QuickBooks Desktop Pro vs. Sage Accounting

I am only going to recommend it because it is currently ubiquitous, and most accountants prefer it at the moment. I do not stand by the company, and will not use the product any longer than I have to. [I believe] the support is lousy, the product is overpriced, but it does the basics of what we need. I'm very happy for all those outside Intuit who make their living supporting QuickBooks Desktop Pro; third-party support is desperately needed. They also doubled their prices for software upgrades this year, and require those who don't pay double what the last upgrade cost, to subscribe every year for $200. If one does not subscribe beyond the first year, one will not be able to use the software beyond the first year. They are moving to a rental model even for those who refuse to use the LOUSY QuickBooks online. They were good company once. Now they just turn out bloatware that everyone uses, so the rest of us have to. I look forward to the day that an honest, better-priced competitor wipes the floor with Intuit.

Incentivized

Pastel also helps users to save time when it comes to bank and supplier reconciliations. Capturing into pastel is also easy. The merit of pastel is that it is very efficient and simplifies most of the financial accounting and human resource management tasks. I have discovered that some long batches (more than 2000), if posted during peak hours, tend to fail during posting and resume later, but at this point, doubling, trebling, or even quadrupling transactions.

Incentivized

• It is easy to manage and adjust inventory on hand.
• It is easy to make reports and customize them to your needs.
• We also use it to pay our employees directly.
• It is easy to make year-to-year comparisons to see where we can make improvements and the current financial situation.

Incentivized

• Bank integration - being able to extract banking transaction into Sage Accounting.
• Allocation rules - transactions are auto-allocated once allocation rules have been set up. This is a great time-saver.
• Flexibility - the ability to view transactions, click on them to the allocation point and rectifying if required saves having to create journals, and therefore time. General ledgers therefore stay cleaner and more user-friendly.

Incentivized

• QuickBooks Desktop Pro has been around for a few years and after an update[,] they force you to look at the changes/updates before you can use [them] after updating.
• QuickBooks Desktop Pro does not have 2FA.
• QuickBooks Desktop Pro should offer a way to store backups to a personal cloud without having to map a local network drive.

Incentivized

• I find it difficult to record journals in cloud accounting. Maybe I just don’t have the knowledge.
• It’s important to export all unrecorded sync bank transactions to Excel to send to clients to explain the payment receipts before being posted. This function is not available on the cloud and makes life harder, having to call out the transactions to clients over the phone.

Incentivized

We use it with all our clients and have several QuickBooks Pro Advisors and will renew and continue to use it with our client base. It is easy to use, helps with collecting annual data and makes compiling of information for filing annual tax returns much easier. It makes our job a lot easier, than using manual records.

Incentivized

I could not live without Sage Accounting, it has become an integral part of my everyday. The more I have used Sage Accounting the more I have fallen in love with it. I am excited to be part of this ever-evolving accounting system that has grown from strength to strength, making life easier is something Sage does so well.

QuickBooks Desktop Pro can be daunting at first. It has the ability to do nearly everything you will ever need in accounting but that means there are a lot of features to learn. It's always best to have an experienced user to guide you with the initial setup as it can be a bit overwhelming.

Incentivized

Sage Accounting is built for the business owner/user and not the accountant, it therefore guides the user and thus detailed accounting knowledge and experience is not a necessarily a prerequisite . It offers a monthly price and therefore no significant up front spend and it tailorable to your business with useful dashboards that again you can tailor to instantly see what's important to you.

I haven't experienced a time when QuickBooks Pro was unavailable when I needed it in the entire 20 years of using the software

Incentivized

Sage has been always available when I want it. If there is any maintenance work to be done by the Sage team, you are told well in advance. Maintenance is generally carried out late at night or before the day begins for most of us. It continues to be the most reliable software I use.

Performance is top notch, if it is not, it is probably your wi-fi connection. It has happened that pages load slowly because of an error on Sage side but almost never. Overall reports load fine, the site is fast, navigation is fine. I have a client that has so many invoices, it is slow or gets stuck when you try to load a report for a whole year but it is just too many invoices, it makes sense. Just take 2 report for 6 months and combine them, its not an issue for me. I am happy with Sage Accounting's performance.

Incentivized

I was a BIG fan of QuickBooks support for a very long time up until recently. The representatives were well trained and wanted to solve your problem for you, as a human, not as just a customer. In my recent experiences I feel as though that is no longer so. My last conversation was appalling. The representative only read the narrative provided over and over and would not send me on to a supervisor. Finally I hung up and called back. On this try, I was passed from department to department. I was not presented with a solution until I posted a rant on their Facebook page. It amazes me that I had to publicly complain to get results.

The support is world class - never ever during 30 plus years in business I have received such helpful, knowledgeable and genuine support as I have from Sage. At Sage people matter and i can chat to someone safe in the knowledge that they will actually listen and assist. This also backed up by huge online portfolio of help and resources

Best thing I ever did was to attend a two day training seminar on QuickBooks, I learned an immense amount in a short time with hands on training by experts. I strongly recommend such training for anyone using any part of the software. It will pay for itself in the first month.

Staff are always friendly, and patient, always work at a speed that suits you. You are never rushed, and In only a short time they seem to be able to help you make great strides. It has been a pleasure not a chore, learning how SAGE Accounting works and benefits me and the company.

I find the online training was very informative and they answered all my questions. I am also certified in Sage One and provided online training in the program which I have set up several people on and they love how it keeps them organized.

We implemented the software ourselves. The training we received on the software was done by taking a community course teaching us how to use QuickBooks. It allowed me to get started with some basics of how to use the program and have not needed much assistance since completing the course work.

Incentivized

The clients' business owner worked with Sage on implementation before I began working for them. After consultation with them it is clear the process was quickly performed and without complication. The key takeaway was that Sage is seen as a partner to the business. That said, it was always necessary to engage with an accountant such as myself to extract the best out of the software.

Quickbooks Desktop Pro is much simple and easier to use, so it fits better to the ticket of our small non-profit organization needs. The other options are either, or both, more pricy and complicated. For example, the implementation for QuickBooks Desktop Pro was simple enough for me to do so in-house with training courses available and phone calls to a customer service representative or implementation expert accessible.

Incentivized

The first integration we had created for our product was with QuickBooks Online. There was a fair amount of work put in to create this solution, and a huge amount of testing to make sure it works properly. Once Sage Accounting had an API available for integration, we included this as well, as a fair number of our customers use Sage products. While there were challenges coming from the difference between product APIs, Sage Accounting was overall easier to implement, and more straightforward with actions and expected outcomes.

Incentivized

You can use Sage in your company for various aspects/positions such as bookkeepers, invoicing clerks, accountant, purchasing etc. Everyone can have their own user login and permissions can be set that specific people can do specific jobs without being able to access other peoples progress or accounts of the company.

Incentivized

• Clean and accurate bookkeeping records [have] made reporting and sharing information with tax accountants a breeze.
• Invoicing out of QB is a bit slow and time-consuming[,] unfortunately, so we were forced to choose another software to integrate.
• A great way to have all accounting needs in one place - AP, AR, Reporting, etc.

Incentivized

• Being cloud-based, meaning I can work from anywhere, has had a massive ROI, as I am no longer tied to the office.
• CoPilot has meant we can spend more hours creating work for our business than chasing for payments.
• Statement Runs mean we do not have to spend half a day carrying out the tasks individually.

Incentivized