Sage 50 Database Design

Efficient and reliable usage of the Sage 50 software requires a database design that is suitable for your company’s financial management needs. We recognize that every business has its own distinct information processing and reporting requirements; translating those requirements into a suitable database design is essential to leveraging the power of your Sage 50 software.

This is where our experience with the Sage 50 software, and with accounting system design in general, delivers value to your system. We can design capabilities into the system that may not be apparent to the typical user.

At a minimum, users of Sage 50 software should be able to produce accurate, meaningful periodic financial statements. This requires a carefully thought out and executed chart of accounts, as the cornerstone of your financial management system. While Sage 50 offers various sample charts of accounts for different business types, our services typically include either creating a new chart of accounts “from scratch” or heavily modifying one of the existing samples. This customized design often necessitates the use of multiple account segments, to maximize the reporting functionality of the software. Account segments, when used appropriately, can significantly enhance the native capabilities of the Sage 50 reporting system.

System defaults for account aging periods and types, payment terms, due date calculations, payment methods, and pricing levels all need to be carefully reviewed to insure that the system will function in accord with internal business policies and practices.

Beyond strict accounting functionality, the design of the Sage 50 database needs to take into account “intelligent coding” for master lists (customers, vendors, inventory items, etc.), and various methods for classifying these records (via “types”, etc.) to facilitate meaningful reporting capabilities and lookup functionality. Many of the embedded Sage 50 reports can become much more functional if care is taken to define filters, sort options, etc., based on values assigned to user-customizable fields in the database. In some instances this may not be terribly intuitive, as when using the Sage 50 Job Cost application (included with both Premium and Quantum) to produce reports not otherwise obtainable within the reporting system.

The Sage 50 Job Cost application can be a very powerful and useful tool for a number of business applications beyond construction (e.g., contracts/grants management, property management, etc.) but requires a bit of experience to implement properly.

Give us a call if you would like to discuss your own Sage 50 database design needs.