Sage News and Discussion

What the heck is this offering? From my brief reading of this it appears as if Sage is urging business partners to purchase Sage Accountant Network memberships for CPA's if they want to be aligned with them. Of course Sage will co-op this -- provided you've got oodles of co-op laying around. Accountants are powerful referral sources but from my vantage point the mind share has largely been lost to QuickBooks --- and I'm not sure if I'd be ponying up money to try to lure accountants into the fold. My experience is most accountants are attracted by free software and tend to be relatively dormant. Anyone see this differently?

I'm guessing that purchasing SAN memberships is optional - and just a recommendation. But still it seems odd that Sage would look to the channel to pick up the tab. Anyone getting substantial referrals from CPA firms any longer? I know mine fell off a cliff and essentially are a trickle of what they used to be.

The smaller CPA firms (under 50 employees) are recommending QBmost of the time. I'm not seeing the larger firms making recommendations on accounting software.

I took a couple minutes to read this and from what I can gather this is the Sage Accountants Network (SAN) only on the partner side. What Sage requires is that you be a partner in good standing and you offer 8 hours of free consulting to SAN members. People got all hung up on this 8 hours but it's pretty easy to claim that you already offered the hours -- just count meetings, etc. Personally I participated in this the last few go rounds. The main interest on the MAS level was from CPAS who were using MAS90 internally and didn't realize they could change to SAN and obtain the software/maintenance as part of their annual fee.

Here's the enrollment form