one click migration all the way to full ERP.

I now have my free account. There is also a certification for Sage One. It takes about 2 hours.

As I type this, it sounds like a stupid question but was the certification paid?

No charge.