Import data from Excel into Sage Instant Accounts

[TBLZ]

Hi there,

Complete newbie here, I have a very frustrating question about Sage Instant Accounts.

We have just purchased Sage Instant Accounts after researching it and Quickbooks. We decided to go for Sage on the basis of this bit of their website:
«
Import from Microsoft Excel

To save time on data input, you can now import data that has been saved in a Microsoft® Excel file (.xls and .xlsx). You can also import .csv files, giving you extra flexibility and saving you time when transferring your existing data into Instant Accounts.
»


However, it seems that you can only import minimal information from Excel into Sage, such as Nominal Accounts, Product Records and other small things that will not save much time, really. What I would have wanted to import would be our sales ledger, purchase ledger and bank records. At the moment, it looks like I cannot even PASTE data from Excel into Sage, rendering the purchase completely pointless! To top it all, Sage will not recognise our bank (the Coop) and therefore won't use the electronic statements we get from the bank.



I have two questions:


1. Am I missing something, and is it possible to import sales, purchase and bank data from Excel into Sage?


2. Would Quickbooks do what we need?


Thanks in advance for your advice.


EJR

 

[johndon68]

The import option lists all the types of data that can be imported such as:

Customer Records (Sales Ledger)
Supplier Records (Purchase Ledger)
Nominal Accounts (Bank)

John

 

[TBLZ]

Shame the marketing doesn't list the options!

 

[johndon68]

Perhaps not as, if it listed every part of every feature you'd have hundreds of pages... If you press F1 to load the help and search for Import, you'll get all the information you'll ever need...

John

 

[TBLZ]

Yes, I have noticed. My point is that by the stage I can press File > Import, I have already purchased, installed and registered the wrong software, and I can't get my money back.

I take it from your posts that the answer to my first question is that no, it's not possible to import sales, purchase and bank data from Excel into Sage. Thank you for your input, John.

So, anyone want to answer my second question?

 

[johndon68]

I take it from your posts that the answer to my first question is that no, it's not possible to import sales, purchase and bank data from Excel into Sage. Thank you for your input, John.

Not sure why you would think that from my post, you can import sales accounts (customers) purchase accounts (suppliers) and bank accounts (nominal), you can also import data (Audit Trail Transactions) into any of those accounts.

So, basically, yes, you CAN import everything you mention...

John

 

[TBLZ]

Thank you John.

So I'm missing something. Could you please explain how I would go about importing, for instance, my sales ledger, which I now have in Excel and contains several thousands of lines of this type:

<Inv nº> <Invoice date> CLIENTX 407.84 479.21 71.37

Thanks in advance.

 

[johndon68]

Before you can import transactions, you need the customer, supplier and bank accounts to be there so they would need to be imported first.

So, you go through the import wizard, select the type of records you want to import, select the Excel file you want to import and, then, at the next stage, you tell Sage which column in your Excel file contains a particular data field so, basically, you 'map' Sage to the contents of your file (this applies regardless of the type of data being imported).

John

 

[TBLZ]

Sorry John,

Is that File > Import > Audit trail transactions?

What should I use for these mandatory Sage fields please:
++ Type
++ Account reference

Thanks.

 

[johndon68]

Yes it is.

Type is whatever the transaction is so SI if it is a sales invoice, SC if it is a sales credit note.

Account Reference is the reference of the customer account that the transaction is to be posted to which is why the customer account must exist first.

John

 

[TBLZ]

Brilliant.

Thanks a lot John.

 

[johndon68]

No problem, the import in the new version is actually a vast improvement over previous versions where the import format was fixed so you had to ensure that your file had all the data in exactly the order that Sage wanted.

John

 

[TBLZ]

I dread to think what previous versions' import facility must have been like.

Having spent hours fiddling with my data in order to import it into Sage, it turns out that all invoices that have been imported cannot be seen in the invoice list, and cannot be matched to bank transactions.

I cannot see the point.

Back to my original question then, having wasted a considerable amount of time on Sage: can Quickbooks do the job?

Thanks,

TBLZ

 

[johndon68]

Having spent hours fiddling with my data in order to import it into Sage, it turns out that all invoices that have been imported cannot be seen in the invoice list

To be fair, that is why the import option is called 'Audit Trail Transactions' which has nothing at all to do with the Invoice List...

John

 

[mauahmed]

Hi

Sage is a strong software if you know what you are trying to do. Please read their help section as this is well documented. Probably think of hiring a speacialist for 2 or 3 hours to setup the necessary templates for your business. This is very important as if you do these wrong then HMRC will not be happy on you. Remember they will take your Sage Backup copy once they visit your company. So plan ahead a little costs now will save you a fortune in the long run.

 

[TBLZ]

Actually, I have been through the help files through and through, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I really have wasted hours on this.

Please re-read my original post, which included this:

"What I would have wanted to import would be our sales ledger, purchase ledger and bank records. At the moment, it looks like I cannot even PASTE data from Excel into Sage, rendering the purchase completely pointless!"

Having wasted hours following suggestions to use the import > audit trail transactions for the above purpose, it turns out that I was correct after all, you CANNOT import your sales ledger or purchase ledger into Sage, and if you import your bank transactions, you'd then have to enter each and every invoice manually in order to allocate payments and receipts. Come on, this is ridiculous.

So back to my original question, is Quickbooks any better?

Thanks.

 

[TBLZ]

In the end, we employed a person to just re-input all the sales data by hand, as it was going to be less time-consuming than pre-formatting all the data to the import wizard's format!

I hope this information is useful to people who haven't purchased Sage yet. I certainly wish I had known that before committing to buy this piece of software.