Why should Companies consider Sage 50 for Accounting?

There are Hundreds of Accounting Software Products to choose from but Sage 50 stands above the competition simply due to few basic reasons like:

Accredited by ICAEW, so Accountants know double entry is fine
Superb Audit trail where finding a transaction and tracing its double entries, details are handy
Easy to install, setup and work with
Smart Built in Report Designer
Stable database with less vulnerability to crashes and corruption
Ability to rebuild a database which is corrupted
High level of user security compared to parallel products

Sage 50 common keyboard Shortcuts

Do you know that Few Keyboard Keys could be used to speed up sage 50 data processing?

The following Function keys will help

F6 -  This Key will copy the information from the line above SPECIALLY useful while entering Batch data. For example, if a few of your invoices have the same date, you only need to enter this once, for any subsequent invoices simply press F6. 

F7    Insert a line – useful when you are entering a lengthy journal and you miss a line by accident and you don’t want to add it to the end, as it would look odd. Also while designing your chart of Accounts, you sometimes require to add lines in between.

F8    Delete a line – Opposite of the above this key is great when you have entered information on the next line of a journal that you now just want to eliminate.

All Function Keys with FunctionF1 Sage 50 Accounts help files
F2 Windows Calculator
F3 Edit individual invoice line
F4 Activate drop down list
F5 Currency Calculator / Spell Checker
F6 Copy the field above
F7 Insert a line
F8 Delete a line
F9 Calculate Net
F11 Windows Control Panel
F12 Sage 50 Accounts Report Designer

What is new in Sage 50 2011?

According to Sage, the latest improvements are as follows:

Flat Rate VAT

• You are able to set up and manage both invoice and cash based flat rate VAT schemes
• Users can calculate savings and losses to their business using the flat rate compared to the standard VAT.

This option is available to you when you create a new company in Sage. The set up wizard now gives you an option for flat rate VAT (both invoiced based and cash based businesses) as well as Standard and VAT Cash accounting.

If you choose one of the flat rate options, you will need to apply the percentage rate for your industry within the Company preferences dialogue box.

What is the Flat Rate Scheme?

The Flat Rate Scheme allows you to pay VAT as a fixed percentage of your VAT inclusive turnover. The actual percentage you use depends on your type of business. You can only join this scheme if your estimated VAT taxable turnover - excluding VAT - in the next year will be £150,000 or less. You can then stay on the scheme until your total business income is more than £225,000.

Charities

Improvements have been made to the reports functionality of charities. When a company is set up as a charity within the Sage set up wizard, the program activates fund functionality. Users are able to create Profit and Loss and Balance Sheets by fund, or review nominal activity by fund. This can all be done without exporting data. Reports can also be generated for gift aid declaration purposes.

Integration with Sage Web Stores software

• Users can use Sage Pay to create new customers and products and generate invoices and receipts.
• Software users can also benefit from automatic payment downloads from their Webstore product to the accounts, saving processing time and removing the potential for human error.

Links to other Sage Services

A new button has been added in the bottom left hand corner of the screen - underneath the links list. It gives you the ability to access other parts of Sage accessible from the internet. You need to have set up your Sage passport details via the configure settings option to be able to benefit from the full functionality.

Bank Reconciliation

The bank reconciliation process has probably seen the most useful changes. There is a much improved bank reconciliation report. The layout is much clearer. You can also print out the reconciliation screen as it appears on screen - this can be done in the middle of a bank reconciliation.

A new visual indicator has been introduced during the reconciliation process. I am not quite certain of the benefits of this other than it tells you that the software is actually processing some data (much like the traditional egg timer device).

Finally, the user now has the ability to make more adjustments whilst in the bank reconciliation screen than before. You can now, add customer receipts, supplier payment, customer and supplier refunds and also bank receipts and payments. This means that you don't have to keep jumping out of the reconciliation if you have forgotten to post something.

Free phone and online support

Sage offers 45 days of free support to new customers - this invaluable if you are not sure what you are doing when you first install Sage and start using it for the first time.