What’s new in Sage 500 ERP 2014 Release

You’ve come to trust the integrated suite of robust business applications in Sage 500 ERP to increase productivity, reduce costs, and simplify business processes. Over the years, the flexible, customizable, and scalable nature of the Sage 500 ERP solution has continually been improved and enhanced to help you run your business the way you want to, with a lower cost of ownership and a high return on your investment.

With the 2014 release of Sage 500 ERP, Sage continues to deliver value with a variety of new system enhancements, connected services, and Sage Inventory Advisor.

Highlights of New functionalities

1. Easily rectify incorrect book entries using Reverse Applications
2. Optimize safety stock levels with Sage Inventory Advisor
3. Process electronic funds using the ACH network through Sage Payment Solutions
4. Manage contacts better with expanded email address fields
5. Improve fulfillment productivity with easier access to shipping and sales order numbers

1. Reverse Applications

No matter how careful accounting professionals are, payments get applied against the wrong invoice, finance charges are applied incorrectly, or memos are applied to the wrong invoice. These errors result in incorrect statements, inflated finance charges, potential credit limit problems, wrong ageing and frustrated customers. Prior to the new release, reversing the application of payments was typically time consuming and a multistep, manual process.

With the 2014 release, Sage 500 ERP introduces Reverse Applications, a new task in Accounts Receivableà Activities designed to simplify reversing an incorrect application by automating and vastly reducing the steps in the process. When an error is detected, users won’t have to wait until they have time to tackle a cumbersome manual process. With the Sage 500 ERP 2014 release, your accounting staff can correct the error immediately upon discovery—without sacrificing productivity.

2. Sage Inventory Advisor

Sage Inventory Advisor is a cloud solution, subscription based, offered by Sage providing analysis and recommendations based on your Sage 500 ERP Inventory, Sales Order and Purchase Order, Customer and Vendor Data.

Analysis at a Glance, High Value Customers, High Profit Items, Slow Performing Items, Potential Stock-outs and Pro-active Planning are some of the features of Sage Inventory Advisor. Sage Inventory Adviser identifies overages, surplus purchase orders and potential stock outs in addition to accurately forecasting demands and recommending what and when to place orders with vendors for replenishment.

For any company trying to manage substantial inventory, Sage Inventory Advisor is a must-have solution . . . and it connects to the 2014 release of Sage 500 ERP!

1. Automated Clearinghouse transactions through Sage Payment Solutions

When it comes to making payments, customers now expect more convenience and flexibility. Many companies meet these expectations with electronic funds transfers (EFTs), which digitally facilitate the exchange of funds between bank accounts. To take advantage of the benefits associated with EFTs, customers need an interface to communicate with the ACH network and that’s precisely what the Sage 500 ERP 2014 Release now includes through Sage Payment Solutions.

That means that Sage 500 ERP 2014 customers using Sage Payment Solutions can now electronically process credits, such as:

• Direct receipt of sales outstanding (cash receipts).

• Business-to-business payments.

• E-commerce payments.

2. Expanded email fields

Prior to the 2014 release, Sage 500 ERP was able to process only 40 characters in an email field, leading to challenges with managing contacts with 41+ characters in their email address.

Sage 500 ERP 2014 release expands the email field to accommodate the industry standard 255-character length to enable easier contact management. The expanded email address capability applies to customers, vendors, and all business contact records across the entire Sage 500 ERP 2014 release.

3. Sales order and shipping numbers where your team needs them.

In the previous version Sage 500, shipment number is not displayed in “Generate Shipments” for single shipments and Sales Order number is not printed on item line in Invoice. This means your sales and order processing teams are scrambling to run multiple reports or flipping through screens to find the information they need— the shipment number when generating a shipment, or the sales order number for a line item on an invoice.

With the new release Sage 500 2014, “Generate Shipments,” will display the shipment number for single shipmenst and the Sales order number is printed for line item on the Sales Invoice.

For single shipments, your team won’t need to track down which shipment they were working on because the information is available on the screen. The inclusion of the sales order number on the invoice and individual line provides a quick cross reference for the customer receiving the order, and provides your customer service team with better information to cross reference sales orders and invoices.

Summary

The continuing success and growth of your business—that’s always the focus of the improvements added to each new release of Sage 500 ERP. This year offers connections to a totally new and extremely powerful inventory optimization solution, to new markets, and to new levels of efficiency and productivity. If you’ve been postponing an upgrade, 2014 is the year to move up!

The 2014 release of Sage 500 ERP is available now. Contact us to upgrade to the new version.