Sage 200: Still going strong or just still going?

I’m talking to several Students’ Unions at the moment. They all have one thing in common: they use Sage 200.

That makes sense. Sage sold it as the “seamless” next step up from Sage 50. So, many mid-sized organisations took the bait. You may know Sage 200 by its older names: Sage Sovereign, Sage Line 100 or Sage MMS.

A quick history lesson
Sage 200 dates back to the late 1980s. It ran under DOS. You installed it on one PC or on a server in your office. For its time, it was state of the art.

Why people upgraded
Sage 50 (once called Sage Sterling) kept things simple. You had departments. They had to be numbers, from 1 to 999. Originally the limit was 99.

Sage 200 gave you more:

• You could analyse by cost centre and by department.
• You could use letters as well as numbers, such as LON or 101.

That suited organisations that budget in two ways. Picture three offices (London, Birmingham and Manchester). Now add three departments (Finance, Sales and Marketing). Sage 200 could report on all of it.

There was a catch. Each cost centre and department needed its own set of nominal codes. Start with 50 income and expenditure headings. You end up with 450. The list gets longer. So does the trial balance. But the reports worked.

Sage 200 also offered period-based accounting. Each transaction lands in an accounting period, usually based on its date. Most organisations used 12 periods a year. Some used 13 or even 52. That gave you tighter control when closing a period.

Then the world moved on
Newer systems are built for the cloud. They use “virtual” dimensions. You don’t need a separate nominal code for every combination. You still get the same analysis, without the giant list.

Sage 200 today usually sits on a hosted server. You reach it through a remote desktop. So I ran a test.

The 4 minute 15 second test
How long does it take to log in and open the nominal list? Here’s what I did:

1. Load the VPN
2. Open Remote Desktop
3. Launch Sage
4. Go to the nominal list
Total time: 4 minutes and 15 seconds.

Assuming everything works. Say you do this twice a day. Once in the morning, once after lunch. Do that five days a week for 48 weeks.

That’s 34 hours a year, nearly a working week, just logging in!

Now multiply that by everyone in the team.

What else have I noticed?

• Slow to log in, slow to use. Time ticks away.
• Huge nominal lists. They’re hard to work with.
• Numbers (101) instead of letters (LON). New team members find them hard to learn.
• Up-to-date reports. Getting one as of today takes effort.
• Electronic documents. Sending and storing them needs a third-party add-ons.