Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate - Avis

Very stable environment that is always striving to keep up with technology. The support staff have a vast knowledge of the construction industry and the various accounting needs that go along with that.

Can be hard to learn at first, but the support and training staff are able to bring users up to speed.

The visibility offered across all the financial modules. Job Cost reports give a project overview.
Accounts Payable is very user friendly and far superior to other programs I've used.

We are integrated with Procore Construction Software. It would be extremely helpful if Sage 300 was fully integrated across all the financial tools in regards to exporting data. The flow of A/R billing/payment data and A/P invoice/ payment data would greatly impact the ability to manage all aspects of the projects.

I like its ability to link with multiple applications including PROCORE, HH2, Paperless.

Out of the box financial reports are limited and it is not super intuitive in my opinion. We are currently running desktop in a hosted environment. I think I would have preferred the cloud based package.

The separate modules work very good. Certified Payrolls are easily done thru the payroll module. Payables and Receivables modules work nicely, with some help. Has a ton of reports available.

Although it has a lot of reports, they are hard to find the one you want/need. The separate modules seem like they came from separate companies sometimes and without an expert help or customer support, it would be really hard to get what you need out of them. I have had to pay for custom reports to be done to get what I need several times.

AP - any errors could be corrected easily, CM - easy to set up new bank accounts, GL - Financial Statement Designer is complete

AP - Waiver Releases trail could be better; GL - I would like to be able to close a month any day of the month, not only "full periods", just to be able to see the Financial Statements progress during the month. I know I can see Year to Date Ledger, but a summary will help

Not very much...it is definitely not user friendly

Almost everything. The billing procedure is absolutely horrible and so isn’t the Accounts Receivable module. Even the Contracts module is not the best. Heaven forbid, someone should accidentally link a contract with the wrong company, the module does not allow any changes to be made. If a change order is marked as approved, you have to create a new change order if a GC decides to void or change it. In payroll, there is no way to assign a fixed wage to a particular group so if a pay raise is approved, you just have to enter it in that group instead of having to do each individual employee.

Job Cost module is very helpful. It could have options that are more easily accessible to add change orders and paid date on the job cost reports.

That the entries in one module don’t post to every other module.

I like that SAGE 300 CRE is able to work for our company in managing our rental portfolio, new construction jobs, and general ledger accounting.

It may take some time to train new employees on the software, as it is so robust, there is a learning curve.

Easy to customize for report generation, navigation on the interface is also very easy, the accounting system is very reliable organised and accurate, it’s a versatile and rich application, I think I still need to learn more to maximize the potential of SAGE

The customer support needs to be more responsive to questions about some of the application features, the application is a complex one, I think, we need a tutorial program or forums to learn more about this application, so many features I need to know about. Thanks.

it is user friendly
Easy to use
I like the reports

Difficult to fix a mistake, takes too long

It had the ability to customize features in the program

The service module is way behind the times and will be the ultimate reason we leave Sage at some point. Even though we haver added SSO for some time now it still does not change the fact the back office program is the problem. We need more flexibility with departments and costing to meet the real service world.
Also in order to make Sage work to meet todays requirements we have had to add third party programs such as Timberscan, Cabbage, hh2 and any even a program to get better access to your data. Sage is exactly the kind of program third part developers want and keeps them in business. Having Sage 300 Re means you will be forced to use other companies to get what you want out of the program.

I did not realize how the programs we pieces bolted on and that there not actually built together. Once I knew how the purchasing module had to use Macros to make it work and communicate to the rest of the program was extremely disappointing. The program does not easily allow you to perform the payroll function easily with Payroll companies. Basically you cant get job costing to pickup until you process a weekly payroll to get it on the jobs. You are left handcuffed to do payroll in house when smaller companies want to move that process out of their company.

The program was moved into the cloud last year in my company but it is really not cloud based. So you have to work in a remote desktop way verses a true cloud based program.

Sage is an amazing product, with so MANY complex programs and modules. There are (literally) dozens of reports and functions that I still know little to nothing about (after 3 yrs of working with the product). It's got everything a general contract would ever need, and then some. Customer support (GOLD) is awesome (tho expensive) . 99% of the time, I have had pleasant, knowledgeable, helpful, experienced assistance from Customer Support. The individuals who work in Customer Support helped me make it that first year, and there is no question of that. Their patience and their availability (and their sense of humor) helped me retain my sanity, that first year (04/14 - 04/15)....hands down.

The complexity of it....each module is multi-faceted and highly complex (and complicated). If a person comes on the scene (such as myself) with no prior construction experience, it's very difficult to simply "pick it up". Also, In order to have Gold Support (a genuine necessity, unless the office employee has a degree in accounting...OR...10 years of prior construction experience) is very expensive. We are a small construction company, and the thousands of dollars we pay, each year, for Gold Support, is not an easy check to write.

It does integrate with many other programs. With the right knowledge, it can be very flexible in reporting. The support is also much better than most programs.

Constant and repetitive data entry. Just a few examples... To record payment of multiple POs electronically, the Sage requires individual acceptance for each PO. So when paying 45 POs with one ACH transaction, Sage requires over 100 individual clicks of the mouse as well in addition to keyboard input. Data entry often requires both mouse and keyboard input, making it slower.

If you make a mistake on a date entry, (like accidentally entering Dec 45th) there is no indication. No popup, no change of color on the field, nothing. You eventually just have to realize what happened. With acct #s or Job #s, there is a pop up to say it didn't recognize the input.

With general ledger entry, Sage does not automatically fill in an amount to balance the transaction. You have enter each line. Seems silly, but that one feature would save many hours over a year. Every other accounting program I have ever used in over 30 years will default to the amount needed to balance the entry, and you merely type over it as you go, but its right there for that last line when you do need it. Just simple, easy, things that could be done that in many years of development have never been fixed.

Sage 300 cre is robust. It can be all encompassing with “modules”. From Estimating (which is an excellent product) through the accounting modules to project management, the workflow is pretty seamless.

The annual maintenance cost for a product that is not SAS is pretty high. It is not clouds accessible and project management modules has fallen behind the times, especially compared to a product like procore.

It is a comprehensive accounting program, useful for conducting audits and reviews of all accounts of suppliers (creditor and debtor). It integrates with many software that is used in project management, enabling users to apply comprehensive management concepts to their projects.
I like very much the ease of setup, commensurate with the needs of the project, and its integration with many applications relieves you of double entry and enables you to import or export data as needed.
With Sage 300, you will be able to accurately prepare the accounting lists for your supply chains, as you will be able to know the balance of any of the suppliers and delivery dates directly and without the need to search in invoices and files.

All is well and after hours of training you will be able to use it efficiently, just needs some updates to the display and some colors to get a more modern look. The program's speed must also be increased so that you can exploit more than one window at the same time.

One of the best things about the software is that the core applications were designed together, unlike other software that tries to integrate applications from several sources. So, Job Cost, Payroll, AP, AR GL and CM flow together very well. Also, the software was originally designed specific to the construction industry so it really incorporates most of the financial needs of our industry.

We are running into issues in payroll due to the size of our current file. We are subject to job audits and we have many large projects so we like to keep several years' data in one file. However, Aatrix is not able to generate quarterly reports without archiving some payroll data.

Also, it's really nice to have the ability to post to future GL periods. It would be even nicer to be able to roll FORWARD for financial statement the way we can roll back.

The Project Management portion works fairly well. The reports are very clunky and hard to work with, but it's possible to get the info you need.

The accounting side of this software is horrible! Did you know that you can have a negative debit and negative credit? That's just part of the nightmare. If you want to see all entries going through both AP and AR, they only show up as summary entries. There is no detail as to vendor, invoice # or anything other than the date and amount. It groups AP entries together into batches depending on how you post. If you post 10 invoices in one AP session, it will group all 10 invoice amounts into one lump sum in the AP gl. Even if you go through the tedious process of posting everything individually, you'll still only have an amount to look at. There is no journal like in QuickBooks and Simply Accounting, so there's no possible way to see what was posted during any given timeframe. Nothing is intuitive and everything takes longer than it should. God forbid you need to reverse something. We always had to call the support line to get help, as it was not easy. Sometimes it glitches and values don't get posted from one module into another. Again, you have to stay on your toes to try and avoid this from happening. Phone support is expensive, and good luck trying to do anything without it. I have now switched back to Quickbooks and export my job costs over once per month into the Job Costs module. We spent a lot to switch to this software (including training), so that decision was not made lightly. It was a bit of a pain, but way less painful than having to stress everyday about how to find something, how to reverse something, or how to figure out where something was posted. I'm very technically advanced and I managed, but it wasn't easy. Accounting isn't difficult, and Sage 300 seems to go out of it's way to over complicate the simplest things. Payroll in Quickbooks takes me 30 minutes. Payroll in Sage 300 took me 3 hours. The software is like playing a computer game on a PS4 and then playing on an Atari, seriously!

The add-ins that allow for easier use of the Software has changed the friendly use of the product.
Adding excel export has made it much easier to create reports instead of using report writers.

The size of the entry, it's too small and you cannot change it.
You are limited to the screen that shows and it normally is too little space or area to view.
The conditioning is far too difficult. You need to understand some basic coding to properly condition.
Formulas also require too much information about IT to properly set up.

all the accounting applications are integrated making it easy to run reports and pull information from the data.

Recently have noticed a decline in customer service. It appears it has been outsourced. The telephone connections are poor and it is often difficult to understand their English. Oftentimes they are not able to answer the call and you get put back into the queue which is frustrating.

About a year-ago we purchased the Sage Service Operations for workers in the field to submit their hours. We had higher expectations from the software but it has not been as smooth as we were told. Running reports from it is difficult, the workers in the field are not pleased with it and the back office having to spend a lot of time correcting mistakes because the software is not user-friendly.

Ease of use
Customer Service
Training and Sage U
Reporting
Custom Reports to fit your business needs.

Other than the odd Software Glitch which Sage is more than happy to fix I have no real complaints. Anytime I seem to bring something up that would make the product better Sage seems to be working on/implementing that change.

It was in place when I started working here and is fairly easy to use once you learn the quirks. It does well for Job Cost Accounting.

The fact that simple things, like making a GL account inactive are not available. We have been using this software for MANY years and the fact that we cannot remove unneeded accounts, payroll deductions, and codes is ridiculous! It makes it cumbersome and a nightmare to pull some reports!

The fact that SAGE ERP doesn't even talk to SAGE Accounting says a LOT!

It's mostly easy to use. Ease of use.

I have complaints from some of the users that some reports don't total correctly.

Once learned the program parts for my position I can work through most anything with ease.

There are still missing features. Cannot pull a report by customer name under the inquiry option only the customer number. You cannot pull up a customer by customer name in service management when creating the work orders. You cannot adjust an invoice in service management unless you post over, then void and then make corrections. And finally unless you know the whole system reports can be quite complicated. WE are not able to export information in Service Management to excel as we need. WE have to pull reports from multiple areas to get information. Have ot been able to import documents to attach to the work orders.

Decent functionality once you get it working. Price to function seems good. I have a hard time saying anything else good. If you can live with the cost of frustration, you will probably eventually say its worth it. I've used it for 10 years!

Sage provides almost "ZERO" support. Don't let them lie to you. I have used this product for over 10 years and my level of frustration remains very high. They will not support you after the software/conversion is done. You get pushed to a very few, custom Crystal Report writers who are incredibly overloaded. So all the promise of great dashboards, custom reports (which you have to have! For your own business!) is for naught. Just add 6 months to your process which is absolutely not an exaggeration. Let's just say it like it is. After the sale, Sage does not care about you.

Job Cost Reports are very good, but you need to know what you want, as it is almost all custom. work.
Sage has many ways to track and this is great, but can be confusing.

Support - Chat - the help is limited to articles, and not as good as a phone call int