Any Sage experts?

[evilsatan]

I have a new dilemma. I was subcontracted for a job yesterday so performed what I was specced and quoted to do.

Two offices in separate locations.

Office A has a PC with Sage 50 installed, Office B wants to connect to it from anywhere using their laptop.

I was told to setup remote access to PC in office A so laptop in office B can access.


Now they have changed their mind as only one user can access the Sage PC at one time with this setup. They now want:

4 users granted access to Sage 50 from remote locations.

Some may need to access accounts at same time.

There is a little more to it as they have two separate LTD company's but I will work that out later. My idea was to either:

• Migrate the Sage database to the ReadyNAS in office A, setup a static IP for the internet connection in office A and have Sage installed on all 4 PCs pointing to the remotely hosted database.
• Migrate the Sage database to the cloud, have Sage installed on all 4 PCs pointing to the cloud hosted database.
• Have Sage installed in the cloud along with the database, each of the 4 users connect to the cloud virtual machine and run Sage from there.

In my mind the latter is the easiest, simplest and cheapest solution but finding out if it is actually possible is another matter. I have emailed Sage and searched google but the few sites I have found don't look too professional, e.g:
http://www.online50.net

Does anyone with Sage experience know if any of the above is possible? I know Sage are very controlling when it comes to licences and what you are and are not able to do with them.

Cheers

EDIT:
After reading thie following article it appears the cloud hosted sage 50 sites I have found are very old hence their unprofessional look. Sage One has been released by Sage but is for sole traders apparently:
http://biztwozero.com/Home/1711

So perhaps my question is which Sage 50 SaaS provider is the best?

[Over Carl]

I'm not too hot on sage so I would check on what I'm saying but my understanding is that sage just uses a flat database (ie a lump of files on a pc rather than something like a sql server).

If the pc's can access the fileshare without hinderance they should then be able to remotely use sage.

Therefore all you need to do is to set up vpn between the sites and make sure the share is accessible.

My preference for this method over the cloud is that you pay nothing, and in the event of a problem it is under your control rather than waiting for someone to reply to a ticket.

However if this sounds interesting I would confirm the validity of what I have said.

[hoponbaby]

Are you looking to respect the licence limits while doing this?

[evilsatan]

Yes, however I would be interested to know if there were any workarounds. No workarounds would be used but from an educational point of view it would be interesting to know what was possible.

[ant3b]

As overcarl said. its just a share on a folder and program installed from the share. So any sort of vpn will work or direct access from the net

[syscon]

They also have a on line version - http://www.sage.co.uk/welcome/sage50online.aspx

[evilsatan]

I'm not sure what Sage 50 online actually does. I am aware of Sage One which is their cloud based software but it is designed for sole traders rather than companies. Even by Sage supports own admission their cloud offerings are limited:

Thank you for your recent enquiry to Sage support.

The first suggestion you gave is the one most commonly used by customers

Sage is currently trialing some cloud based software - Sage one but it is still fairly limited in terms of functionality

I have passed some info on and will await a response. I think the quote is going to be too high for the client as setting up any of these is labour intensive and requires me to travel to central London.

[andy262000]

Just helping my pal out with his stuffed sage and payroll pc, sage support reckon .net framework update from microsoft has stuffed it up, should be 3.5 but it has upgraded to version 4, he has two pc's in the office and laptop, he has the Accdata folder on the server and points the machines with sage installation on towards it and laptop has vnc same principle pointing at the folder on server, works for him.

[evilsatan]

Thanks all, I have just remembered that I set up sage line 50 and sage ACT on a server before but all the users were on the LAN. So the only difference here is the need for a VPN and I suppose the network folder must be mapped to a drive on the remote PCs. I will have to see how easy it is to migrate the DB as on the previous setup I did it all from scratch. Cheers for all replies!

[hoponbaby]

To migrate the database just move the accdata folder. You will also need to look on each pc running it for the company file - depending on version it could just be in the installation folder, could be in docs&settings\all users\app data\sage\ It's just a text file and you need to make sure the contents are pointing at the location of the new data directory.

In terms of access though they will still only be able to have one person logged in at any time without using an activation key to give a higher number. If they want to stay legit the RRP for additional users is £250 per user off memory. If you want to add an additional company that would also be another £250. They would then be able to select which company they want to work on from the start up screen - another annoying "feature" of sage is you can no longer have multiple installations of the same version of the program on one pc. If they want to upgrade I can probably get some discount through my account manager.

Online50 has been around for years. I had a demo ages ago and ripped the security apart - when I told the salesman the names of companies using the program and the server they were on etc etc as well as being able to fuck with their files he was a little surprised, whether they've improved is anyones guess.