Sage Accounting is a cloud-based small business accounting software. Coming with affordable plans to choose from, Sage Accounting offers essential bookkeeping and accounting features, comprehensive reporting, and inventory tracking.
How does Sage Accounting work?
After you sign up for Sage Accounting, you’ll be able to log in to your account and access your dashboard. Your main dashboard view will be the summary tab, which provides an overview of key financial information, such as sales, expenses, and cash flow. You’ll be able to navigate to different sections of your account using the navigation bar across the top of your dashboard.
When you sign in for the first time, you’ll see the Getting Started Wizard, which can walk you through the steps needed to get your account set up. You’ll be able to enter basic information about your business, like your company name and address, as well as create and link your bank accounts.
Once your bank accounts are linked, your transactions will download to Sage automatically, helping to streamline the reconciliation process when balancing your books.
Next, you’ll be able to enter customer and vendor information. If you have existing contact data in a spreadsheet, you’ll be able to import it directly into Sage Accounting. You’ll also be able to set up your chart of accounts, enter opening account balances and review your trial balance report.
At any time, you can visit the online help center for additional information on setting up your account or chat with Sage customer service by clicking the chat button in the upper right corner of your screen.
With the Sage Accounting plan, you can invite multiple users to your account and assign them one of five user roles. If you are working with a professional bookkeeper or accountant, they can sign up for Sage Accounting Accountants Edition and send you an email invite from their account. Once you accept the invitation, your accountant will have full access rights to the data within your Sage account.
Sage Accounting Start users must go through this process in order to work with an accountant. However, although Sage Accounting offers unlimited users, Sage recommends linking accounts through this process for a better user experience.
Benefits of Sage Accounting
Comprehensive reporting
Between Sage Accounting Start and Sage Accounting, this software offers solid reporting features, extending beyond the basic financial statements (profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, general ledger). With the entry-level plan, you can create a chart of accounts, sales tax reports, 1099 vendor reports, and accounts receivable aging reports.
The Accounting plan takes reporting to the next level with cash flow forecasts, profit analysis, accounts payable aging reports, and stock movements.
Inventory tracking
Inventory tracking can be a particularly useful feature of accounting software for product-based businesses. Not all accounting software solutions offer inventory management, however, and some that do offer it only with their top-tier plans.
With Sage Accounting, you can add products, organize them into categories and customize their prices. You can track quantities, set stock reorder levels, receive out-of-stock notifications and generate reports on your best-selling products. Moreover, you can also add services or actions that you buy and sell to customers, like software upgrades or computer repairs.
Unlimited users with Sage Accounting plan
If you want to be able to create several user accounts — without paying additional fees — the Sage Accounting plan could be a particularly good option for your business. This plan offers unlimited users, with five user role options. In fact, one of the five options allows you to customize your user’s access levels, designating the permissions you want them to have based on the different sections of your account (sales, expenses, contacts, etc.)
