QuickBooks Desktop Premier vs. Sage 50

QuickBooks Desktop is an easy-to-use software with good services. Their invoicing, employment, and vendor sections are all wonderful. These sections allow efficient tracking and instant business summaries and reporting. However, the pricing for additional services and upgrades and lack of good customer service makes it a less attractive software for small businesses.

Incentivized

Sage is great for portability and exchange with external accountants as it is widely used and people will be able to read your data in. It's a very good and complete solution for a little business where one person can handle all of the accounting. I doubt that it scales well to large companies with several in-house accountants working at the same time.

Incentivized

• QuickBooks Premier is easy to use, yet flexible and powerful enough to handle some complicated accounting scenarios.
• QuickBooks Premier offers a wide array of canned reports. Custom reports can be easily created.
• QuickBooks Premier with Enhanced Payroll gives us the tools to handle complex payrolls with multiple variables.

Incentivized

• I like the automated guides to set up complex features of payroll formulas.
• The business intelligence reporting seems very comprehensive, so that one could really "crunch the data" and analyze different aspects of their business.
• Sage annually improves the performance and features of their program.

Incentivized

• I would like to be able to choose how i want to view accounts receivable aging. I would like some flexibility to sort and choose how to present the data.
• For a seasoned accountant, I would like to see some of the restrictive controls that are in place for novices to be able to be relaxed so that I can easily make some entries and adjust some balances that ordinarily a regular user would not be able to do.
• I would like to see an easy way to clear old outstanding checks that need to be reversed without affecting prior balances/history.

Incentivized

• The out of the box reports are not appealing and take a bit to clean up during the end of the month. The set up of the reports can be quite tedious and not very intuitive. They need to do a better job of adding the drop and drag tool in a more visible way so that it is easy for the end user.
• Sage needs to add the ability for the users (in a controlled environment) to manipulate the look and feel of the input screens. It gives you minimal options to add fields to certain areas.
• The help feature does not have the "google" type of intelligence that allows you to search on phrases. If it is not exact, it does not do a very good job of filtering through items that you really don not need. I have used more of the internet searches to figure out my problem because it wasn't easy to pull up the help option in Sage.

Because we have been extremely happy with the product and our organization tends to be creatures of habit. We rarely leave a product that works this well for the latest and greatest. Typically we follow the "if it's not broken, don't fix it rule". While QB does make changes we typically just roll with it. If we do find something we don't like we work through it until we fully understand its functionality.

Incentivized

I use this rating simply because I have a thriving Sage 50 consulting practice and will continue to keep my expertise in the product. I have consulted on both Sage 50 and QuickBooks for over 25 years so I have to maintain expertise in the solution as well as accounting and verticals.

Incentivized

We switched to a more "robust" software program with the hiring of a new CFO. The migration of historical data and ancillary information has been cumbersome and riddle with errors and issues. In hindsight much of what the new software program was touted to accomplish is not come to fruition. QB Desktop Premier was sufficient for the organization needs

Incentivized

I think Sage 50 is a trusted product and is reliable from a product delivery and support perspective. They have deep domain expertise in the non-profit space and should be a consideration for new non-profit startups or existing non-profits looking to migrate from other platforms. Overall, I believe that Sage 50 does many things well with few limitations.

Incentivized

This is very reliable software, the desktop version is fast. If there is a problem, it is most likely on your own hardware!

Incentivized

It takes forever to load.

Incentivized

This is where QuickBooks falls short. Many times my staff has had questions that have not been able to get resolved easily with a chat or call. I personally have had more general questions that have not been answered easily as well. I think QuickBooks needs to provide the resources of having readily accessible help in order to make it simpler to get solutions.

Incentivized

The support from Sage is quick, easy to understand and always relevant. They are very responsive to queries and this enables us to have very little down time if the product does fail for whatever reason. Having someone on the end of the phone who can solve your issues is invaluable.

Incentivized

It is important to do your research. There are tutorial videos online that could help new user of this accounting system. These tutorials are straightforward and easily understandable.

Incentivized

Sage 50 is a strong accounting software package. It will work efficiently if it is installed correctly. If one puts garbage in, one will get garbage out. Also it is important to train the staff to use Sage 50 properly. It is also important to set up security for each user.

Incentivized

We've used QuickBooks Desktop Premier for many, many years. We've not reviewed any other accounting products internally - but have a handful of the customers that use Cyma (mentioned above). While I've never had occasion to functionally use Cyma, I have had to install and troubleshoot problems with it. Put simply... not impressed. I found installation a bit confusing, and once started up, I wasn't able to easily find anything I would have wanted to find - where conversely, QuickBooks Desktop Premier excels on both of these fronts.

Incentivized

Sage Accounting is better suited for smaller organisations with fewer transactions. The invoicing system of this piece of software is a superior tool, however. Sage HR is more commonly used for employees to access payslips and record things such as annual leave or overtime. Sage Intacct is likely a more practical solution for a larger organisation with a higher volume of transactions.

Incentivized

They're getting better. Still room for improvement.

Incentivized

I define scalable from two perspectives; 1) the scalability to handle more bookkeepers/accountants using the product, and 2) the scalability to handle increasing customer/vendor/employee and transactional data. Sage 50 does a good job on both fronts. From the single users operating a micro-business accounting for customer invoices and bill payments only, to the multi-staff, multi-location, multi-departmental complex transactional operation. Although Sage 50 is quite expensive for that smallest user, it is quite inexpensive for the larger business entity. So, for the new enterprise expecting rapid growth, Sage 50 is the application of choice.

• Most of our business clients use QuickBooks which makes it efficient for us to work on clients that use the program. We can import QuickBooks data into our software which adds efficiencies to our tax practice.
• Having staff that are familiar with the software enables our firm to provide quality service to the clients that use QuickBooks.
• We receive referrals from satisfied QuickBooks clients.

Incentivized

• It has allowed for more emphasis on sales than data entry which has allowed the Wholesale division to grow
• The "On Screen" credit status on the Sales Order feature has given the capability to free up inventory for paying Customers which increased Turnover, while keeping Past Due to a minimum
• The Reporting has allowed for yearly, prior year and Budget Variance Reporting for the Sales Reps so they can stay or target
• The Inventory Reporting and Receiving keeps a grasp on damaged based on Lots received which helps to notify the Parent company of production issues and monitor shrinkage
• The Credit with Job and RGA capability give a clear view of which Customer are having warehouse issues or if we are having Freight Carrier issues