Sage 50 Club. New feature details. Note: These notes have been prepared using Sage and Microsoft Office 2010.

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1 Sage 50 Club New feature details Note: These notes have been prepared using Sage and Microsoft Office Foreign Trader Foreign trader has been available in Sage 50 Accounts Professional for some time and allows users that trade in multi-currency the ability to process customer, supplier and bank transactions in the relevant currency (Euro, USD, etc.), and perform currency bank reconciliations. Sage took on-board customer feedback, suggesting that this would be a useful addition in other variants of Sage 50 as smaller businesses may not be able to justify the additional cost of upgrading to Sage 50 Accounts Professional. As a result, Foreign Trader is now available as an add-on module compatible with all variants from Sage Instant Accounts and above. Cost indications are that this is available from around 120 per user (ex VAT). Foreign Trader with VAT Cash Accounting Previously, Foreign Trader was only available to users whose VAT Scheme was Invoice Accrual. This has now changed to allow users that operate the Cash Accounting VAT scheme to also use Foreign Trader. Charities Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) The ability to report on Gift Aid claims has been part of the Charity functionality in Sage for the last few versions enabling users to produce reports to support their claims and make the process easy to manage. In-line with HMRC legislation changes, functionality has been introduced to identify small donations allowing Gift Aid claims to be made, even if there was no Gift Aid form completed. These figures can now be easily reported from Sage from the donations postings made using the bank account.

2 Financial year change New to Sage , is the ability to change the financial year in all variants of the software. Feedback from customers suggested that this was a common requirement if a mistake was made at set up stage meaning that customers had to send their data to either Sage, or their accountant for the change to be made. Even though the facility is now available to change the year end, users are still required to process the relevant journals to ensure that the correct data is included in the new reporting period. VAT improvements Previously there were changes made to the VAT routines with the introduction of VAT Tasks. This was designed to walk you through the VAT reconciliation process, run the VAT Transfer wizard and process the payment to HMRC. Sage have taken this a step further with the introduction of some routines to help users verify the results in their VAT Return to increase accuracy and guide users through the verification process. Producing a VAT Return opens up a newly formatted VAT Return screen now separated into three tabs. Settings allowing users to define the checks

3 As part of the Calculate VAT Return, Sage runs through the verification process. The results can be accessed. Once the Return has been verified and agreed, reconciling the VAT Return takes users to the final tab to complete the VAT Return. This now includes the VAT Tasks. Stock management improvements In Sage 50 Accounts 2014, users can now import stock take results from either a MS Excel spread-sheet, or a csv file. This is designed to save time updating stock take results especially where there are a high number of products.

4 There is also a new tool for removing stock transactions and stock records. This means that individual products can be removed more easily without having to clear all stock history before a specified date range. Archive In previous versions the ability to archive was only available as part of the year end process. In Sage 50 Accounts 2014, it is now possible to run this routine at any time. An archive copy of your Sage data is a full read only backup of your live company which can be accessed through the File menu. The ability to archive data at any time is useful prior to running big routines, like clearing the audit trail (although we would never recommend clearing the audit trail mid-year). Practice & Demonstration data Accessing the Practice and Demonstration data has been made much simpler in Sage by accessing them from the company list. Previously these were accessed through the file menu, but can now be accessed in the Select Company screen. Additional information has also been added to the Select Company screen so users can see at a glance additional information about the data (e.g. version numbers), and also be able to access the data path (previously available from the Support Homepage). Live Link Sage introduced a Live Link facility to keep users up to date with the latest news on software and support, and update users of any issues. Users can choose to opt in or out in settings.

5 Data conversions The release of Sage now means that direct conversion of data is possible from v2009 and up. If you have an older version and would like to upgrade, we can help. Contacts The above is a note of key changes to the 2014 software. If you have any further questions, please contact any member of the Sage team on sage50club@ or call and speak to Wendy Clydesdale, Gary Niven or Campbell McLundie. Edinburgh: Glasgow: Final Word We hope you find this bulletin useful and, as always, we encourage you to give us feedback using our sage50club@ address. We look forward to seeing you at one of our sessions in the near future.