Why we’ve moved our accounts over to Sage One Accounting
Our Financial year starts in January (I changed it so my work goals & targets were in line with my personal ones. I know, you can think your own thoughts & no more need be said on the matter.) Anyway, after using Sage 50 since we started in 2009 we decided to move onto Sage One for several reasons, but here are my top 3:
1. We can send invoices from our tablets…
…now this is clearly the joy of a cloud based program that is not specific to Sage One, but having moved from a desktop setup where we could only invoice from the office (& we’re often in other people’s offices due to the nature of the job) it’s fantastic. Sometimes you need to leave work at the office & come home, but as any micro business owner knows sending invoices should never be considered work! Without it how on earth would the bills get paid? And for making it easy to create & email an invoice we’re loving Sage One.
2. We’re learning to love bank feeds.
I mean they just save so much time. And whilst other feeds we’ve tried have seemed either too complex or too easy (by which I mean they make it easy to tick off every transaction – but too easy to get it wrong &, for example, pay a receipt from one company off somebody else’s account ).This one seems to strike the right balance (at least it has done so far with our banking). Regular transfers to VAT or Tax accounts are picked up straight away without having had to set rules, it just remembers what you posted the last time that detail appeared (OK so that may not technically be what goes on, but that’s how it seems to us!) Where there is one invoice that has the same amount as a payment or receipt this is suggested - but where there are multiples you need to self-select to avoid miss allocating. You can amend or add to the detail posted easily. We were pretty sceptical of bank feeds when they were first introduced, but as the heading suggests, with Sage One we’re learning to love them.
3. It’s just so simple…
That is something which could be taken as either good or bad, but whenever we go into a business to train or troubleshoot on any accounting package, our advice is to keep things as simple as possible based on reality. (If real life is complicated then the finances that reflect it may by necessity have to be more complicated than we’d really like). In our business we have 2 barely a dozen purchase invoices each month, not that many more sales invoices, a handful of cash receipts, and a few journals that you maybe wouldn’t even bother with if you weren’t that way inclined. Sage One lets us do all of this really easily & report on it in a really clear, always drillable, & constantly improving manner.
So don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely not saying that Sage One is for every business. If you need stock control, or have a complex chart of accounts, need highly customised reports, or have in depth project costing requirements, then there’s a good chance it won’t fit the bill, & Sage 50 may well be the one for you. That isn’t even an exhaustive list, so I’m not saying Sage One is fabulous for everybody. But for a small service based business like ours it’s perfect, and with the pricing changes in the Sage 50 model as well as the growing love affair that the business world has with cloud based programs it could well be worth taking a look. We’re glad we gave it a shot.
