Sage 50 (the product formerly known as Peachtree) has long been seen as the orphan stepchild of the 800 pound gorilla in the small business accounting software market that is Intuit QuickBooks. With the release of Sage50c in February of this year, Sage 50 has finally emerged from its “on-premises only” obscurity, to offer a feature that is demanded by many businesses and virtually all accountants – synchronized access to the accounting database when off-site.

Termed Sage 50c, this latest upgrade to the Sage 50 product line – available for Pro, Premium and Quantum editions – offers the ability to synch one or more Sage 50 company databases (up to a maximum of 50 databases) to “Sage Drive”, a new Cloud-based storage space now included with a Sage 50 BusinessCare subscription. Via Sage Drive, off-premises users can access a Sage 50 company database from any computer that has Sage 50 installed on it, even when not physically connected to the network where the database natively resides.

At this time the Sage Drive synchronization is intended for “occasional” off-premise use; for a bookkeeper or accountant to make entries, or for a business owner to run reports or enter transactions when off-site. Once a “remote” users connects to the synchronized database, that database becomes “read only’ for everyone else accessing that company on-premises. When the remote user exits the system, the database again becomes available in multi-user mode for everyone on-premises with a valid license. We expect this limitation to disappear in future releases as users become comfortable with the power and versatility of this new feature.

The Sage 50c system administrator (someone in the company with full rights to the database) needs to initially activate the Sage Drive synchronization service, and can then designate up to five users for off-site access; only one off-premises user at a time can access the Sage Drive-synchronized database, however.

This new capability very closely parallels what QuickBooks has offered to accountants for years, which has made that product into the behemoth it is for many accountants.

We believe that Sage 50 is a superior product to QuickBooks in a few specific areas (inventory, job costing, integration with its sister Sage product Timeslips, etc.). With this new capability accountant-generated adjustments should become much easier to manage, perhaps making Sage 50 a more popular – and accessible – choice for both accountants and small business owners.

Click here to read the FAQ document released to all Sage 50 Business Partners this past week, which answers many of the common questions voiced by users.

Want to better understand Sage 50’s strengths and weaknesses? Interested in learning how you can take advantage of this new Cloud-synched data capability? Give us a call  at 610-941-2116 to discuss your interests and needs. And let’s see what we can do to put you on the right track to the Cloud.