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Sage 500

Score8.8 out of 10

42 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Sage 500?

Sage 500 ERP includes accounting and finance, distribution and supply chain, and manufacturing operations support modules. The latest Sage 500 release includes accounts payable enhancements, credit card processing, and general updates, as well as updates to the solution's modules.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Sage 500 has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 42 ratings of Sage 500's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Role-based user permissions

    Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.

    Category average: 8

  • Custom reports

    Users can create custom reports.

    Category average: 7.6

  • Accounts payable

    This includes the automation and tracking of payment to vendors and suppliers, with features such as payment scheduling, check printing, open purchase order alerts, document management, direct ACH bill payment, and vendor records.

    Category average: 8.3

Areas for Improvement

  • Budgeting and Forecasting

    Establish project budgets and forecast future project financials

    Category average: 7.8

  • Forecasting

    Statistically forecast based on historical patterns and sales input, monitor accuracy and estimate new demand

    Category average: 6.9

  • Performance Monitoring

    Analyze business metrics and compare actual performance to plans, identify issues, prioritize demands and respond to changes

    Category average: 7.3

Reviews

What users are saying about Sage 500.
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Best Cloud-Based Solution ERP

Incentivized
John WilhiteView profile
General Accountant in Finance and Accounting at Idera Inc (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sage 500 ERP addresses our organizational substance issue of operating many teams all over the world (APAC, EMEA, America) at the same time without having to converge at an office and allows for multiple users coordinating efforts at the same time with either being at different ends of the world.

Pros

  • Cloud-based
  • Automatization
  • External add-on modules.

Cons

  • Better messaging system
  • Built in OCR
  • Some key features are not visible at first glance.

Return on Investment

  • Efficiency - enhanced automation
  • Cost reduction - simple workspace is enough

Usability

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Other Software Used

Tipalti, Yooz, 1Password

Endless Capability Thwarted by Lack of User Interface

Incentivized
J. Mickey MerguerianView profile
Project Controls Manager in Finance and Accounting at Restani Construction Corp (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Sage is the one-stop-shop for all of our needs. We're able to control contracts, subcontracts, and field reports from the program.
  • Another strength is the ability to database all the information and export it to excel. This makes data-based investigations a breeze.
  • The ability for Timberscan to be imported to Sage is a huge help with invoice management. Prior to this it all had to be done manually and slowed the process to an essential halt as there are thousands of invoices per month.

Cons

  • Sage has a huge issue with User interface. The program itself is non-intuitive and I believe suffers from Paralysis by Analysis.
  • There are too many overlapping issues in the program. They use uncommon vernacular in their operations that leaves the user unsure about whether or not the changes they entered will stick.
  • Sage is extraordinarily cumbersome for a program that has such functionality. If they're able to simplify the language and the modules within the data entry, I will recommend it, but as of now it's sub-par for this industry.

Return on Investment

  • Positive: The program allows for a lot of data entry and splitting of information. It has the capability of replacing multiple programs and therefore saving cost.
  • Negative: The modules are cumbersome and not user friendly at all. As a result not many user are comfortable using it. This means that the program is not being used to its capacity.
  • Negative: Although the program has the capacity to be great, the user interface destroys that potential. Sage needs to seriously work on their program to simplify it. It's as if it still uses Command-line entries from 1995. Needs to be updated ASAP.

Alternatives Considered

Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, Sage 300cloud (formerly Sage 300 ERP), Sage 500 ERP, Procore, HCSS and OnBase by Hyland

Other Software Used

HCSS, Procore, OnBase by Hyland, Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle JD Edwards World

Love the software, hate the upgrade price.

Incentivized
Lisa Kuta
Accounting/Software Administrator in Finance and Accounting at Garneau Industries Ltd (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Payables and receivables handled beautifully
  • Projects has the reporting capabilities we need
  • Cash management is easy to do

Cons

  • The upgrade price is outrageous

Return on Investment

  • Meets our reporting needs

Long time devotee of Sage 500

Incentivized
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Multi-Company processing, including intercompany transactions within Accounts Payable, Purchasing and General Ledger.
  • Handles Multi-Currency transactions with ease.
  • Handles multiple business entities (warehouses, divisions, regions, locations, departments, etc.) with reporting at each level.
  • Inquiry screens (called Business Insights Explore/Analyzer tasks) are easy to personalize by the user, showing the data you want, in the order you want, with sorting, filtering and aggregation (Count, Average, sub-total, etc.) as you need. And all of the data from these tasks can be explorted to Excel if additional "slicing-and-dicing" is needed.
  • MANY options for importing data into the system, and the Customizer module allows you to personalize screens by adding/hiding fields, renaming fields, etc.

Cons

  • The application is very functional, but the interface is a little "stale" compared to more modern applications.
  • The underlying client software is written in an old version of Microsoft Visual Basic. I suppose SOME DAY, Microsoft will be discontinuing, although Microsoft has its own ERP software written in that same code.

Return on Investment

  • ROI is fairly quick to recoup.

Other Software Used

Sage 100 ERP, Sage ERP X3

Sage 500 ERP

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Accounting uses the application for tracking all financial transactions and how it affects our general ledger. This is one of the strengths of the package.
  • Purchasing uses the software to create, issue and track purchase orders. Another area of strength of the application.
  • We will start using the tool to keep track of inventory quantities. i have used Sage 500 in a prior firm for this purpose and, I believe, it does an excellent job of this also.

Cons

  • The biggest concern/complaint of Sage 500 users is speed. Some of the screen take a while to load.
  • The user interface needs some refreshing. Screens need to be updated to take advantage of shortcuts and to be more intuitive.

Return on Investment

  • I have been involved in two conversions to Sage 500. One went very well, because the companies processed were very specific and detailed. The second did not go very well but this is not because of the software. There were too many things that they wanted to use the software for and it was not designed to handle that particular function.
  • Employee efficiency has increased by using the application. Information is at the employees fingertip, so whenever an employee needs an answer, the information is readily available in the application views.

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