Quickbooks Enterprise vs Sage 50?
November 19, 2013 3:00 PM Subscribe
We are a retail business, ~10 employees, multiple locations of inventory and some drop-ships. I am looking at both Quickbooks Enterprise and something from the Sage 50 family but can't find anything online that provides a good comparison. Anyone use both? Opinions?
Response by poster: That's a good point. I figured comparisons to "Peachtree" wouldn't be looking at recent enough versions to be relevant, but your link is a good counterexample.
posted by vaaaase at 4:31 PM on November 19, 2013
posted by vaaaase at 4:31 PM on November 19, 2013
One thing to consider is whether you plan on integrating your accounting system with any other systems. There are programs that integrate directly or through third-party software with both Sage and QuickBooks to various degrees. Do keep in mind that a lot of software that says it is compatible with QuickBooks actually just exports to an IFF file (basically a CSV) and doesn't directly integrate.
Also what does your accountant/bookkeeper prefer? Most are only versed in one system.
posted by radioamy at 7:30 PM on November 19, 2013
Also what does your accountant/bookkeeper prefer? Most are only versed in one system.
posted by radioamy at 7:30 PM on November 19, 2013
Do keep in mind that a lot of software that says it is compatible with QuickBooks actually just exports to an IFF file (basically a CSV) and doesn't directly integrate.
Officially, IIF is a deprecated format and should be phased out. The fact that it still works haunts QB custom development. QuickBooks has a very robust and powerful API but people still want to do the flat file format. Sage 50 has an SDK (I'm using it in the immediate future for a client project) but it's not as good as the API for QuickBooks both in terms of how it integrates and what you can do with it.
posted by graymouser at 3:31 AM on November 20, 2013
Officially, IIF is a deprecated format and should be phased out. The fact that it still works haunts QB custom development. QuickBooks has a very robust and powerful API but people still want to do the flat file format. Sage 50 has an SDK (I'm using it in the immediate future for a client project) but it's not as good as the API for QuickBooks both in terms of how it integrates and what you can do with it.
posted by graymouser at 3:31 AM on November 20, 2013
Response by poster: Good stuff. We actually are building up an order management system in the next few months so the quality of the API is important. Supposedly either system is fine for them to work with. We have enough accounting experience in house that we haven't needed an outside accountant, so that part is a non-issue.
From this and what I can dig up online, it sounds like the differences are so minor or subjective that there's not going to be a way to know for sure which I like better unless I literally tried them both. That's not a feasible option, and Quickbooks is a little cheaper since we'll have fewer than five users, so I'm leaning in that direction. If the API is a little more powerful, then all the better.
posted by vaaaase at 9:07 AM on November 20, 2013
From this and what I can dig up online, it sounds like the differences are so minor or subjective that there's not going to be a way to know for sure which I like better unless I literally tried them both. That's not a feasible option, and Quickbooks is a little cheaper since we'll have fewer than five users, so I'm leaning in that direction. If the API is a little more powerful, then all the better.
posted by vaaaase at 9:07 AM on November 20, 2013
Yeah, I talked with my company's accounting software guy (by "guy" I mean he's a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and clients ask for him by name to work on their systems), and he said the main thing is that QuickBooks is so much better in terms of UI and that Intuit's really improved the software over the last 5 years. And our dev teams have had a lot of success with the API. Best of luck with it!
posted by graymouser at 10:01 AM on November 20, 2013
posted by graymouser at 10:01 AM on November 20, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
One thing that may help in looking online is that Sage 50 was known as Peachtree up until recently so a lot of comparisons use the older name.
posted by graymouser at 4:16 PM on November 19, 2013