Sage 300 Construction

I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to take their accounting system to the next level

I have used Sage 300 since 2010 and have found it the most troubling accounting software I have encountered. It has the capability to do a lot, but the product is so difficult to use that it makes doing a lot impractical, at least for a smaller company.

Sage acquired Master Builder in around 2008 and has yet to implement many of the "smart" features I had expected after they bought it from Intuit in that acquisition. In Master Builder/Sage 100, you can drill down on just about any field or report for more data. This drill down does not exist in Sage 300. The built-in calculator in Sage 100 is so handy; it does not exist in 300. The feature to advance the date using the + and - keys in 100 does not exist in 300. The feature to verify successful check runs through a certain check number does not exist in 300.

The use of non-accounting terms intermixed with accounting terms is frustrating to me. When looking at the Cash Management Module, it refers to Debits and Credits as Additions and Subtractions. It posts certain entries as a Negative Debit instead of a Credit or vice-verse. GL is driven by the modules and never the opposite. In 100, you can enter accounting entries and have the job costs updated, but not in 300. If you have to enter a GL transaction that will affect job costs, you have to then go into the job cost module and enter a direct job cost and debit and credit the same account for a net zero GL affect.

It can only print one thing at a time. Let me clarify; you open one report, an AP aging. You realize you paid a vendor more than you thought. You then run an open invoice list for that vendor. You realize they haven't been paid on a draw that they should have. You then decide to print the Open Invoice list to give to the PM, Controller, etc., but you can't. The first report that is open gets the print priority. Then if you try to close your AP aging to print your Invoice list, you can't. When you opened the second report, apparently the first report tells the second that it is not allowed to print. You then have to close the second report and re-run it.

My biggest issue with 300 is that it is extremely prone to being out of balance with itself. That phrase may not make sense to most accounting users. I am referring to the concept of the GL not matching the AP, AR, Cash, etc modules. I have had so many instances of something being off; most recently, certain sales accounts were showing a previous balance after closing the fiscal year. This required manually changing the previous year account balance on the sales account and changing the retained earnings by the same amount. These sort of internal errors are very scary to me because Sage doesn't know why they happen, and if it can happen in one place, it can happen just about anywhere, I would think.

Sage support is decent; they are all pretty used to the odd quirks and defects of the program, so they seem to be able to get these problems solved.

If you are a daily user of the software, I would recommend not getting Sage 300.