Sage haven't got to where they are because Instant is rubbish!


Far from perfect, but probably the best bet   March 1, 2006
 18 out of 19 found this review helpful

In almost every area of technical software there’s the “industry standard” software that professionals use, which has the downside of being relatively unfriendly to the casual user, and there’s other software that is more friendly and accessible to users, who often maintain strongly that it is “just as good” but which doesn’t meet professional needs.

It’s the same here. The Sage family goes from the cheap “Instant” range as seen here and takes a similar look and feel right up the range to Line 100 which is used by companies turning over millions.

Despite one good feature, from an accountant’s point of view, the competitors to Sage Instant are a pain in the neck. (And “no” to the cynics, that doesn’t mean the accountant is pleased to bill more, for sorting out the mess. That type of work is really hard to bill. The margin that accountants can charge on Sage is not enough to sway judgement either.)

This version doesn’t attempt to do stock control. The “Products” features are for creating invoices.

There are things about Sage that are not good, and the company is fairly “revenue hungry,” but I’d recommend this as the best of the accounting software bunch at this level.


Dont waste your money and more importantly time   February 8, 2006
 22 out of 26 found this review helpful

The program is little better than a paper based system. In theory it can out preform other programs and is totally customizable. However one would need advanced financial and programming knowledge to get sage to produce even the most basic of reports. Other programs will knock up over 100 reports within a couple of minutes. It could take 2 days to program sage to produce a single report. Most accountants tell me just to export the figures into excel to manipulate them. I ask why duplicate work, surely the accounts program should do the work.

Data entry is extremely slow and monotonous with sage lacking even the most basic programming concepts to make life easier.

In a nut shell sage is barely more effective than using a pen and paper and although with advanced programming it could produce reports that are highly customised, the amount of time it would take would be akin to using pen and paper in the first place.

Small business's need to get financial information out of their accounts system easily. Sage will record the data ( albiet slowly ) but when it comes to analysing and returning meaningful business information, you are on youre own.

On the plus side sage is so simple mistakes are hard to make. 90% of accountants recommend it (probably because its the only program 90% of accountants have ever used)


The chocolate teapot in accounting software!   January 21, 2006
 26 out of 28 found this review helpful

I have never used a piece of software with such appalling instructional design. It's horrible to use and requires the support service from Sage to simply get started. One of the previous reviews says that:

'The bad reviews are probably from people who have not had a great deal of experience with accounts software and I can fully understand their dislike of Sage, as it is not the most intuitive of programs... etc.'

We are completely computer literate using far more complicated layout and CAD software, and my book keeper has been in the business for over 10 years using various accounting software and it still reduces us to tears using it! We actually have to run other software solutions alongside Sage to make it do the most simple of operations.

We are now looking for more effective accounting solutions than sage and seriously considering an abacus!!