Sage 50 Now In a Cloud Version Called Sage 50c



sage 50c

Starting today, Sage Software will be replacing its Sage 50 accounting software (formerly Peachtree) with a new offering, Sage 50c.

The “c” in Sage 50c stands for “cloud” and it’s easy to see why: users of the new Sage 50c will be able to store their accounting data in, and share their accounting data via, the cloud.




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This is a big change for the solution which up to now has only stored its data locally.

Let’s take a closer look at how this announcement will affect users of the software.

What Came Before

Sage 50 was a desktop accounting solution for small businesses. It was offered in three versions:

  • Pro (1 user): accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management;
  • Premium (1-5 users): automated tasks, audit trail, budgeting, change order processing; and
  • Quantum (3-40 users): fast processing, industry-specific features, workflow management.

While Quantum was expandable to 40 users, Shari Willman, the product marketing manager for Sage 50 told Small Business Trends, “The real sweet spot for Sage 50 seemed to be 10 users or less.”


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Given the intended small business market, this made sense as accounting tasks at many small businesses are performed by the owner and one or two others, something that the out-of-the-box accounting solution handled well.

Sage 50 was an in-office solution. Your accounting data could live isolated on one computer or, if you had a multi-user license, you could share the database from a desktop machine or a local server so that multiple users could work concurrently.

As time went on however, Sage began hearing a couple of common complaints:

  • Due to the local-only access of Sage 50, you typically needed to be in the office when you wanted to access your accounting data, something that can be frustrating in our “anywhere, anytime” work culture.
  • Sage 50’s local-only database also made it hard to share your accounting data with an external accountant, something many small businesses do. In order to make it work, you needed to export your data and then share it via the Web or a portable drive. Either way, you needed to stay out of your accounting system until your accountant returned your data for you to import (ugh!).

Enter the Cloud

Sage 50c was created to address these two common complaints and to build a platform on which additional features could be offered now and in the future.



Here’s how the new Sage 50c version works:

  • Sage 50c still needs to be installed on at least one computer system.
  • Once in place, your Sage 50c administrator (someone at your company) can choose to activate “Sage Drive” from within the software:

sage 50c

  • Once activated, all of your Sage 50c accounting data, including multiple companies, will be synched between your desktop (or server if you’re set up that way) and the secure cloud servers over at Sage. This feature is free no matter how much space you use or how many companies you create, and your data is backed up — which is handy.
  • Once sharing is in place, your Sage 50c administrator can give access to the data in the cloud to up to five named users. These five users do not have to be your employees. In fact, one can be your accountant (yay!) — they just need to have the Sage 50c desktop software installed and they’re all set.
    • Each of these users can access your accounting data from anywhere at anytime (though there’s one snag — see below) as long as they have a desktop or laptop with the Sage 50c software installed on it.
  • If you choose not to activate the Sage Drive, the software will operate much the same as Sage 50 did.

The One Snag

The one big drawback to the Sage 50c solution at launch is the fact that only one user can access the accounting data in the cloud at a time, essentially locking out all other users. This means that:

  • If you have five users with cloud access, only one of them can work on accounting tasks at a time; and
  • If you use Sage 50c at, let’s say, the Quantum level (e.g. 40 users), the other users can’t work when one of the cloud users is logged in. Otherwise, “every licensed user has full functionality on the desktop,” says Willman, “while Sage Drive continues to work behind the scenes to sync with the cloud version.”

To accommodate this snag, the Sage 50c users in your company will need to manually coordinate the times when they’re in the cloud. There’s no offline access remotely either — you have to be the user connected to the cloud or you wait.



Though a solution for working concurrently in the cloud is, “on the roadmap,” said Willman, “given that the current Sage 50 customer base is typically 10 or fewer users, we don’t expect this to be a big issue up front.”

Other Features of Sage 50c

In addition to cloud storage and sharing, Sage 50c will offer more integration with Sage Payments:

sage 50c

  1. First will be an in-product dashboard for Sage 50c customers who have a Sage Payment merchant account. Accessed from right inside the software, it’s a quick and convenient way for Sage 50c customers to view payment information and perform their most common payment activities such as individual lookups and batch processing.
  2. If you don’t have a Sage Payment merchant account, you can apply for one from inside the software. Part of the form will be prepopulated and, in some cases, they’re offering quick approvals.

Why Not 100 Percent Cloud?

One question we asked Willman was, “Why the hybrid solution instead of moving the software to the cloud entirely?”



The answer was interesting. “Many of our customers still don’t feel comfortable with a fully cloud-based solution. They want to own their data and Sage 50c enables that by syncing between a company’s own database and the cloud so they always have a local copy. We’ve seen this attitude both here at Sage and at our competitors where cloud-only solution adoption has been slow.”

While Sage 50c is not fully cloud-based, Sage does offer Sage One, a cloud-only solution for startups that don’t require more powerful accounting functionality and features. Here’s a comparison of Sage 50, Sage 50c and Sage One:

sage 50c

Conclusion

Despite the “only one cloud user in at a time” snag, Sage 50c is the answer to two of its customers’ most pressing pain points as well as a platform for new integration and features.



Usable today, once the kinks get ironed out in future releases, Sage 50c will likely find itself on the small business list of, “must check out” solutions.

Images: Sage North America 21 Comments ▼



Matt Mansfield Matt Mansfield is the Tech Editor and SEO Manager at Small Business Trends where he is responsible for directing and writing many of the site’s product reviews, technology how-to’s, and lists of small business resources as well as increasing the reach of our content.

21 Reactions
  1. I think the cloud feature is great because that means that it can run on multiple gadgets that has access to it. I love how they have now fused it into one and how you described the differences with an image.

    • Thanks for your comments, Aira. Sage is working to provide our loyal desktop customers with new ways of working and helping untether them from their office. Stay tuned; in November we’ll have even more options.
      Regards,
      Shari
      Sage 50c Product Team

  2. Hello. This has been a need for sometime: for managers to view certain reports remotely.
    As with anything Sage product: there must be a cost for cloud storage and use. We pay $ 900.00 per year as it is. So what is the bill if one uses Sage50c

    • Hi Mark,
      Special pricing is available for your first year. Call 800-336-1420. Available exclusively by subscription.

    • Hello Mark,
      Thanks for your question. The cloud access and cloud storage costs are included with your subscription, and the cost is much less than your current cost of $900 per year for online backup. Sage 50c has three product updates per year, delivered automatically. Look for more online features in the November 2016 release — again, included with your subscription.
      Shari W.
      Sage 50c Product Team

  3. Not bad at all. Think many Peachtree users are disapointed with that “C” while were expecting a true Cloud solution. Of course some micro business will love their accountants can access without come to office.

  4. There is no reason why someone cannot use either a full hosting, remote access or some other solution that allows multi user all the time and you can always keep a copy of your data locally if you wish. This solution is about 10 years outdated. This article also does not mention that it puts multiple copies of the data on my drive each time it is shared and that can cause confusion when two or more people go into different instances of the data to enter data.

    • Hello Tom,
      Thanks for your comments. There are many options for allowing remote access to the Sage 50 desktop accounting software. Hosted solutions add costs that Sage 50c includes with your purchase; remote access is also an option, again at an additional cost.

      Sage 50c cloud access and automatic sync back to the desktop is the first step toward merging desktop software with built-in cloud and remote options. We’ll have more features in July and November, so stay tuned.

      Regards,
      Shari W.
      Sage 50 Product Team

    • This (50c) hybrid solution does seem a little clunky. I do love the Sage products. Can you provide a roadmap and schedule for a true cloud solution including job costing

  5. Is anybody using this and if so, how is it working. I have 5 users and want to use remotely at my home periodically but not sure this solution works as from what I understand if I am working remotly my team back at the office cannot use it, except for “read only”?? And if they are using it, I only have “read access” remotely. We have a server in the office we keep the data on but why can’t I use a cloud based server like Amazon so that anyone with Sage installed can work, so long as they have internet?? I have been considerng moving to QB for the cloud options but concerned about migration of data……

  6. Hello Jim,
    It is true, that at this time only one person can work in a shared Sage 50c company at one time; however, we are continually working to address this issue. Sage 50c has 3 product updates per year and the July and November releases will have features to help address this. We do have companies with multiple users who are successfully managing the process today.

    Sage 50c is still desktop software at its heart, with features (now and coming) to help companies work differently – including anytime, anywhere access to your Sage 50c data from wherever you have Internet access and Sage 50c installed. Happy to chat more if you have questions.

    Shari W.
    Sage 50 Product Team

  7. The download corrupted halfway through and we lost wverythin. What a mess.

  8. I have been using the Sage 50 C for a few weeks now. The only problem I have is the backup to the cloud is erratic. I would like to know how to change it so it backs up at night when no one is using it.

  9. Can I remotely access my sage50 on my home computer?

  10. Can multiple companies(databases) be saved to Sagedrive by administrator and then more than one company be accessed simultaneously, by different users?

  11. had nothing but trouble with sage drive … the old name for 50c. sage should offer full cloud facility

  12. Currently planning on getting 50C. I still need some clarification, so please let me know if this is correct:

    My work PC is the “server” I hold the data. If I want to work remotely on a laptop, I need to load the Sage 50C on that laptop? Then from my PC, I would activate the Sagedrive?

    Once, I understand how this gets set up, my next question is: If I am working remote through the cloud on my laptop, can users that are back at the office still use their computers (not through the cloud) just connecting to my “server”?

  13. Sage 50c worked great for a few days when we “upgraded” about a month ago, but we are now plagued with a daily log-on issue and until our extremely P/T IT guy can address it, it is actually IMPOSSIBLE to use the program. We get an error message every time: “We are unable to authorize your Sage ID credentials” and are literally prevented from opening our own company. All Sage Tech Support could give me was a fix that includes “Warning: This solution requires advanced knowledge of your computer’s operating system.”

    https://support.na.sage.com/selfservice/viewdocument.do?noCount=true&externalId=78499&sliceId=1&cmd=&micrositeID=MS_Agent&ViewedDocsListHelper=com.kanisa.apps.common.BaseViewedDocsListHelperImpl

    So WARNING: if you are a small shop and do not have your own IT guy/gal or cannot afford IT help, just know Sage is going to leave you swinging out there in the wind, folks.

  14. Is this Sage Line 50 Accounts your talking about , as I have the multi company Sage Line 50 and they told me I couldn’t use the cloud? I’m confused.

  15. Sage has to be one of the most frustrating companies to deal with. Been a user for ten years. Poor response times, and poor fixes to the same problem, billing department didn’t even know their products (asked about 50c he didn’t know what it stood for). Windows 10 upgrades seems to be impossible for their IT people to fix. And you’d think it would be fairly easy to transfer Sage 50 to their Sage 50c. Nope. Time to just move to QuickBooks, which I was hoping to avoid. Time for a change. Their support has to be better.

  16. HI, I currently use sage one. I am interested i Sage 50c so I can then get the construction industry add on. My question is, can all the sage one data and accounts be transferred to Sage 50c if I upgrade?