You’ve Outgrown Sage 50; Now What?
Sage 50 has been a mainstay of growing businesses since its introduction in the 90s. It contains all of the essentials you need when you start up – bookkeeping and accounts, payments, and banking. However, as your company grows and changes, an extendable solution may be more useful. Sage 50 is widely used and loved because it is a powerhouse when it comes to finances. However, its good name can suffer when companies outgrow it quickly and find themselves constantly butting heads with the limitations of the software. The leap to a new platform is less daunting when you know that the pain points you have now will be solved by a new system. Sage Intacct, for example, a native cloud ERP, really shines when it comes to financials, making it a good first port-of-call for those outgrowing Sage 50. In fact, it is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) only preferred financial management solution. The true strength of the solution is its flexibility and best-of-breed approach.
How do you know it’s time to move from Sage 50 to a platform like Sage Intacct? We’ve made a list of the top 6 signs you’ve outgrown Sage 50.
- Sage 50 doesn’t address all of your needs anymore.
A growing and expanding business will likely venture into new areas. This may mean multiple warehouses, locations, or even different subsidiaries with different tax IDs. It could also mean you need to factor in multiple currencies or other languages. Sage 50 is ideal for small businesses that operate out of one location and work only within the local region. However, once the added complexities of multiple locations come into question, a sure sign you’re outgrowing Sage 50 as it doesn’t have the capacity to handle the operation.
Sage Intacct, in contrast, can seamlessly handle multiple languages, locations, and projects. It also has native currency conversion capabilities. If using different currencies, it is possible to consolidate all data in different currencies into a single report, output as a single currency.
- You use third-party app connectors, or different systems to track all of your operations.
Modern businesses have so much data that they need to keep track of. Sales and Marketing often need CRM, warehouses need inventory management, and members of the C-Suite need analytical tools to make business decisions. If you are using Sage 50, it is likely that you are using other systems, as well as excel spreadsheets, alongside it to manage these areas. This introduces its own problems, including data duplication and wasted hours trying to align the data from different solutions. For those other apps that are not native Sage products, this can often mean too many moving parts and issues are bound to crop up.
However, Sage Intacct is built on an open API structure. This makes it easy to create connectors for other apps. It also has a useful sandbox mode, meaning these solutions can be created without messing with the live data in your system. Sage Intacct considers itself to be a best-of-breed solution; it has stellar core financials as standard but integrates with leading web apps like Salesforce, Criterion, and WooCommerce – all best-of-breeds in their own areas.
- Outgrowing Sage 50 means manual data entry and comparison is eating into your work hours.
According to Forbes, automating business processes can save full-time employees 6 weeks of work time per year. Six. Weeks. Savings in time and money come with automation. Your disparate systems mean that cross-departmental or cross-solution automation is not possible. Your team is probably using large swathes of time to compare spreadsheets, intervene in communications between systems, and see basic business processes through.
Sage Intacct’s centralized bank of company-wide information means processes that require cross-departmental communications can be automated. Tasks in AP, AR, and HR, as well as general business processes, can be automated, freeing up employee time.
- Your current data has been corrupted.
If your Sage 50 solution crashes unexpectedly or shows incorrect data in reports, there is a chance that some of the underlying data has been corrupted. This is caused by an error in the database where your info is stored. There are a number of reasons this could happen, one of which is an overloaded database. This is a common issue when companies have outgrown the platform.
Sage Intacct is built on a highly-reliable database infrastructure, with large resource pools, completely avoiding those slow-downs and that data corruption that happens when databases are overloaded. Other causes of data corruption, such as power outages at your office, are not a concern either since they won’t impact the data stored in your cloud database.
- You need more of your employees to have access.
More than likely, you started your company with a few employees in one location. Now that your operation has grown, a larger team may need access to your system. With Sage 50, users can see a decrease in speed and increase in wait times when there are a larger number of users logged in. Often, teams will share common login details; in terms of data integrity, this isn’t ideal when it comes to audit trails. Audit trails are not visible on Sage 50.
The cloud-based nature of Sage Intacct means that you can take advantage of larger server environments. All of your employees that need access to the system can use it simultaneously, without the frustrating lag. Plus, you can do it without the upfront cost of upgrading the hardware you use. There are also full audit trails on Sage Intacct, meaning a full view of who accessed or changed what data inside your platform.
- You need immediate, real-time reporting.
Doing business in this day and age means you have access to a mountain of complex data. Previously, it took employees hours to pore over data and compile reports based on that. This usually means a lag between the timeframe of the report and when it is presented. On the other hand, real-time reporting gives decision-makers access to all of the relevant information they need to make key strategic decisions, right when they need it.
One of the best things about Sage Intacct is how easy it is to create and edit reports dependent on what you are analyzing. These reports don’t only pull from the core financials – they pull data from each connected entity, giving you a 360° view of where your organization needs correction or improvement.
Sage 50 is a strong choice for small companies that need a solid, time-tested solution for financials. However, a growing company with developing departments needs a solution that can manage all of these areas in one central place. Sage Intacct is a flexible platform that can serve this purpose. Its native cloud infrastructure is reliable and has lower upfront costs for hardware. The API architecture it is built on also facilitates easy customization.
If you think you may have outgrown your solution, you can get in touch with one of our product specialists to discover what your upgrade options are.