Sage 50 Accounts - Managing your finances:

• Manage all your VAT tasks in one place:
  With our new VAT Ledger you’ll save yourself time dealing with your VAT tasks as you’ll find them all in one place. Use the VAT Ledger to help you prepare, generate, reconcile, adjust and submit online, to keep on top of your VAT.

• Store a complete history of your VAT return:
  We make sure it’s easy for you to access the transactional detail behind your VAT returns - saving you, and the auditors, valuable time searching for information.

• Submit your VAT return online:
  From 2010, all businesses will have to start to file and pay their VAT returns online – but our HMRC-recognised software lets you get ahead of the game with maximum confidence and minimum effort. And because our software has been fully tested and achieved HMRC recognition for filing VAT returns, you know you are submitting the right information, totally securely.

• Simple manual adjustments:
  Adjusting your figures, for whatever reason, is simple and straightforward, and you can record and trace the reason for each adjustment.

• Increase the accuracy of your VAT returns:
  A VAT return can be generated and completed at the touch of a button, in hours rather than days. This feature checks your customers’ data for accuracy and helps prepare for an audit. It also identifies suspect/duplicate transactions and runs checks for possible VAT queries and errors.

• Easily track your VAT returns:
  Each transaction is now flagged with a unique VAT return number for easy tracking when it comes to audits or inspections.

• Dealing with “carousel” fraud legislation:
  Companies that trade computer chips or mobile phones with a total net value of more than £5,000 with other VAT registered companies are now subject to different recording and reporting methods. Our software lets you produce on-screen reports and submit online directly to HMRC.

• Your EC Sales List:
  If your business trades with other EC countries, you can see the EC Sales List as an onscreen report which automatically calculates the value of sales from individual customers.

• Make the most of online banking:
  Make payments online to save time, reduce costs and improve relations with your suppliers. We make no additional charge for this, and we now offer a greater choice of major banks whose online services work with our software.

• Managing your finances:
  The Nominal Ledger is an essential part of your accounting system, where all your business information is held, and forms the basis of your Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet reports, making sure you can perform important business tasks with ease.

• Instant information about your accounts:
  This feature lets you see the Nominal Ledger as an on-screen set of charts that can be investigated in more depth by drilling-down from the same screen with just one click.

• Quicker and easier bank reconciliations: You can record multiple bank accounts and their details, enter payments and receipts and save your bank reconciliations part-way through. And to keep track of your banking without all the paper waste, you can use our software to download a bank statement and automatically reconcile payments and receipts against both statements. ‘Smart Totals’ allow you to see the value of any highlighted transaction. And with our new retrospective bank reconciliation report, you’ll be able to see the reconciled balance of your account at any given time – particularly useful at month and year-end.

• Plan your cash flow:
  See all outstanding payments due in and out, so that you can plan cash flow in advance.  You are able to see the effect that making or receiving payments will have on your finances over the next few weeks.

• Better business insight:
  Use the accounting information stored within your software to generate both Balance Sheets and Profit and Loss Sheets at the touch of a button.

• Print out your cheques:
  Print cheques directly from your Sage 50 Accounts software, saving you time and effort. 

• Store your company data:
  You can archive a complete set of company data before running the year-end. You can then analyse and report on the archived data, and access it immediately without having to restore a back-up.

• Manage your departments effectively:
  Your business is likely to use departments for many different reasons but now, no matter what you are using department analysis for, you can monitor performance more closely and efficiently than before. Enjoy extra control by setting up budgets and producing reports for each department or nominal code. To help you plan ahead, you can also set budgets for now and your next Financial Year.

• Support for charities:
  We’ve developed our software so that it is as effective as possible in meeting the needs of charities, with specific functionality including Fund Management, charity-specific financial reports and Gift Aid Reporting.

• Easier foreign trading:
  Process foreign currency transactions in all major currencies and produce documentation in foreign currency. You can make and receive payments in foreign currencies as well as maintain foreign currency price lists and handle exchange rate fluctuations. Additionally, this feature ensures that you comply with legislative requirements for declaring foreign trade on your VAT returns and in Intrastat declarations, in both standard and cash-based VAT accounting.

• Get the most out of your accountant:
  Easily exchange information with your accountant while you continue working on your accounts. The Accountant Link automatically lets your accountant update your journals, bank and VAT reconciliations, so they always have your most up-to-date records.

• Keep track of the flow of your money: Our improved dashboard let’s you see an instant view of the credit position of your business. You can see where your money is, how old your customer or supplier debt is, what’s due, what’s overdue, what’s disputed, what’s promised to pay and what’s still to be allocated all in one place.

• Chase the right payments to keep your business breathing: Always know who you should be spending time chasing for payments; for example what’s overdue, when money is due in and who has promised payment. Promised payments are automatically added to the diary, and if payments are not received you’ll be reminded to follow them up.

• Plan ahead to avoid the crunch: You can now see who you need to pay based on supplier and age criteria. So you can see what payment commitments you’ll need to make in the coming weeks and months, helping you plan ahead.

• Give the right person the right message… on time, every time: Different people like to be contacted at different times in different ways. That’s why you can now record and store names, telephone numbers, email addresses, office addresses, preferred contact times and mailing preferences for all of your contacts, all in one place. And when you make invoice, letter and statement runs, you can be sure that the documents have been sent to the correct person, ensuring action will be taken quickly.

• Build your communications, build on your professionalism: Payment disputes? Information requests? All contact can be recorded on your communication history, together with a follow-up, so you’ll always have the right information to refer back to. Whenever you generate a letter or statement, these details will be automatically recorded into the communication history. Keep your customers and supplier relationships strong with flexible payment methods: Your suppliers might insist on being paid in different ways. That’s why you can now do a cheque run for all suppliers who like to be paid this way, or an e-payment run for those who want BACS payments. With Sage Payments Solution*, your customers will have an easier way to pay as well – directly by card. This can be done over the phone or even by Internet, then posted directly into your accounts to ensure that everything is kept up-to-date.