Moving from Sage 200

[Audreyb]

Hi there
We have an independent bookshop with turnover of approx £750,000. Many years ago we inherited Sage 200 as our accounting system but it now needs upgraded at a substantial cost. This has made us consider alternatives to Sage 200. Obviously being able to keep track of a large number of stock items is key for us. We have online, telephone and walk-in sales and some sales are on account. We have a small amount of stock in other locations, but over 90% of our stock in in the main building. (These external stock locations are part of the reason we were originally directed towards Sage 200). We think we could possibly work around the external locations if the software can use e.g. bin numbers to show location of the stock.
Sage 200 is definitely too expensive and overcomplicated for our needs.

We have been looking into using Sage 50 as an alternative to Sage 200, but are there any other accounting software packages any of you would suggest as good alternatives? And do any of you have experience of moving "back" from Sage 200 & how it worked out?

Thanks

 

[Spur Support Services]

You are completely correct that this an outstanding opportunity to look at you end to end processes and integrations.

Starting with what you are using to sell online, in store and on the phone, together with how inventory flows in/out and ending with the payroll, VAT and management accounts, cashflows and forecasts that your like to see as a small business owner.

Collect information from all user areas in each "business function", identifying strengths, weakness, wish lists and niggles.

I'm definitely biased, but I would say a Xero and associated app solution would be better choice.
However, you should look at a number of Xero Integration options, together with the Sage options, looking at combined ongoing cost as well as initial implementation costs.

The more time that you put into scoping and planning this change project, the more likely you are to get a robust long term solution.

 

[Audreyb]

Thanks Rebecca. Have you used any of the Xero inventory apps or seen them used? I am very familiar with Xero, using it in my husband's business & in my other job, but we don't need the inventory function in either.
One thing I dislike about Xero is the user permissions & how it is difficult to allow users to access reports plus either the sales OR purchases side rather than both. (Or maybe I've just not worked that out properly!)

 

[Spur Support Services]

I really couldn't comment, without knowing far more about your business. There is a lot of choice out there and if you have access to the App store via Xero, then it's worthwhile arranging some demos with those software providers.

However, don't forget the other functional areas of the business that would be affected by a change to Xero, to consider disruption and opportunities.

So many companies large and small focus on one area and then find problems late in the implementation phase.

 

[johndon68]

Moving from Sage 200 'back' to Sage 50 is possible but not necessarily straightforward as 200 has features (such as cost centres for example) that simply don't exist in Sage 50 so a lot depends on what features you use in 200 and this would potentially apply even more if you move to something like Xero where 'out of the box' at least, it has no where near the feature set of Sage 200 with regards to stock control.

You say you have a large number of stock items? How many is a large number as Sage would tell you that above a certain number of records you should be using 200 rather than 50.

Other considerations with a move to something like Xero is limits on volume of data. I'll be honest it has been a couple of years since I looked at Xero but when I did they had a limit of the number of invoices that could be entered each month which, for some of my Sage client's at the time was a show stopper.

John

 

[Audreyb]

Thanks John.
I believe there are currently around 8,000 items in the stock database, but many of these codes haven't been used for years, so the plan is to reduce it to approx 4,000 items before we move over.
I think currently the cost centres and departments are used in Sage 200, but not in a meaningful way. I believe we could combine the way we use the two and have 1 sensible department which will give us better info.
I had a good call with Sage technical department earlier & they said that if I get the info from Sage 200 into CSV format, they can help me to import it into Sage 50 with the guidance of the below article.

https://gb-kb.sage.com/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?solutionid=200427112602351

I think Sage 50 is the most likely direction we take, partly because the software will have a more familiar look & feel to it, & partly because we have a related company which uses it.

I think Xero has limits to the data for the cheaper monthly subscription, but I'm not aware of limits for the full package.

Are there any other packages I should consider?

 

[UK Contractor Accountant]

That's Sage 50c I believe you are looking at to migrate over from 200.

CSV export files for the standing data should be the way to go but I have always found it to be a bit fiddly to get the mapping and columns into the correct format when trying to import data.

 

[johndon68]

That's Sage 50c I believe you are looking at to migrate over from 200.

CSV export files for the standing data should be the way to go but I have always found it to be a bit fiddly to get the mapping and columns into the correct format when trying to import data.

Sage 50c (or Sage 50cloud) is just Sage’s fancy new name for what has been Sage 50 for years.

 

[UK Contractor Accountant]

Not so keen on the pure Sage Cloud Version prefer Sage 50c with the old desktop look and feel.