Posts Tagged ‘ Sage Tips ’

Sage 50 Accounts 2013 – Update 2

The second update for Sage 50 Accounts 2013 has been released. As for previous updates, if you run a multi-user system, once you have updated one machine you must then go ahead and update all machines which use the same data before you will be allowed to re-open Sage.

Before you update your Sage 50 software

You must close ALL Sage programs and Microsoft Excel before installing any updates: this includes ACT!

If you forget to close Excel and other Sage programs, you may get stuck in an update loop which will not allow you to open the program and also not allow you to update it. If this happens, please follow the instructions in my prior post, Sage 50 Accounts 2012 – Update 3 to access the Sage website www.sage.co.uk/accountsupdate, download the updates and install manually.

Installing the Update

If you follow the instructions and still are not able to successfully update, you should contact the Sage Cover Support lines, or we at Silicon Bullet can offer you remote support if you do not have Sage Cover.

Please see our other blog posts about Sage Updates.

Once you have installed the update, your program details in Help -> About should be 19.00.11.278.

2012
10/31
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
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Sage 50 Accounts 2013 – more new features

Following on from my previous post, What’s New in Sage 50 Accounts 2013, where I gave a brief list of the new features in the software, and highlighted my two favourite features, Quick Tasks and Email settings, in this article I am going to expand on more of the new features which have made Sage 50 Accounts 2013 even easier to use and understand.

Company Configuration

Customise your Company

When I train a company new to using Sage Accounts, one of the first things I go through with them is the defaults that can be set up in the Settings menu, which make data input much easier in the long run.  This is something that self-taught Sage Accounts users who have bought the product without extra support or training often miss.

There is now a ‘customise your company’ option which can be run on first installing the software, or can be opened at any time from the Help Menu.   The facility has videos and instructions which take you through the many options available as well as ‘Setup Now’ options which take you straight to the relevant screens in the software.

Help Centre

Getting Help

When you buy Sage 50 you no longer get a manual – and to be honest – who reads the manual anyway?  Another part of the training I give is on using the Sage help system in order to remind yourself about tasks you have forgotten, or things you do infrequently, such as VAT returns and year end procedures.

You have always been able to use the F1 key to bring up help about the area you are currently in, and then search the help area for what you need, but now if you are on a machine connected to the internet, the F1 key will bring up a new Web Help screen, which has all the same great information held in the offline Help, but is now easier for Sage to keep right up to date.

These are just a couple more highlights of the new features in Sage 50 2013. If you want to find out about other changes, why not arrange a free demonstration of the new software – check out our Facebook page for informational videos which take you visually through the main new features.  Just call Alison or Paul on 01604 420 057.

2012
09/05
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
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What’s New in Sage 50 Accounts 2013

Sage 50 Accounts 2013 is for growing and established businesses who need to take more control of their finances with department and budget analysis.  The software helps you stay in control of your cash flow and VAT, and track key business information.

In brief, the new features in version 2013 are:

  • New – user interface and language
  • New – company configuration
  • New – Help Centre
  • New – Quick Tasks
  • Simplified month end, year end and VAT return tasks
  • Improved reporting

As Sage users ourselves, we have been using the product for a couple of weeks now, and I want to highlight a couple of features which have really improved my experience with the software.

Quick Tasks in Sage 50 Accounts 2013

Quick Tasks

Quick Tasks help you to speed up your common processes, and also guide you to the next step in some specific processes.  The feature I really like is that you can highlight a variety of products in the Sage product window and with a couple of clicks create a Sales Order, Quotation or Invoice, or a Purchase Invoice .

Other areas which have been streamlined are common processes when using Sales and Purchase Orders, and processing Cash Sales.

Email Settings

Sage New Email Defaults

One of the most common requests I am getting at the moment is to set up invoices and statements so users can email them to customers instead of printing and posting them – thus saving on paper and postage.  If a company has several different invoice designs, this used to involve editing each layout in turn to customise the email settings.  Sage 50 Accounts 2013 have added  Email Default settings into the Settings Menu – so you can set up your email defaults once for each type of layout then choose which layouts to apply these changes to – thus removing the need to change the settings in each individual layout.

Also each Customer and Supplier record can now have 3 separate email addresses associated with each account, enabling orders, invoices and statements to each be sent to a different email address.  This could be done with the Addresses and Contacts option before, but that was long winded and could really slow down the running of your reports.

These are just a couple of highlights: if you want to find out about other changes then why not arrange a free demonstration of the new software – check out our Facebook page for informational videos which take you visually through the main new features.  Just call Alison or Paul on 01604 420 057.

2012
08/24
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
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Understanding Sage Transaction Numbers

In Sage 50 and Sage Instant Accounts, every time you update an invoice, make or receive and payment, make a journal entry or do anything which impacts the nominal ledger, Sage creates new transaction records, and numbers them sequentially starting from 1.  This is called the Audit Trail and can be viewed by clicking Company >Financials.

The Sage Financials Window

Historically these transaction numbers were not static.  If you decided to clear your audit trail after the year end, Sage would delete any transactions which had been completely finished with (see my post on Spring Cleaning your Accounts Software for more information).  The system would then create new opening balances and rebuild the audit trail starting with 1, and all the transactions would be renumbered.

The problem is that many companies, when doing their bookkeeping ,would use this transaction number as a unique ID to identify invoices or journals – which meant that tracing historical data after clearing the audit trail could prove difficult.

Why does my Sage Audit Trail have Missing Transaction Numbers?

Sage Support used to get calls about these numbers changing quite regularly, so they have now changed the system so that once a transaction is entered and allocated a number, it will always keep this number.  This means that if you have done a Clear Audit Trail you will now have missing transaction numbers which represent those transactions from previous years which have met the criteria to be cleared down.

This change, however, was not well publicised, so now Sage users query why there are missing transaction numbers!

For more advice and tips on using Sage 50 and Sage Instant accounts then take a look at the posts tagged with ‘Sage Tips‘

2012
08/23
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Instant Accounts
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Sage 50 Add-On – Invoice CSV Import

This is the fourth in my series of blog posts highlighting add-on products which tackle regularly requested extra functionality to improve your Sage 50 experience.

When companies start to use Sage 50 for their accounting, they quite often already have well established routines and systems for creating customer invoices, and it is not always appropriate to change their system in order to utilise Sage’s invoice-raising tools and templates.  If this is the case, you still need to move your invoices into Sage in order to keep a complete financial record, so a direct import of these invoices is often the best option, removing the need to re-key in large quantities of data, and also reducing the chance of user error.

The Sage 50 Invoice CSV Import tool allows you to import invoices into the Sage 50 invoice module from a CSV file.  This is different from the import options that comes as standard in Sage, as these just allow transactions to be imported into the ledgers, by-passing the invoice module totally.

The column headings in the CSV file are used to define the fields into which the data can be imported,  and multi line data can be imported into the Service Text field if required.  The CSV file contents are displayed before the import takes place, along with any error messages, to help with error checking and to ensure that you end up with a clean import.  New template CSV files can be created by selecting fields from a list of available field names, to help ease the set-up process.

The program works with Sage 50 versions 8 to 18 (2012) and costs £99 + VAT for a company-wide licence. If you want to take a look for yourself, request a free trial of the software.

To see the other posts in my Sage 50 Add On series, take a look at the posts tagged with Sage Add-On.

2012
07/24
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Add-Ons
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Logging Back into Sage after a problem

Sage User name already in use

I have had the same enquiry twice this week from customers.  Something has happened on their computer which has meant they had to exit Sage using Task Manager rather than closing the program fully, then on trying to log back in, they have had a ‘User name already in use’ message which threatens data problems.

This can be quite worrying if you do not expect the message: after all, data checks and corruption are the biggest source of worry for many Sage 50 and Sage Instant account users, especially those who have ever had to send their data off for repair.

When you log out of Sage normally, your name is taken off the current list of logged-in users, which can be seen in the User List in the View Menu. This is the case even in single-user systems where you don’t type a user name in to log in, and the Sage Manager Password is hidden from view: the default username is always Manager with no password unless you have changed the system yourself.

Sage User List

If your computer stops responding and you have to close Sage using the Task Manager, or if you have a power cut and your machine suddenly turns off, your name remains on this list.  In this case, you are faced with the user already in use message when you try to go back into Sage. You should click the Close Session button and you will then be logged in to Sage as usual.  If you know you were logged into Sage on that machine and there is a reason why you had to exit suddenly then you should not get data problems.  I would recommend, though, that you always do a data check in Sage after any such occurrence, just in case there is an underlying data issue causing your problems.

The warning is there to stop a second user in a multi-user environment from trying to log in with the same name that is being used on another machine.  If you do this, the first user will be kicked off the system, and if they are in a data entry screen they will lose whatever is in the current window.  If you try to log on to a second machine and get the warning, and there is a risk of logging someone out on another machine  then you should click Cancel and log in with an alternative username.

For more hints and tips about Good Housekeeping in Sage, and advice about the  Sage Manager Password  then see my previous blog posts.  And don’t panic when you have had a problem and need to log back into Sage: just follow the simple instructions above and you will be back doing your bookkeeping in no time at all.

2012
07/16
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Instant Accounts
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Sage 50 Add-On – Back to Back Ordering

This is the second in my series of blog posts highlighting add-on products which tackle regularly requested extra functionality to improve your Sage 50 experience.

Many companies don’t keep stock of the items they sell, but take orders but then arrange for the goods to be shipped direct to the customer when an order is received.  I had a request to allow a sales order to be taken in Sage, but then to create a purchase order from it to send to the supplier, with pertinent information transferred from the sales order to the purchase order.  Creating these purchase orders manually can cause room for errors and feels like duplication.

The Adept Back to Back Ordering program allows you to select from a list of sales orders or sales invoices and create the purchase orders needed to satisfy the customer’s requirements.  The customer’s delivery address is carried over seamlessly and then the sales order or invoice is marked as ‘processed’, to prevent attempts to process the same order twice.

This prevents the need for manual duplication and keying in errors, and if a product is always purchased from the same supplier you can indicate this, with the preferred suppliers being listed on product codes.

The program works with Sage 50 Pro and Financial Controller versions 8 to 18 (2012) and costs £199 + VAT for a company-wide license. To take a look for yourself then request a free trial of the software.

2012
05/14
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Add-Ons
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Good Advice – You must give to receive

I am a regular contributor to UK Business Forums, and quite often respond to queries, mostly to people who are having problems with their Sage software or bookkeeping, and then move on and forget about it.

I was really surprised and pleased this weekend to get a thank you message for a post I wrote in 2009, answering a query about the difference between using Sage batch invoicing options or creating order,  invoices and purchase orders in Sage.  The reply I made came up in a Google search 3 years later, in May 2012, and my advice has now helped another Sage user.

I have had direct queries for work as a result of the contributions I have made to the forums on this site before, the answers given seem to rank high in Google searches, meaning you get noticed, and with good contact details in your signature line you can benefit from the advice directly.

So, is there a subject you know a lot about?  Find a suitable forum and see if you can help people too – you never know when you may benefit in the future.  And remember, if you have a question too, you might just find the help you need.

You can see the thread and the advice given by looking at the forum thread.

2012
05/09
CATEGORY
General
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Instant Accounts
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Sage 50 Add-On – Adept Sage 50 Code Changer

This is the start of a series of blog posts to highlight Sage Add-On products which have proved particularly popular with Silicon Bullet’s clients.

Have you ever been in the situation where you have mis-typed a product code, or a sales or purchase ledger account code, but you have not realised until after you have saved your first transactions to the account?  You are then stuck with this incorrect code, or even if you edit transactions to move them to a new corrected code, you still can’t delete the incorrect code due to there being transactions showing on the account, even if these are deleted.

This is something I have encountered in many places where I have given Sage training, and when I take on a new bookkeeping client there can quite often be a mismatch of codes due to companies changing names, or product descriptions changing slightly, which just make the accounts look a bit messy.

The Adept  Sage 50 Product and Account Code Changer is a simple add-on which allows you to edit account codes, product codes or even fixed asset codes (although almost none of my clients seem to use this last option).  The beauty of it is that the transaction or stock history is fully retained and is moved seamlessly to the newly named code.

The Add-On  has a CSV input facility for people who want to change a large number of codes in one go. This is particularly useful for companies who, with the benefit of hindsight, have decided that they could have designed a better coding structure for their products.

The program also has a test mode (untick the Update box) which allows you to see what the program will do without actually making the changes. This mode is available in the trial as well so you can see fully what effect the changes will have before you go ahead with them.

If this add-on appeals to you then please request a free trial of the software.  It works with Sage 50 versions 8 to 18 (2012) and also with Sage Instant and Instant Plus V15 to V17.  I also have the software installed on a demonstration machine so you can see how it works before deciding if you want to purchase it.

However to prevent you from asking for the trial version and making the changes you want, then not purchasing the full product, the trial version only works with the Fixed Asset codes, just giving you a taste of what the software can do!  

2012
04/23
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Add-Ons
Sage Instant Accounts
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Sage 50 Additions Add-On Software

Sage 50 is a great product which is very reasonably priced for a small company to use for all their accounting requirements, and if you have Sage 50 Accounts Professional, you have stock control functions and sales and purchase order systems available to use, too.

Quite often, though, when I’ve been installing Sage at a client site, I’ve found that there is just one little bit of functionality which does not come as standard with the software, but which would make your job so much easier.

That is where Sage Additions come in.

Sage Additions

Many Sage Developers have created add-on products which can seamlessly add great functionality to your existing Sage software.  And if the functionality you need has not been created, it is worth getting in touch with them to suggest what you need, as it may be something they could develop in the future.

We have worked with a couple of Sage Developers in the past, whose knowledge of Sage software is fantastic, and who have been able to make our clients’ Sage Software work just that little bit better.  If you wish to be put in touch with our contacts then please do get in touch with us.

I will be doing some reviews of add-on products which have proved particularly useful to my clients in future posts.

2012
04/18
CATEGORY
Sage
Sage 50
Sage Add-Ons
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