A good alternative to Sage 50 Accounts?

[lumencreative]

Ok, so have been previously using Kashflow for our accounts but wanted something more substantial, that could manage stock, BoM's, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, etc, in addition to 'just invoicing/purchasing.

So, we decided at our end of year we would move to Sage 50 Accounts Pro. We started using it on 1st June this year and there are so many things it doesn't do, which make no sense whatsoever, that I'm starting to think I've made a huge mistake in moving over.

The three most frustrating are:
1. It doesn't allow you to create an invoice for an order until the order is dispatched.
2. When it does create an invoice, it doesn't allow you to use the sales order date, or even payment received date as the invoice date, so a customer could make a payment in one vat quarter and then the invoice could be dated the following vat quarter.
3. We have SagePay for our website and you can't add a SagePay button to Proforma invoices so customers have to wait for their actual invoice before they can pay by SagePay, but wait...you can't send an actual invoice until the order has been dispatched.

So, firstly, am I approaching this all completely wrong? Is there a way to handle orders that I'm not getting? It seems Sage is geared (and is great) for companies that offer all customers credit but we don't, so does that mean Sage isn't right for us?

Secondly, if Sage isn't right for us, what alternatives are there that can do basic stock management and sales orders?

My only other thought would be to perhaps to have a different piece of software for managing orders and use Sage for just invoicing, etc.

 

[The Byre]

Xero or GnuCash.

 

[johndon68]

Xero or GnuCash.

Xero doesn’t do order processing and the stock control is very basic unless you purchase add on programs for it.

John

 

[lumencreative]

Xero or GnuCash.

As far as I know, Xero doesn't have any stock management unless you pay a third party but not looked at GnuCash.

 

[faradaykeynes]

How many inventory items do you have?

 

[lumencreative]

How many inventory items do you have?

A couple of hundred

 

[faradaykeynes]

Sage should be able to handle that for you, any money in paid in advance can be recorded as on account for customers which can then be allocated at time of generating invoices.

If you have not already seen these videos, I am sure it would be helpful
Sage 50 2018 Tutorial Quotes, Sales Orders , Proposals, and Invoicing Sage Training

Sage 50 Accounts (UK) - Purchase orders

Importing Products into Sage Accounts

Intergrate, download, MOTO, e invoice using Sagepay in Sage 50

On other hand Xero and Quickbooks can handle pretty much all above, xero has inbuilt sock option for tracked stock items 4000 in numbers, un-tracked 100k. Also option to customise invoice format and add pay now button using sage pay

 

[johndon68]

Sage should be able to handle that for you, any money in paid in advance can be recorded as on account for customers which can then be allocated at time of generating invoices.

But it doesn't automatically do the three things the OP mentioned in his first post...

1. Invoices cannot be created without despatching the order - not what the OP wants. One possible solution would be not to use sales orders at all, assuming this would even be an option for the OP.

2. Invoices will always have today's date (rather than the order date) when created from a sales order - not what the OP wants albeit the date can be edited manually once the invoice is created or, alternatively the Program Date can be changed prior to doing the despatch but this would be a real pain if there were lots of orders with different dates.

3. ProForma invoices can't have the SagePay button added - not what the OP wants.

John

 

[faradaykeynes]

All software have option of creating invoice through Sales order or without it i.e direct invoice creation. If coming from sales order , sales invoice cannot have date prior to SO. Per forma invoice are not suppose to carry payment options they are not final but payment on account can be collected directly from sapgepay or any card processing option through their own admin panel or bank transfer which can be logged to customer account as payment in advance

 

[lumencreative]

All software have option of creating invoice through Sales order or without it i.e direct invoice creation. If coming from sales order , sales invoice cannot have date prior to SO. Per forma invoice are not suppose to carry payment options they are not final but payment on account can be collected directly from sapgepay or any card processing option through their own admin panel or bank transfer which can be logged to customer account as payment in advance

Thanks for your input but you are really missing the point.

1) If I create a Sales Order with todays date and receive payment for that order (whether sage calls it Payment on Account is irrelevant), the customer will expect an invoice with todays date on it. HMRC also specify that the tax point is the date payment was received if this is earlier than the invoice date.

So, Sales Order created on 29th June 2018, Payment Received on 29th June 2018, Order Despatched on 10th July 2018 will result in an invoice date of 10th July 2018. This would then not marry up with the date we received payment and would not marry up with the date the customer paid. So both ourselves and the customer would have a document with an incorrect tax point.

As johndon68 says, I could manually change the invoice dates but during our peak period (October to January), we could be processing 100+ orders per day so the admin task of amending the invoice dates would be a big job.

The only option I have come across is to forego the Sales Order section and just create invoices instead but this is not really ideal.

 

[faradaykeynes]

You can try Xero and Quickbooks for free if you like to see if their feature solve your issue. VAT can be on cash or accrual basis which can cause tax point to move a bit

 

[Ken Moorhouse]

Don't have L50 at my fingertips at the moment, but I would think that you could change the Invoice layout to use the Sales Order date instead of the Invoice Date. You do then have to be careful as to the dates appearing in the Audit Trail, of course, for statutory and VAT purposes, but maybe that can be reconciled at each month end?

An Invoice layout can also be amended to say "Proforma Invoice".

 

[johndon68]

but I would think that you could change the Invoice layout to use the Sales Order date instead of the Invoice Date.

Certainly possible but the audit trail transaction produced when the ledgers are updated would still have the invoice date.

John

 

[Ken Moorhouse]

Certainly possible but the audit trail transaction produced when the ledgers are updated would still have the invoice date.

John

...I agree, hence my qualifying comment.

If lumencreative is on VAT Cash Accounting then no problems with VAT, but statutory p&l would be affected. Maybe use Sage for order processing, stock, BOM and invoicing. You should be able to add a second company onto Sage (if the cost can be justified) and run that for statutory purposes, exporting and importing between them, but all transactions would need to go in as SI and SA transactions as, once matched, they are not readily importable as SR.

 

[johndon68]

exporting and importing between them, but all transactions would need to go in as SI and SA transactions as, once matched, they are not readily importable as SR.

The export report would also need to be amended as, by default, SR (and PP, SD and PD for that matter) transactions are ignored by the export routine...

 

[Ken Moorhouse]

The export report would also need to be amended as, by default, SR (and PP, SD and PD for that matter) transactions are ignored by the export routine...

Yes, that's what I meant by not being readily importable.

 

[CriticalThinker]

Unfortunately your issues seem to be down to the scale of Line 50 and what it caters for. Sage200 does have the answer to your issue with regards to accounting for your VAT at the earlier of the payment date or invoice date however this is of course a more advanced ERP system and comes at a higher cost for the additional functionality. Would certainly be worth looking at if it is VAT compliance that you are most concerned about and see whether it justifies the higher cost, from reading your posts this software would seem to be a good fit, if not a little oversized in truth.
In essence what Sage200 does is create a VAT only invoice on payment and then, as you mention, at a later date you'd post your invoice once goods have been dispatched.
Perhaps try a free demo of the software and if you want additional assistance setting it up let me know or PM me.

 

[lumencreative]

Apologies for the length of time since I last answered. We actually ended up ditching sales orders and just using Sales Invoices instead, however, we are in the process of switching to Quickbooks Online - The main reason being that Sage decided to increase our subscription from £85 per month to £170 PLUS charging us for an Office365 account that we've never used or asked for.

I really like some things in Sage (although I do feel it's overly complicated for what we need), but I just cannot justify £170+vat per month for it. We would be much better placed to put the money towards a dedicated order management system that can integrate with a cheaper accounts package.

 

[Glenn Martin]

The subscription pricing of Sage will make a lot of long term users look around as Xero and QBO are £20 pm before discounts/special offers and many of the features of Line 50 are simply not needed for many businesses.

 

[Jeremiah@RHJ Accountants]

With the likes of Xero, QBO and others Sage is not the best option for most businesses nor does it fit their requirements.