One of the funny things about Sage 200 is that businesses can use it every day for years and still only use a fraction of what it can actually do.
That's not necessarily anyone's fault. Your system was probably configured around what the business needed when it was implemented. People learn the parts they need for their jobs, processes gradually change and, before you know it, someone is spending three hours every Friday doing something manually because nobody realised Sage could help.
So, before looking for another piece of software, here are five things worth checking in the Sage 200 system you already have.
If you regularly raise purchase orders to fulfil specific customer sales orders, this one could save quite a bit of time.
Sage 200 can use back to back ordering to generate purchase orders from sales orders. That reduces duplicate entry and gives you a clearer connection between what your customer has ordered and what you need to purchase to fulfil it. It's particularly useful where you don't necessarily want to hold everything in stock and are buying certain products specifically against customer demand.
Bank reconciliation isn't generally the part of finance that has people racing into the office on a Monday morning 😂
Sage 200 can connect to supported banks and bring transactions into the system, helping reduce some of the manual work involved in reconciling your accounts. Sage also supports importing bank data where a direct feed isn't available.
If you're still downloading statements, manually entering transactions and matching everything line by line, it's worth checking whether there's a quicker way.
If you hold stock where traceability matters, particularly in sectors such as bioscience, pharmaceuticals, food, engineering or manufacturing, batch and serial functionality can be incredibly useful. Sage 200 can record batch and serial numbers against stock movements, helping you trace where products came from and where they went. That can make a considerable difference when you're dealing with expiry dates, product recalls, warranties or simply trying to answer a customer asking exactly which item they received.
This is probably one of the biggest areas where we see spreadsheets creeping in.
Someone wants a slightly different report, so the data gets exported to Excel. Six months later that spreadsheet has seventeen tabs, several complicated formulas and has somehow become a vital part of running the company.
Sage 200 has Business Intelligence and reporting options that can help you analyse information from across the business. Sage's current functionality includes dashboards, interactive reporting and integration with tools such as Microsoft Power BI. That doesn't mean Excel needs to disappear. We love Excel! It simply means you may not need quite as many spreadsheets as you currently have.
Your finance system doesn't have to operate in isolation.
Sage 200 can be integrated with other applications, including CRM, ecommerce, reporting tools, web shop and bespoke business systems. This is where it's worth looking at the wider process rather than just Sage.
If someone enters information into one system, prints or exports it, and somebody else then enters exactly the same information somewhere else, that's usually a conversation worth having.
Have a look at what you already own. Sage 200 is designed to be modular and adaptable, and Sage continues to develop functionality around automation, reporting, Microsoft 365 integration and connected applications.
That doesn't mean every feature will be right for your business. It does mean it's worth reviewing your system occasionally, particularly if the way you work has changed since it was originally implemented.
If there's a process in Sage 200 that regularly causes groans around the office, tell us about it. It might need some configuration, a bit of training, an add on or a completely different approach. Or there might already be a button sitting in Sage that nobody knew was there 😊
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