Sage 50 2020 was made available to current Sage BusinessCare subscribers on July 17, 2019, via a download notification from within the Sage 50 application (Select Services, Check for Updates from the top-level menu to find this download).

We recommend deferring the installation of the 2020 Release until early September, however, so that any problems with the application itself, or with compatibility related issues, can surface, and  prevent clients from experiencing difficulties inherent in any new software or operating system release.

Listed below are the principal new features of this latest version of Sage 50:

1. Larger Address fields – Address fields in Maintenance records for Customers, Vendors and Employees have been expanded from 30 to 50 characters, to accommodate longer addresses.
2. Larger Deposit Ticket ID field – The Deposit Ticket ID field has been expanded from 8 to 20 characters.
3. Larger Item Type field – The Item Type field associated with Inventory Items has been expanded from 8 to 20 characters.
4. Additional fields on the Payroll Withholding Info tab – Due to new Paid Family Leave policies and other additional withholding taxes, Special 3, Special 4 and Special 5 fields were added to the Withholding Info tab in Maintain Employees and Sales Reps.
5. Additional email contact addresses – when emailing Customer forms such as Sales Orders, Quotes, Proposals, Sales Invoices, Credit Memos, Change Orders and Receipts, you can now choose a specific Contact within the customer record, other than the Primary/Bill To contact, to receive the email as a default setting for that customer.
6. Notes field in Maintain Vendors – In the Maintain Vendors area a field for Notes has been added, similar to the existing field in Maintain Customers.
7. New notifications functionality – for messages that users have not dismissed, a new “bell” notification was added on the top menu,  to indicate how may active messages have not been read or dismissed.
8. Database upgrade – The database handler that supports the Sage 50 data has been upgraded, from Pervasive v11 to Actian Zen v13 – This upgrade was introduced to:
   • Ensure that the latest updates to the Windows operating system are fully compatible with Sage 50, and include the latest security countermeasures to protect company data.
   • improve performance in some areas of operation and pave the way to streamline performance in other areas in future Sage 50 releases.

Note: the Sage 50 2020 release cannot be operated on the same system as any active versions of Sage 50 prior to Sage 50 2019, due to incompatibilities between those earlier applications and the new Actian Zen database handler. This would, however, be an extremely rare circumstance, in our experience, since virtually all clients operate only a single version of Sage 50 at any given time. This restriction has no impact on database conversions from earlier versions; software updates and conversions can be run as they are normally performed.

Related Article: https://sage50peach.com/sage-50-perpetual-is-still-alive-and-kicking/

Have any questions or concerns about the latest Sage 50 upgrade? Or any other questions about the Sage 50 product line?

Post your questions to the Sage Peach Wizard at [email protected], or give us a call at 610-941-2116.