The new features of Sage 50 Accounts 2017 have been implemented directly from ideas put forward from Sage Partners and Customers via the new Sage 50 Accounts Roadmap. The new Sage 50 Accounts Roadmap encourages both partners and customers to submit their own ideas of how to improve Sage 50 Accounts.

User Interface

The new transactional drill down option available within customer, supplier, bank and nominal activity windows provide easier access to view every part of a transaction in a single screen previously only available within the audit trial.

Invoicing

The invoicing options appear to have had the most development changes within this new release with some great new features:-

  • Negative Values – The new Sage 50 Accounts now allows for negative item lines to be added to Service Invoices so customers are now able to articulate a negative value on the face of the invoice.
  • Due Dates – A new Due Date field is now available when entering customer or supplier invoices. The due date is automatically populated from the payment terms set within a supplier or customer account but can now be edited when entering or creating the invoice.
  • Invoice Payments – Invoice Payments can now be entered at the same time as entering an invoice via the batch invoicing window. The new feature is particularly useful when taking deposits where previously a user would have to enter the invoice and then navigate to the bank options to enter a receipt

Bank Feeds

The secured Bank Feeds service aims to reduce the time taken entering bank transactions and performing bank reconciliations. There is a bit of setup required but the new features available would certainly provide benefit for Sage 50 Accounts users who are currently used to processing pages of bank statements.

The utility uses a 3rd party piece of software by Yodlee which is responsible for the secure communications between a customer’s Sage system and the bank.

Backup Manager

For BlueMoon Solutions this is properly the biggest and best feature change of the new Sage 50 Accounts. Where previously you could only choose a local disk for the automated backups the new version allows you to choose the exact destination of your backups within the Sage automated Backup Manager module.

It’s not quiet finished with regards to it being a complete tool as its still missing an email alert being sent with the results of the automated check data and backup. But look out for this in the next release as BlueMoon Solutions have specifically requested this which received numerous votes and has now been moved into the “Improvements Coming” list