Sage advice

[mrs incredible]

Hi
I am totally new to all this. I have decided that business would give me the best platform and i am currently looking for a designer.
Has anyone got any sage advise on pitfalls or things to be aware of. Its such a lot of money to spend, and it would seem a little too easy to make a mistake.

May be you could recommend a designer?

Also looking for opinions on Sage/quickbooks. They make this link sound so easy!


Thanks in advance

[steelcube]

If you're looking for a good designer, we used ProSite ( http://www.prosite.co.uk/ ). They seemed to know Actinic inside out, did our design and were reasonably priced.

Check out our site at http://www.steelcube.com/ and if you like what you see, worth contacting them.

James

[chris ashdown]

To use the link software you will need Sage line 50

[jxs97s]

I don't know about quickbooks but Sage is expensive (over £1k for licence plus installation and support). As a new business, you may find it easier to keep your accounts in Microsoft Excel. This probably depends on whether you are selling a large volume or small volume of products but Excel is pretty easy.

Unless you have accounting / bookkeeping background, you will need an accountant at year end to sort out your accounts whether you use Excel or Sage so using Excel may save you time and money.

If you use excel, set up 3 worksheets, one for sales, one for cost of sales (what your stock costs) and one of other expenses. In each worksheet, have five columns (date, narrative, net price, VAT and gross price). At year end, give the lot to your accountant and that should be nearly all he will need to sort out your accounts. Just make sure you keep copies of all receipts / invoices you receive in and send out.

[Miranda Stamp]

Having done all 3, I think I could be qualified to comment.

Started in Excel, but soon needed the functionality of something that had a quick button press to calculate our VAT return (some products 17.5%, some 5%, and most 0%). Excel is fine for a small number of orders (would be fine for low volume high value orders) but we are high volume low value with a multitude of assorted products/options - far more of a challenge in Excel.

As my bookkeeper had Quickbooks (she is freelance for several people), we used that for several years. Far cheaper than Sage, and almost as functional. Its also very obvious what to do in Quickbooks, I find it much more straight forward (for a non financial person), however we were getting busier and busier, and stock control was a nightmare on QB not having the stuff linked between the web site & real time and also having the problem that all our 1500 product lines were dotted about my house lurking in any available nook and cranny it was consequently very easy to over order or forget where you had hidden a certain item you knew you had 20 of as it was tucked behind something else or in the loft or under a bed or something, and the stock quantities were always out. In the end we just did a monthly dump of 'a figure ' for sales turnover & VAT amounts per month into QB rather than mess about entering individual itmes and orders (though I am sure I could have exported a csv file into QB and jiggled it about to suit but no time no time like the white rabbit)

SO I bought Sage Financial Controller. Hideous price.....but wanted to loose some profit at the time . However when I bought it and Developer/Actinic Link that was prior to Actinic being downloadable to QB, however not being a bookkeeper or having an accountancy training whatsoever I found setting it up HUGELY challenging (and being busy and having no time), it was over a year before I got it all set up (thanks to Paul at www.greatervision.co.uk - very highly recommended, he came and did a training session for all my staff too)

We've now got the stock out of my house and in a warehouse all easily accessible on proper shelving, all the stock is in real time amounts we know what we have and where it is, when we ordered it etc, re-ordering is a breeze. Orders come in and drop into Sage, the stock adjusts accordingly, the money comes and is allocated to the right places and we've saved on my bookkeeper's money too.

So in a nutshell I'd ask how big are you gong to get, how much will you sell, and will you be doing the bookkeeping or are you paying someone? It may be worth your while just startiing with Excel to see how you get on especially if expecting a low volume of orders at least initially, however if financially you can afford something under £200 I'd say go for QB and have done with it - far easier to prepare a VAT return for example. Unless that is you're planning a major major take over of the world market and will need the expandability of Sage. You can download orders and stock into QB just the same as Sage it has all the functionality you'd need to use for a small to medium operation at a fraction of the price. If I'd not bought Sage when I did I think I'd have stayed with Quick Books.

[Paul Barker]

Actinic & Sage

Hi

Please contact us to discuss your requirements. We're the company Miranda Stamp recommended.

Best wishes

[richardh9999]

If you're looking for a good designer, we used ProSite ( http://www.prosite.co.uk/ ). They seemed to know Actinic inside out, did our design and were reasonably priced.

Check out our site at http://www.steelcube.com/ and if you like what you see, worth contacting them.

James

Your site looks great ! Would you mind giving me a clue as to what constitutes a reasonable price (just an indication would do) ?

Thanks