A happy (and belated) new year to all blog readers and site visitors! The site is starting to build in momentum now along with requests for work. The updates have been slower than normal thanks to being bogged down in a Sage 1000 implementation/data migration at the moment. Which reminds me if you are a Sage Line 500 or Sage 1000 user I have a sister site related to just those products. That site is here and I am soon to be launching a Sage reporting website where reporting services reports can be purchased covering all core ledgers as well as VI contract costing.
Sage 50 for the Web Part 2
December 16th, 2008 by admin No comments »OK, so a secret little project I had been working on was ready to present to Sage. The problem? Bad timing, having written off to Sage UK with a demo of my software within days I found out the news about Sage Live deeming the prototype (and pending development of the full product) irrelevant.
What am I talking about? A completely web based, identical look and feel, version of Sage 50. This is an alpha prototype which now will probably go no further, you can see it here
Sage 50 for the Web?
December 1st, 2008 by admin No comments »So news breaks that Sage have been quietly working away on hosted (via the web) version of Sage 50. Of course everyone is keen to be jumping on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model as a way to lock in future revenues and now Sage are looking to compete with the existing online players such as Kashflow, e-conomic and Xero. This product has a working title of ‘Sage Live’, not sure if that will how it will end up being the final name or not. The information comes hot off the press from Duane Jackson, founder of Kashflow and can be found here.
Whats new in Sage 50 2009?
November 4th, 2008 by admin No comments »Well in a nutshell you now get;
- Built in diary facility
- Improved credit management
- Additional contact information can now be stored
- Communication history to assist with credit management
- Batch printing of reports
Is it worth the upgrade? Well I guess it depends how valuable those features are for your business.
Try before you Buy
October 24th, 2008 by admin No comments »If you’re a startup business and are not sure if Sage accounting is right for you well now it doesnt cost you anything to find out. You can simply do the Sage TestDrive and get a feel for the software before commiting to buy it. You can find the link here
Or you can now get a 90 day trial of the software which is available from this page here
BeBook e-book reader
September 10th, 2008 by admin No comments »One more off-topic post and then back on track I promise! If you have lots of PDFs kicking around on your computer but never really read them then maybe you ought to consider getting an e-book reader. With this device you can store hundreds of PDFs, text files and HTML files on a memory card and view them in portrait mode using electronic ink which is easier on the eyes and increases battery life massively. The one I bought is this one here http://mybebook.com/ and if after looking at it you decide to get one you can put in my email address gary@domorewithsage.com at the checkout page (it will say something like redeem coupon) and get a 25 euro discount!
A new browser enters the market
September 3rd, 2008 by admin No comments »OK, so not exactly Sage specific but hot news all the same is the new release of a web browser from Google. Having tried it today I have to say the interface is very slick and it performs very well. However before you jump in with both feet you might want to read the small print. The licensing terms seem very restrictive and quite worrying, they are
“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”
So before choosing it as your web browser of choice you might want to bear that in mind!
Marketing Campaigns with Incentives and Targets
July 2nd, 2008 by admin No comments »I get to work in alot of vertical markets because of what I do. Today I was with two guys who work in and around the motor trade. We were looking at creating some software that can incentivise your existing base to increase their spend by setting ‘uplifted’ sales targets. It was something I had never seen before. So here’s how it works. You create a campaign and lets say that campaign runs for three months starting tomorrow (02/07/2008). You then select what customers you want to add to that campaign. Then using historical financial data you get the sales figures for each customer for the same period in the previous year (or go back 2,3,4 years). You then apply a percentage uplift to each customers historic sales and this then becomes their target for the current campaign. Now where it gets really interesting is you also take your current gross profit figure and then apply that to the uplifted sales figure. What this will do is tell you how much in actual revenue you will receive from each customer if they hit target.
Lets look at an example. Customer X has sales for the same period of the previous year of £100K. We use an uplift of 20% which means that customer has to hit £120K of sales during the current campaign. If our average gross profit is 30% then we make £6K if they hit target. So of course we can incentivise the customers to hit this target with some really compelling (and quite expensive) prizes in the knowledge of how much money there is to play with. And of course if they dont hit the target they dont get the prize!
Integrated CRM and accounts
June 30th, 2008 by admin No comments »The holy grail of systems. CRM is a hot topic but guess what? Integrated CRM and accounts in the Sage world is a myth. It simply doesn’t work 100%. Why because the Sage 200 suite and Sage 1000 comprise of nothing more than two products loosely coupled together. With the Sage 200 suite you get a windows based legacy application bundled with a web based application; two applications and two databases. With Sage 1000 you get a Sage Line 500 webclient (which uses Java) and the same web-based CRM (which doesnt use Java). So what happens when you want to raise a quotation for a prospect in Sage 200? There you are in the web-browser and as soon as you hit the quote button up pops the a windows application window from Sage 200! As this site is focused on business productivity and not specifically Sage productivity I am watching with interest a product called Interprise suite. It is the only completely integrated accounts, CRM and webshop on the market. The single user version is completely FREE and it is priced between Sage 50 and Sage 200. A demo can be downloaded from this site.
Dashboard for Sage Instant or Line 50
June 30th, 2008 by admin No comments »The completely FREE dashboard I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Is now ready for download. If your a user of Sage accounts, either Line 50 or Instant you can check out the features and get the software from this page.
