Sage 50 vs Sage 50cloud
Sage 50cloud pricing
Sage 50cloud features
Is it right for you?
An accountant’s view
An IT view
Implementation and training

Sage 50 vs Sage 50cloud

Sage 50cloud is just the name of the current version of the software that was previously called Sage 50 (and which even longer standing Sage users may know as Sage Line 50).  Recent versions have introduced cloud connected features (such as automatic backup to the cloud). Nevertheless it’s still common for people to refer to the current product simply as Sage 50, and indeed you’ll see that we slip between the two names ourselves.

Sage 50cloud pricing

Sage 50 is bought as a monthly (or annual) subscription paid for by direct debit, and the subscription cost includes support direct from Sage.  It’s available as Standard or Professional – Professional adds sales and purchase orders, projects and trading in multiple currencies to Standard, and project allows more users and companies.

Pricing for the most common options:

Sage 50cloud Standard, 1 user, up to 2 companies – £65+VAT per month Buy now

Sage 50cloud Professional, 1 user, up to 10 companies – £132+VAT per month Buy now

Sage 50cloud Professional, up to 5 users, up to 10 companies – £139.50+VAT month Buy now

Sage 50cloud features

Sage 50cloud is available in two versions: Standard and Professional.  You can upgrade at any time from Standard to Professional – the table below shows the main features of both products including the main differences.

Feature	Sage 50cloud Standard	Sage 50cloud Professional
General
Maximum number of users	2	20
Maximum number of companies	10	Unlimited
Manage who can do what via user permissions	✔	✔
Trade in multiple currencies		✔
Charity specific reports and features	✔	✔
Remote access (for your accountant or working from home)	✔	✔
Keep your data safe via easy backups	✔	✔
Online and phone support	✔	✔
Remote support for trickier questions	Up to 3 sessions	Unlimited
Reporting
Includes comprehensive set of reports	✔	✔
Easily export data on most screens to Excel	✔	✔
Export reports to Excel	✔	✔
Report designer allows custom reports	✔	✔
Working with customers
Customer accounts	✔	✔
Multiple contacts and addresses	✔	✔
Manage status, credit limits and payment terms	✔	✔
Enter and email or print quotations	✔	✔
Enter and email or print invoices	✔
Sales orders, allocate stock and delivery notes		✔
Manage outstanding quotations and sales orders		✔
Easily manage customer price lists		✔
Setup and take payment by direct debit		✔
Easily take payment by debit or credit card	✔	✔
Credit control
Email or print customer statements	✔	✔
Email or print debt chasing letters	✔	✔
Chase debt screen - see who needs chasing	✔	✔
History of credit control calls and letters	✔	✔
Schedule call backups	✔	✔
Record payment promises	✔	✔
Flag disputed customer invoices
Late payment charges
Working with suppliers
Supplier accounts	✔	✔
Supplier payment details	✔	✔
Rapid entry of purchase invoices	✔	✔
Dispute supplier invoices		✔
Suggested payments routine	✔	✔
Send supplier payments to bank		✔
Purchase order processing		✔
Supplier price lists		✔
Contra entries		✔
Stock
Item codes for products	✔	✔
Item codes for services		✔
Integrated with sales and purchase orders		✔
History of stock movements	✔	✔
Margin reports	✔	✔
Stock take process	✔	✔
Allocations, returns, adjustments		✔
Bill of materials
Trial builds / stock shortfall		✔
Work with the bank and cash
Bank reconciliation
Enter transactions automatically using bank feeds	✔	✔
eBanking to load statements and make payments	✔	✔
Cash flow forecast	✔	✔
Manage and submit VAT returns
Wizard to check VAT information	✔	✔
Wizard to add fuel scale charges		✔
Submit VAT returns online (Making Tax Digital)	✔	✔
Support for flat rate VAT schemes	✔	✔
Support for cash accounting	✔	✔
Job / project costing
Integrated with customers, suppliers and stock		✔
Report on project profitability		✔
Report actual vs budget		✔
Categorise costs and revenue		✔
Full transaction history		✔
Accounting
Templates to help with initial setup	✔	✔
Profit and loss and balance sheet reports	✔	✔
Report actual vs budget	✔	✔
Profit and loss by department	✔	✔
Accountant link	✔	✔
Record and manage fixed assets	✔	✔
Journals	✔	✔
Prepayments and accruals		✔
Reversing journals		✔
Consolidation for group accounts		✔

Is it right for you?

Advice tailored to you

If you are an accountant (whether the finance manager or an external advisor) or the IT manager, please contact us if you’d like a free of charge call with one of our experienced Sage 50cloud consultants.  Our consultants are able to discuss all aspects of your project, from data migration, implementation, integration and reporting, to how to manage the project.

Proven and familiar

Sage 50cloud is the latest version of a product family that’s been serving many 10s of thousands of UK based small and medium businesses and charities since the 1980s, this means:

• It’s proven and stable over many years
• You will have access to a big UK based support team
• It’s features have been tuned to reflect feedback from those many users
• Existing and new staff are likely to have used Sage 50cloud (or one of it’s closely related predecessors such as Sage Line 50 or Sage 50)

Getting paid and making payments

Sage 50cloud supports the full cycle (creating customer accounts; managing credit status and limits; raising invoices and emailing or printing them; taking payment by card or direct debit; sending statements, making and recording phone calls and other aspects of credit control) of getting paid.  Similarly it allows you to make and manage payments to supplier (creating supplier accounts; raising purchase orders; confirm receipt of goods or services against purchase orders; suggested supplier payments; creating upload files for your bank software to make payment).

These are made easy, but with checks and controls so that you can ensure that processes are followed and things are done correctly.

Managing VAT

Sage 50cloud gathers the details needed for your VAT return as you enter day to day transactions.  “Making tax digital” (MTD) VAT returns can be easily prepared and submitted directly from Sage 50, but there are also a series of checks that you can run to help you ensure that completing your VAT returns is not just simple but also done correctly.

Cloud connected

Proven desktop software means that you have: speed, access to comprehensive data and the security of knowing that only you control your data.  Cloud connected means that you have the convenience of the cloud: access from anywhere; and access to information on the move.

Integration

As Sage 50 is so widely used, it is very common for industry specific and other software (such as ecommerce software) to integrate with Sage 50cloud as standard.  You will need to confirm this with the supplier of the third party software.

If you have other integration requirements, then please contact us.  We can create custom integrations for you, and, as importantly, advise you as to what is wise not just what is possible.

Information to manage your business

A very full set of reports is included as standard with Sage 50cloud, certainly covering all the common requirements (aged debtors for credit control; aged creditors for managing supplier payments; quantity, turnover and margin for product sales; short term cashflow for managing cash; profit and loss and balance sheet for monthly or quarterly management review; SOFA and other reports for charities).

In addition it’s possible to amend the standard reports or create your own, using the Sage supplied report designer.  Better still, it’s possible to extract the underlying Sage 50 data straight into Microsoft Excel, and so create refreshable Excel reports.

An accountant’s view

Sage 50cloud’s primary audience is small business owners and charities of comparable size and complexity. Given this it’s no surprise that its focus is ensuring that day to day record keeping is in order and core financial controls are in place. It:

• Is well proven as it and its predecessors date back to the mid 1980s and it is very widely used in the UK
• It’s a safe choice, for example there’s a long history of it keeping pace with regulatory changes
• Is easy to use, and it’s easy to recruit new finance and admin staff who are already familiar with it
• Covers all the core requirements for: managing cash (credit control, bank reconciliation, direct debit and card payment processing); handling invoicing of goods or services (product and stock records, sales orders, invoicing, basic purchase order processing); managing suppliers and supplier payments; managing VAT (generating and checking VAT returns, MTD VAT submissions); charity reporting
• Comes with many reports including the real core of: aged debtors and creditors; stock valuation; user configurable balance sheet and profit and loss
• Monthly reporting is commonly done in house by a bookkeeper or remotely by the user’s accountancy advisors

If you are an external accountant and will be preparing monthly or other reporting, then the “Remote Data Access” feature (previously known as Sage Drive) will allow you to review and make changes to the live data.  If the report pack that you prepare is Excel rather than paper / pdf report based, then it’s likely that you’ll benefit from using the Sage supplied “ODBC driver” which allows Excel reports to be update with the latest Sage 50cloud data automatically.

Sage 50cloud is transaction date rather than period based.  This avoids the complexity of managing periods, and so is a good fit with its primary audience.  It does mean that it’s less suited to a business that (as would be typical of one which is: professionally rather than owner managed; larger; or part of a group) wants to finalise monthly reporting, and then review and make decisions knowing that historic data hasn’t changed.  This is an example of a number of factors that determine whether Sage 50cloud or products further up Sage’s range is appropriate.

If you’re a qualified accountant then we offer a no obligation one hour call with one of our Sage consultants to discuss any Sage 50cloud related topic including:

• A quick introduction to Sage 50, including areas where you can quickly “add value”
• Reporting, particularly Excel reports
• A strategic view of whether it’s the right current and future product
• Immediate challenges – how to solve now and avoid recurrences

An IT view

Cloud connected

Sage describe Sage 50cloud as “cloud connected” or “combining the convenience of the cloud with the power of desktop accounting software”.

The core of Sage 50cloud is a long established, proven, stable Windows desktop application, with data stored on the desktop or on the local Windows network.

It is cloud connected through Remote Data Access (previously known as Sage Drive) and Microsoft 365 integration

• Remote Data Access performs background synchronisation of data between sites (which is managed via Sage cloud based servers).  This is great for occasional or light remote use, such as: if you have an external producing quarterly or annual accounts; a manager needs to lookup data or run reports from home; or someone is working from home temporarily.  On the other hand if you have staff entering data into Sage 50 from two or more locations on a permanent basis, then we recommend that you use Microsoft terminal server rather than Sage’s Remote Data Access.
• Microsoft 365 integration is a growing part of Sage 50cloud.  It is described more fully here (click on “view integration features” for details), but it includes the option for Sage 50cloud’s built in backup to sync the backup files to OneDrive and capturing of invoices and expenses via Sage 50c Capture.

Proprietary but accessible database

Sage 50cloud data is stored in a proprietary (to Sage) database.  It used to be a simple file access database (like Microsoft Access), but several years ago became essentially client-server (more akin to Microsoft SQL Server), which improved stability and performance.  The database is a black box, so “management” is limited to checking that the Sage data service is running.

Although the database is proprietary, Sage do provide 32 and 64 bit odbc drivers.  Configuring this and setting up a few simple refreshable Excel reports is easy, and likely to be an easy way to make your finance team happy.  If your organisation has more demanding reporting needs, then it’s possible these can be met by using the odbc drivers to import Sage 50cloud data into Microsoft Access or SQL Server.  Best to discuss the requirements and approach with Sage specialists first, though – we’re happy to have an initial discussion free of charge.

Integration

It’s possible to integrate with Sage 50cloud via a Sage supplied SDK.  Indeed this is widely done by suppliers of industry specific software, typically starting with posting sales invoices into Sage 50.  Integration via the Sage SDK requires specialist knowledge. If you have custom requirements for integration then please contact us, we’re happy to help whether by suggesting third party products or implementing bespoke software for you.

Lastly Sage 50 is aimed at small and medium businesses and not for profits, and it meets their needs well at a cost per feature which is much lower than accounts software aimed at bigger organisation.  It does mean though that if you’re from a corporate background it won’t have some features that you may expect (eg no Active Directory integration).

Implementation and training

Some businesses and non-profits are able to buy and implement Sage 50cloud without any external, professional support, particularly if some of their staff have used Sage 50cloud previously.  Sage 50cloud has wizards to help with initial setup, and there are lots of online resources to help.  For a smaller, simpler business (for example a product distribution business that only buys and sells in the UK) this provides a rapid, low cost way of getting started with Sage 50.

If, however, you want external, professional assistance for the assurance of an on-time and successful implementation, then Protronics’ consultants are knowledgeable, experienced and methodical and can help you:

• Plan and manage your Sage 50cloud implementation – including: data migration; accounting and reporting requirements; processes; integration; and training
• Make the best choices about how Sage 50cloud is setup for your current and future needs
• Create custom reports
• Tie Sage 50cloud based reports and controls into how you manage your business