Which accounts package?

Sage, Sage or Sage seems to be the options for most businesses. But there are others. TASBooks was voted small accounts package of the year three years running and Quickbooks has far bigger sales worldwide than Sage does. At certain levels, these and a number of other software packages can represent better value. You could also consider purchasing a package that specialises in your industry, although these tend to be a lot more expensive.

Whatever you do there are a few ground rules that you must follow:

Consider the users. Are they familiar with the package? Will they need to be trained?

Is your hardware sufficient to run the software?

How long will it take to input the initial data? Can data on your current system be converted for the new one?

How will it adapt in the future? Could it be adapted for the Euro and at what cost?

Can it be upgraded for stock control and job costing if these apply to your business?

Does it provide the reports you want both during the year and at the year-end?

Does it have the ability to link to a cash flow or forecasting package if you need this?

So why do so many companies choose Sage? Well we give four reasons why companies often choose Sage ahead of other possibilities:

1. Sage is a stable company and a very stable product. The company is now in the Footsie 100 and for small businesses is almost industry standard. Upgrades always work when they arrive and unlike other packages corruption of data is almost unheard of.
   
   
2. You are probably going to have to train someone to use your accounting software. What if they leave? You can almost always find someone with experience of Sage but with other packages, you will probably have to re-train them from scratch.
   
   
3. The accountant. It will make life easier if you work with a package that the accountants use all the time. At our office, most of our senior accounts staff and managers can talk you through Sage problems without even looking at the screen, useful if you are at the other end of a phone line.
   
   
4. Support. The biggest accounts software company has pretty much the best on-line telephone support when things go wrong. Just remember though that they can only tell you how to do something if you know what you wanted to do in the first place.