Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise: Which Accounting Software is Better?

Are you looking for the best accounting and business software to meet your needs? In the following guide, we will compare Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise and look at the pros and cons of each!

We will compare aspects of both programmes such as their features and integrations. In addition, we will discuss how both options compare when it comes to pricing.

With our reviews, you’ll have a clearer idea as to which of these options are best for you.

Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise: Accounting Software

Accounting software is incredibly helpful for any business owner.

For the financial side of things, it allows you to process your accounts with far more speed than if you were to do them manually.

Further, accounting software lets you increase efficiency by adding automation.

Software like Sage 50 and Quickbooks Enterprise (QBE) also support the completion of business tasks and can help report the organisation’s activities.

Accounting and business software can improve your company’s efficiency and effectiveness by truly bringing it into the digital age!

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Sage 50 Accounting Software

Officially known as Sage 50cloud or Sage 50c, this software combines a set of payroll and accountancy products developed for small to midsize business (SMB).

It is the bestselling SMB accounts software in the UK with both desktop use and cloud-connected features. You can avail of Sage 50 with an annual subscription.

Sage 50 offers three different plans, namely Pro Accounting, Premium Accounting and Quantum Accounting.

QuickBooks Enterprise UK

The QuickBooks desktop software is intended to support your accounts management and business requirements with ease and efficiency.

QuickBooks Enterprise allows for hi-tech handling of payroll, accounting, payments and inventory among many other aspects of running a business. It is most suited to SMB.

QBE is appropriate for use in a wide range of industries from manufacturing, to retail and nonprofit distribution.

It comes with an annual subscription and monthly payment. You can also purchase various editions of QBE, specific to different industries.

Sage 50 Accounting Software: Features Overview

Let’s start our comparison with a look of the features offered by Sage 50.

There are three main packages of Sage 50. Let’s break down the features of each pricing option.

Sage 50 Pro Accounting Features:

• Single-user option
• Accounting basics
• Send invoices
• Management of contact
• Track expenses
• Invoices & estimates
• High-quality inventory
• Live bank feeds
• Financial statements and reports

Sage 50 Premium Accounting Features:

This option has all of the above features, plus:

• Access for up to five people
• Available with two pricing options
• Time tracking
• Managing projects
• High-quality job costing
• High-quality budgeting
• Serialised inventory

Sage 50 Quantum Accounting:

This package is a bit of a price jump from the prior two, costing almost quadruple that of Pro Accounting and more than double the cost of Premium Accounting. It comes with all of the features from the previous option, plus:

• Up to 40 users
• Personalised dashboards
• Features specific to your industry

Sage 50 Accounting Software: Basic Features

Despite having an outdated user interface (UI), Sage 50 has plenty of useful features.

Dashboard:

Sage 50cloud has a very customisable dashboard where you can add over 45 different graphs and charts so you can see easily see what information is most important to your business.

Estimates:

You can create quotes and proposals in Sage 50cloud. It’s easy to convert quotes into sales orders or invoices with this software.

Invoicing:

In regards to invoicing, Sage 50 provides a single template. While you can customise the template for different colours, fonts, layouts and by adding a company logo, the template is ultimately very basic.

Sage 50 allows you to track your invoices, send recurring invoices and duplicate invoices. You may add attachments and send a single invoice to several customers if you wish. However, you can only send invoices with Microsoft Outlook.

Contact Management:

When it comes to contact management, you can add plenty of information to your contacts. This includes a shipping address, billing address, phone number, email and additional custom fields.

Its Customers & Sales dashboard provides you with the most vital information regarding your customers.

You can also take a look at a contact’s history and add tasks, such as ‘call’, ‘meeting’ or ‘send letter’.

Project Management:

This feature allows you to create elements such as a description, start date, supervisor, status and end date for your company’s projects.

You may also include job phases so that you can track an ongoing project with ease. With the Premium and Quantum plans, you can benefit from full job costing.

Sage 50 Accounting Software: More Features

Expense Tracking:

The expense tracking offered by this software is also very basic.

While you can connect to your bank account directly with live bank feeds, Sage 50 does not automatically categorise transactions nor does it come with any custom bank rules.

You should consult with your bank before attempting to use live bank feeds as in some cases, using a bank live feed could violate a banks’ Terms and Conditions.

Inventory:

This programme comes with a well-developed inventory. You can establish defaults and unit measures for your inventory, make inventory adjustments with ease and construct inventory assemblies.

With the Premium and Quantum plan, you can also gain access to a serialised inventory.

If that wasn’t enough, the Quantum Plan lets you set quantity discounts!

Tracking Time:

The built-in timer provided by Sage lets you monitor the time. Alternatively, you can enter the hours manually into Sage 50.

You may create weekly time sheets and mark time as non-billable or billable if required.

Cash Flow Manager:

Perhaps one of the most useful features of this software is the Cash Flow Manager.

It lets you analyse your cash flow, prepare for future scenarios and project cash flow into the future.

This is an essential tool and it does the job well!

Year-End Wizard:

This tool is also very useful. It helps you with your closing books as the year nears an end.

Importing & Exporting:

Sage 50’s high-quality importing and exporting feature lets you import and export practically anything. You can even import custom-made Excel reports directly into Sage 50cloud if you wish.

Sage 50 Accounting Software: Summary of Additional Features

You can easily review your account register and reconcile your accounts through Bank Reconciliation.

In relation to the Accounts Payable feature, you can track, manage and pay bills directly with this software.

It’s also possible to write and print cheques with Sage 50 via the cloud. In addition, you can order cheques, forms and other business supplies directly from Sage.

This programme also provides a thorough accounts chart that can be customised with ease.

With Sage 50, you can use more than 165 reports, allowing you to choose the right design for your business plan.

These reports can also be customised very easily and feature all of the details you’d ever need.

You can establish and adjust journal entries and create or/and manage a budget with Sage 50 too. It also allows you to manage sales orders.

QuickBooks Enterprise UK: Features Overview

There are three different pricing options associated with QuickBooks Enterprise, namely, Silver, Gold and Platinum.

In this section, we’ll take a look at the features offered by each of these packages.

Silver Plan Features of QuickBooks:

• Invoicing
• Manage your contacts
• Lead management
• Track your expenses
• Accounts chart
• Accounts payable
• Inventory
• Time tracking
• Planning and budgeting
• Project management
• Over 140 reports
• Over 200 integrations
• Supports multi-currency
• Automated backups of data
• Upgrades automatically
• Work orders & scheduling

QBE Gold Plan Features:

This plan, which costs 30% more than the Silver Plan comes with all of the aforementioned features, plus:

• Payroll

QBE Platinum Plan Features:

You can avail of this plan for a cost 60% greater than the Silver Plan and just under 25% more than what you would pay for the Gold Plan.

With the Platinum Plan, you also gain access to:

• Advanced item pricing
• Advanced inventory

Basic Features of Quickbooks Enterprise UK

QuickBooks Enterprise comes with a highly vigorous set of features.

It’s worth mentioning that there are also industry-specific editions of QBE with many more features to choose from.

Among these editions are options for contractors, manufacturing & wholesale and accountants.

Home:

The QuickBooks homepage is broken up into various sections. Namely, there are employees, banking, company, customers and vendors.

There are arrows and icons to mark vital features which help to show you the proper account flow.

On the left-hand side there are shortcuts intended to make it easy to quickly access features.

There are also options here so that you can have a look at your most important reports and balances.

It will also let you see any windows you are currently using.

The homepage features a customisable side menu with 30 unique shortcuts.

While most features appear on this page, there are many more available in the top menu bar too.

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Dashboard:

The dashboard of QBE is not what you would find with software that is cloud-based. In this instance, you’ll find an ‘Insights’ tab instead.

There are charts and graphs present here to display your Income, Expenses and Profit & Loss (P&L).

Quotes:

With this programme, you have the ability to send quotes using three distinct templates. QBE lets you convert quotes into purchase orders, sales orders or invoices with ease.

You can also add attachments to your quotes and create quotes directly via projects.

Invoices:

QBE offers ten invoice templates, all of which can be customised. While the templates aren’t particularly outstanding, you have the ability to set the colour theme, font and any of the information displayed to your preferences.

You may send an invoice by email as a PDF or link.

Alternatively, they can be printed out and sent by post. You also have the option to batch print or batch send your invoices.

QuickBooks Enterprise comes with a layout designer, allowing for advanced customisation. This software supports refunds, discounts and customer credits.

Not only can you send sales receipts to any customer but you may also impose “past due” stamps on your invoices if you wish.

One major drawback is that you cannot create recurring invoices.

Contact Management:

QBE lets you record detailed information about your contacts such as basic contact details, shipping addresses, billing addresses, credit card information and default tax and payment settings.

With Contact Management, you can attach a given sales rep to your customers and choose a customer type (e.g. retail, business, etc.).

Upon adding a customer’s address, QBE will add a map with directions to the contact info screen automatically.

If that wasn’t enough, you can create customer reports via QBE’s customer centre. You have the ability to manage vendors with this degree of detail also.

Quickbooks Enterprise UK: More Features

Lead Management:

With QBE, you also have the freedom to manage leads. Aside from essential contact information, you can add a status to any lead.

They can be marked as hot, warm or cold. You can add a to-do list to increase your chances of securing a deal!

Track your Expenses:

It is straightforward enough to categorise expenses with QBE. You can also create custom bank rules, unlike with Sage 50.

Bank Reconciliation:

QBE allows you to reconcile your bank accounts without any trouble. The software also lets you close your books and add password-protections.

Fixed Asset Management:

With this tool, you can keep a record of fixed assets for your company and select a default method of depreciation. While comprehensive, the interface of this feature is very outdated.

Accounts Payable:

You can manage your company bills directly with QuickBooks Enterprise.

QBE also provides a bill tracker which enables you to view any paid bills, unbilled purchase orders and bills which have you to be paid.

Cheques:

Either write or print cheques directly from QBE. You may also add reminders to order new cheques.

Inventory:

QBE comes with a high-quality inventory feature. You have the ability to add detailed information for items, set points for reorders and construct item assemblies.

QBE automatically displays the margin and markup for any given item once you’ve set the price.

If you choose the Platinum option, you can also access an Advanced Inventory tool. This offers serial numbers, mobile device barcode scanning, and several inventory locations.

With this plan, you’ll also gain access to Advanced Pricing, which lets you easily adjust the prices of items.

Project Management:

One downside to managing projects with QBE is that this feature appears beneath customers. Further, every job needs to be tied with a particular customer which is a bit of annoying.

Another issue with QBE’s Project Management is that you can’t set tasks for projects. This is usually a basic feature of any accounting programme.

With the exception of the Contractor edition of QBE, there is no job costing feature.

However, overall it’s an easy-to-use feature. It lets you add a job title, description, start date, job status and payment settings without any fuss.

Track Time:

The time tracking feature offered by QBE is fairly basic. You can attach times to projects and with invoices, bill hours.

Employees can record their work hours and also update timesheets.

Payroll:

This feature is only available with the Gold and Platinum plans.

If you purchase either of these plans, you can access the payroll centre to create paycheques, view payroll guides, run new reports and access payroll from the recent past.

QBE allows for direct deposits. You can also add employee deductions, company contributions and liabilities for payroll.

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Quickbooks Enterprise UK: High-End Features

Budgeting:

With QBE data, you can construct annual budgets. By including added criteria, you can create an advanced budget and compare the budget to the actual P&L.

Sales Orders:

You’ll have five unique templates to choose from for creating sales orders. With this feature, you can attach files and send a sales order by email or post.

QBE also comes with a Sales Order Fulfilment Worksheet.

Purchase Orders:

For purchase orders, there is just one template to choose from. Purchase Orders also features a management worksheet.

Class Tracking:

An interesting feature provided by QBE is Class Tracking. It allows you to organise estimates, billable hours and transactions based on departments or classes.

With these classes as a measure, you can also create P&L reports.

Business Plan Tool:

With this tool, you have the option to create a comprehensive business plan as well a five-year financial forecast.

These plans can be created based on income, expenses and information related to your business.

In addition, QBE’s business planner helps you every step of the way so that you can construct a customised plan for your business with ease!

To-Do List & Calendar:

This feature lets you add tasks with due dates, priority levels and other details. You may also create reminders and access them with the calendar.

This calendar will show you any tasks that are upcoming as well as how many transactions you’ve added per day and the amount that is due.

Multi-currency support:

QBE also offers support for multiple currencies.

A downside is that by using this feature, you can no longer access the Income Tracker, Bill Tracker or Insight tools.

In addition, your ability to control your invoices will be more limited, such as that you will no longer be able to add batch invoices.

Importing & Exporting:

QBE enables you to import files with IFF or XLS.

You can export lists using IFF. In the majority of cases, QBE will let you download or print transactions and reports.

Overall though, the capabilities of this feature are relatively limited.

Quickbooks Enterprise UK: Summary of Additional Features

You can only create journal entries with the Accountant edition of QBE or if you have user permissions for accountancy.

As for the Charts of Accounts offered by this software, it is entirely customisable.

You can import or create a fresh chart of accounts if you wish. QBE also enables 140+ reports.

You can even utilise the custom report writer to construct your own tailored designs! QBE lets you construct default templates for emails allowing you to automate processes for your company. QBE provides 12 letter templates.

You may also design your own templates if you’d like.

The cash flow projector provided by this software will help you to prepare for the future.

QuickBooks Enterprise is unique in that it can allow you to create various custom price levels meaning that you can set a given price for each customer.

In terms of loan management, QBE lets you apply for loans, analyse your schedule of payments, create payments and add new reports.

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Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise: Comparing the Features

According to FinancesOnline, Sage 50 has a smart score of 8.8 compared with a total of 9.5 for QuickBooks Enterprise.

In regards to user satisfaction, Sage 50 edges out a 97% to 95% lead. QBE has more features than Sage 50, so it is no wonder than it is more expensive.

It also arguably goes as far as you can without transitioning to a comprehensive ERP solution. Sage 50 still has plenty to offer and at a lower cost.

Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise Features: Overview

QBE is a PC-only option, unlike Sage 50. To gain access to the cloud with QBE, you need to pay an extra charge. Further, it is significantly more suited to medium-sized business than it is to a small business.

Sage 50 is a more appropriate option for owners of small businesses while still providing enough suitability for midsize companies.

One advantage that Sage 50 has over QBE is that it supports recurring invoices. In addition, the former also comes with a job costing feature if you purchase the Premium or Quantum Plan while QBE only provides this feature as part of its Contractor edition.

Sage 50 lets you create journal entries while this is only available with the Accountant edition of QBE. However, Sage 50 has a very outdated UI.

QBE, on the other hand, is very modern in its design with only a few exceptions like its Fixed Asset Management tool.

Both involve a bit of a learning curve. Another upside to QBE is that it comes with a free single-user subscription to Intuit Field Service Management. Further, QBE allows for custom bank rules, while Sage 50 does not.

QuickBooks Enterprise is also arguably a better option for keeping reports.

However, Sage 50 should be your choice if you need maximum functionality for multiple companies and various users.

As you can see there are plenty of benefits each programme has over each other. Which option will suit you best will ultimately depend on your preferences.

Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise: Integration

System integration refers to combining parts of software, known as subsystems into a single system. Both Sage 50 and QBE have a variety of integrations available with each.

Sage 50 Accounting Software

• Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Outlook Sync, Word and Exchange
• Macromedia Flash
• SP1 of Crystal Report 2008
• Printers with support from Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8
• Adobe Reader
• Sage-endorsed 3rd party solutions from 22+ industries

QuickBooks Enterprise 2020

• Office 365 (for 32 and 64 bit systems) including Outlook
• Word
• Excel 2010 SP2, 2013 and 2016
• Forms such as invoices with Outlook 2010-2016
• Outlook.com
• Email Estimates
• Gmail
• QuickBooks Mac 2016
• Integrate apps with QuickBooks POS v18.0
• Various email clients supported by SMTP
• Quicken 2016-2018

Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise Integration: How Do They Compare?

As you can see, QBE has more integrations than Sage 50.

However, QBE is a bit pickier in regards to Excel if you don’t have Office 365.

Both have integrations which the other doesn’t. Ultimately, the best option for you in terms of integration will depend on your needs and preferences.

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Sage 50 vs Quickbooks Enterprise: Pricing

Price-wise, Sage 50 is significantly cheaper!

The Pro Accounting Package from Sage50 is three times less expensive than the Silver option offered by QBE. The first Sage 50 Premium Accounting option is also around three times cheaper than the next pricing option from QBE.

This option allows for 2-users while the next premium plan enables 4-user subscriptions. Compared with the second Premium Accounting choice, the price of the Gold Plan from QBE is only 1.5x dearer.

Sage 50’s Quantum Accounting pricing varies depending on how many users you would like to have added. You can select various options from 1-user to 11+users.

Notably, even at 10 users, you’re actually looking at a higher cost than QBE’s highest costing package, that being the Platinum option.

Sage 50 vs Quickbooks: Final Verdict

Both Sage 50 and Quickbooks programmes are supported in English only. Sage 50 is available on Windows, Android, the iPhone and iPad. QBE, on the other hand, can be used with Windows, Linux, Mac and Web-based use.

Sage 50 is better suited to a wide range of business types including freelancers while QBE is best for mid-sized business and perhaps small companies too.

We hope you enjoyed our reviews of Sage 50 vs QuickBooks Enterprise. Let us know in the comments your thoughts on both programmes! Which is your favourite and why?

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