We like Excel. Most businesses like Excel. In fact, we’d go as far as saying there are probably quite a few businesses being held together by an Excel spreadsheet that only one person truly understands!
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using it. Excel is brilliant for analysing information, manipulating data and producing reports.
But if your monthly reporting routine involves exporting information from Sage 200, copying it into several spreadsheets, adding formulas, checking totals, fixing broken links and then doing the same thing all over again next month, there may be an easier way.
Sage 200 has several reporting options that businesses sometimes overlook, particularly if the system was implemented years ago and everybody has simply carried on doing things the way they’ve always done them.
Before building anything new, it’s worth looking at what Sage 200 can already give you.
Sage 200 includes standard reporting across areas such as customers, suppliers, nominal accounts and stock. Depending on the information you need, the answer may already be sitting in a report that nobody in the business currently uses.
There are also different reporting tools available within Sage 200, so it isn’t simply a choice between “run a Sage report” and “export everything to Excel”.
Sage has an overview of the wider Sage 200 features and reporting functionality if you want to see what is available.
Good. So do we! One of the useful things about Sage 200 is that Excel can still be part of the process without all the manual exporting and copying.
Sage 200 Excel Reporting allows you to extract Sage data into Microsoft Excel, where you can filter, format, use pivot tables and perform further analysis. Sage currently provides a range of reports covering areas including customers, suppliers, nominal accounts and stock. You can read Sage's guide to Sage 200 Excel Reporting and its more detailed Excel Reporting packs information.
So, rather than maintaining a spreadsheet where somebody manually replaces the data every month, you may be able to create something that can be refreshed with current Sage information.
Same familiar Excel. Considerably less copying and pasting.
For businesses wanting more visual dashboards and analysis, Microsoft Power BI can also be used with Sage 200 data.
This can be particularly useful when managers don't necessarily want another spreadsheet. They want to open a dashboard and see the information that matters to them.
Sales this month. Stock position. Performance against last year. Outstanding orders. Whatever is important to the business.
Sage provides guidance for businesses wanting to create Power BI reports using Sage 200 data, and Power BI is also referenced within Sage's current Sage 200 feature set.
The important thing here isn't creating the fanciest dashboard possible. It's making information easier to access and, more importantly, useful.
This is worth saying because we're certainly not suggesting that every spreadsheet needs to disappear. Sometimes Excel genuinely is the best tool for the job. The warning signs are when you've created a process around getting information into that spreadsheet.
Perhaps somebody spends half a day producing it every month. Maybe figures have to be copied from three different reports. Perhaps there are complicated formulas nobody wants to touch because Dave created them in 2017 and Dave left four years ago. Or maybe two people produce supposedly identical reports and somehow arrive at completely different numbers.
That's when we'd start asking whether Sage 200 could be doing more of the work for you.
One of the things we regularly find when talking to existing Sage 200 users is that their business has changed but the way they're using Sage hasn't. New reports have been created outside the system. New processes have appeared. More spreadsheets have gradually crept in. None of that necessarily means there's anything wrong with Sage 200. Sometimes it simply needs another look.
Our Sage 200 overview explains some of the wider functionality available, while our Sage 200 Modules page is useful if you aren't sure what functionality your system could include. And sometimes the quickest improvement isn't new software at all. A little help understanding what you already have can make a surprising difference, which is why we also offer Sage 200 training tailored around how your team actually uses the system.
If you've got a spreadsheet that has quietly become essential to running your business, show it to us. Tell us where the information comes from, what you do to it and what you actually need at the end. We might tell you Excel is absolutely the right place for it. Or we might find that Sage 200 can save you quite a lot of work.
Either answer is fine with us 😊
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