Sage One Accounting Now Integrates PayPal Payments


Sage North America recently announced that Sage One, its entry-level accounting and project management system, now offers electronic payment options.

A small business using Sage One to issue invoices can now include a payment button on an electronic invoice.  The payor receiving the invoice can click the button to pay the invoice online with a credit or debit card, via either PayPal or Sage Payment Solutions, as shown in the following screenshot:

accounting PayPal payments

The goal is to make it easier and faster for small businesses using Sage One to get paid by their customers.

Online Payments a Top Request

Sage One is a web-based application aimed at entrepreneurs and small businesses having 0 to 9 employees.  Receiving online payments was one of the top feedback requests Sage got from its users, said Senior Product Manager of Sage One Alistair Ellis.

For small businesses today, the steps involved with getting paid are often time consuming.  Issuing invoices, following up, receiving  payment via check, depositing the check, and then entering the payment information into your accounting system — all can be labor intensive. The chances for errors increase when you have to manually re-key data.  Also, there’s delay involved in all those steps.  It might be weeks or months until your small business gets paid.

Ellis emphasized the efficiency and speed benefits of online payments:

“Invoices can be emailed to the customer and the customer has the option to pay the invoice online right away. The payment is updated in Sage One, eliminating the need for the business owner to have to record the payment against the invoices themselves.”

More Than An Accounting System

There are dozens of accounting systems today, but Sage One aspires to be an all-in-one system for startups and small businesses to run their companies on.  It includes the ability to track time, assign and manage projects, collaborate with team members and customers, store project messages and files, generate invoices, track finances in a simple accounting system, and use reports and a dashboard to run a small business.

The concept behind “all in one” is that there would be less need for duplicate data entry. There’d also be less chance for important transactions to slip through the cracks in the business’s daily workflow.

As Lawton Ursrey, Product Marketing Manager for Sage One, noted in a January interview we conducted, it’s about helping entrepreneurs manage their workflow.  At the time, Ursrey said, “We want to eliminate the repetitive, redundant administrative tasks holding the entrepreneur captive. This is at the heart of Sage One. *** We’re focused on helping the entrepreneur reclaim his/her business day.”

Sage One was designed with business-service professionals in mind. Typical users might be consultants, web developers or  graphics designers — i.e., small businesses and entrepreneurs who bill out professional work on an hourly or project basis.

Sage is also known for its Sage Payment Solutions, contact management software, Sage accounting for small businesses, and Sage 50 (formerly Peachtree) accounting software for SMBs.

Sage Group plc, the parent company, was first formed in 1981 and currently supports more than 6 million customers around the world. The company is headquartered in the UK.  Sage North America is headquartered in Irvine, California.


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Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

10 Reactions
  1. This is great news to all of us who use Sage One for time tracking and issuing invoice. Great post! Very informative!

  2. It’s nice to see companies giving SMBs more options for payment, especially if you have international clients. Just in the last month I’ve invoiced a client in Canada and one in Mexico. By going through PayPal we didn’t have to worry about currency changing or anything.

    • I agree; PayPal is by far the easiest method of sending/receiving payment that I’ve every used – regardless of the currency.

      Ti

  3. This is beneficial to SMB’s, but be warned, PayPal’s merchant account fees are steep.

    • Jon,

      You are correct that PayPal can charge higher discount rates than some other providers.
      Rates are usually determined by revenues processed by the merchant and whether the card is swiped or keyed-in. Rates quoted are also not exact rates as different membership/point club cards will have different rates as well.
      Sage Payment Solutions does have competitive rates for Sage One at a 3.70% discount rate for keyed-in cards and $0.20 transaction fee. There is no monthly minimum and no hold backs on the amounts processed.

      Regards,
      Alistair Ellis
      Senior Product Manager – Sage One

      • Thanks for the feedback Alistair. I am aware that Sage has better rates, and I actually am in the middle of an application now where my client is with Sage, but their new hosted gateway solution won’t accept it so we’re forced to use PayPal and pay the higher rates. I offered Authorize.net as an alternative, but their bank doesn’t accept that, so the ultimate solution may be switching banks.