A little warning about….. Sage 50 v24 AUTO UPGRADING!

Following our post a couple of weeks ago, Customers have advised us in the last few days that an upgrade to Sage 50 Accounts v24 has auto installed to their PC.
So will this happen to us?
If you have an active Sage 50c or Sage Cover contact then possibly! Sage doesn’t push out auto updates to everyone in one go. They will be scheduled.
So what happens??
When closing out of Sage 50 Accounts a Sage upgrade screen appears which won’t cancel! This screen is very similar to the usual Sage update screen. You may get a prompt to ask if it is OK to run the file – this is where you can cancel out. If not you can cancel out when it goes through its install process.
So why cancel the install?
There are many benefits to upgrading to Sage v24. We would encourage everyone who is either on Sage 50c or has Sage Cover to upgrade ASAP. But, in a multi user environment this needs to be managed, with all PCs and the server/Sage host PC (even if Sage is not directly used on this device) being updated at the same time.
So what do we do next?
As mentioned above, we certainly recommend the installation of v24.1 (the latest and greatest version). Give us a call, if you have support with ACIT (or Sage 50c via us) you are entitled to one free installation per year. We can plan a remote session and get you up to date, this normally doesn’t take longer than an hour. If you don’t have support with us, or have used your free install this year, we would still love to help you. As we said above, it shouldn’t take longer than an hour, so will only cost approx £75+vat. Obviously, you can always run the updates yourselves, just make sure that all machines are updated!
So what is so great about V24?
The main thing is remaining legislatively compliant! If you submit your VAT returns directly from the software, you will need V24 to continue to. This is because HMRC have changed their gateway, meaning previous versions of Sage 50 will not work. And if you are not submitting straight from Sage 50, WHY NOT?? It is so easy and avoids errors transposing data manually! (and yes we can still do it for group VAT schemes/partial exemptions or any other excuse you may come up with!)
As well as this, a few other improvements have been delivered in v24 are:
– Hide old bank & nominal accounts (and customers, suppliers &
products)
– Automated bank feeds – save time on bank reconciliation (50c)
– Go cardless integration for direct debit processing
– Sage capture for Android (50c)
Of course, Sage 50 will continue to evolve, reflecting the requirements of users like you. One of the big things coming up that will affect everyone is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR to us!). GDPR compliance is not something that can be achieved via software alone, but Sage will be providing reports that assist users identifying personal data and considering data retention periods… If you want to get fully clued up about GDPR, talk to ACIT about getting yourself on a webinar detailing everything you need to know……