General Consultant Discussion

We are no longer going to invoice Sage maintenance for anyone who is not also under our support agreement. If Sage continues to only supply 30 day notice for renewals we'll stop the rest as well as I'll take that as a sign that Sage officially wants to manage the billing. The accuracy of the invoices and the hassle of dealing with Sage is starting to make it highly questionable that the compensation for being the administrative arm of Sage is worthwhile. Because we are multi-office it is further problematic because shortly we expect Sage to take away more of our ability to review the renewals (did Sage process the renewal? At the right level? For the right customer? ). I get extremely nervous when managing larger $$ renewals. The customer pays the money to us and we are seen by them as responsible. We've seen several instances where Sage is not only invoicing the wrong amount - but the wrong class of maintenance. In once case Sage caught it about a week before the renewal deadline (after we'd already invoiced and collected) and refused to honor the mistake. A while back we started invoicing 100% of our customers on the belief that at some point Sage might require that type of effort to continue earning margin. Now I'm not so sure that is the case and that Sage may just ratchet up the difficulty of getting accurate renewal $$ and the hassle of dealing with them. The end result will be that many partners such as us throw their hands up and walk away from these renewals. Very odd thinking on Sage's part.

Isn't this a re-post? Sage doesn't give two shits about us helping them collect M&S. Hasn't seemed that way for at least four years. They have a team of overly aggressive dialers that call, email and generally harass the clients to pay up (and to upgrade to Gold Business Care). Clients hate their guts but I guess it's part of the Excellent Customer Experience? Peace is war.

This might have been double posted but it was so brilliantly worded I decided to post again.... Actually it may have been tagged onto another post as a reply somewhere - I wasn't sure and tried to briefly look but I think you are right that I had offered this up somewhere. Just couldn't remember where.

The key problem that I have is when the customer is not on a Schulz Support plan -- I am now potentially incurring a liability for a user who I typically don't make any money off (and who in reality just tries to call for free support once or twice per year) because I've seen many instances where Sage : a. Invoices wrong -- either $$ or level b. Doesn't renew c. Renews with wrong date I'm at a loss to come up with any reason why I should put myself into the position of the unpaid complaint department when the margin slips constantly and more importantly I become the ""local neck to strangle"" when something goes south.

You know that I hang on and memorize your every word so if you ever want to double-check if you are re-posting, contact me.

We took the big leap a year or two ago to encouraging our customers to renew direct with Sage. It is/was a risk to point our customers directly to Sage, but it sure has made the process less confusing to customers and made things way more efficient on our end. We still send a letter and call to discuss the renewals with clients, just let Sage handle the transaction. For those that prefer to renew through us, we still honor, but the 90+% do the transaction with Sage. It has been a very positive change. Of course if Sage does something really foolish someday, I could end up regretting.

The problem that I have is we've had more than one occasion where Sage sent inaccurate info then either refused to honor it or they took forever to make the change and during that time we had to closely monitor the customer account and followup multiple times with Sage. Call be crazy but if the customer pays us $7,500 for maintenance and Sage screws up the renewal (forgets to renew) then I think the customer probably has a right to come back at us and demand to be reimbursed (assuming Sage doesn't make it right). For people who are not on our support plans -- I'm increasingly puzzled why I'd incur that risk for an ever diminishing commission.

We still invoice all of our M&S. The biggest complaint I get from my customers is that they have to pay more in sales tax than Sage charges. I agree with Wayne, I hate to be on the hook when they think they have paid me and they have not, and Sage says that they are late. I try to explain to the customer the value of buying through us. We double check the price and the modules and the support levels. Sage gets it wrong more than they should. We have saved customers money, and I point that out to them. Whenever that happens, we have a customer for life.