Sage 50 Accounting uses a wizard to guide you through creating a new company, walking you through the setup process, and asking questions to accommodate your specific needs. The company offers various help options, including excellent online and software-based resources, as well as chat, email, and phone support.
All accounting applications have dashboards. Most start you off with a default set of charts and lists, but Sage 50 lets you start from scratch, providing a lengthy list of program pages that you can display in the order you want. These include Aged Receivables, Customers Who Owe Money, and Revenue Year to Date. You can assemble multiple dashboards if you pay for the Quantum tier.
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Sage 50 uses a traditional horizontal menu at the top. Alternatively, a vertical toolbar provides another way to navigate more easily by dividing the software’s tasks into modules. Click the first module, Customers & Sales, and a map opens with links to common actions, along with related charts and lists. Another page in this section shows each customer’s transactions. Every module works this way.
The new Sage 50 Cloud edition opens the software up to a much broader audience: anyone with a computer and a web browser. This hosted version features automatic updates and backups, which minimize business disruptions. I’m glad to see Sage 50 dispense with one of its biggest historical drawbacks, though you pay a lot more for this version, as mentioned.
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Although it’s easy to understand how to use the software’s multi-pane pages, Sage 50 has stuck with the same interface and navigation scheme for decades, even when it was called Peachtree Accounting for Windows. It has updated some, but not all, pages over the years, which results in a somewhat uneven appearance. It looks dated, though longtime users might like the consistency. A couple of operational quibbles: The text is very small and hard to read on some pages, and the software frequently opens new windows that you have to close to proceed with your work.
