○ Probably the most important thing is having the market leader finally come out with a proper Cloud accounting solution – this will help validate the topic with the mainstream account in business or in practice in a way none of we Cloud evangelists could ever manage.
○ Sage are so frightened of disrupting their cash cows of Sage Instant, Sage 50 and associated training, support and partner network hat they’ve positioned this product at the very bottom end of the market for micro businesses, with very little functionality for accountants to get excited by.
○ Like you I’m amazed that they’ve spent a year in development and 6 months in heavy customer testing and come out with such a simple, weak set of functionality – the average Ruby on Rails development team will look at this and wonder how big companies manage to do so little with so much resource.
○ The user interface looks very presentable.
○ They’ve missed a a huge opportunity to do something innovative. This is too little too late and I would argue marks the start of a steady decline. They’re a big company with a strong user base, so it will take a long time, but this is the high point.
○ They’ve ignored the online accounting topic for a decade. Now they’ve finally validated the topic and are talking about shifting the other products in to the Cloud, it will be the startups and players lik you and Twinfield who have come in to the market since around 2005 that will reap the benefits, not Sage.

I roughly support what toby has said. Generally I find it very suspicious when the representative of one company comments on the product of a competitor. I work with high profile retail products and I would find it very easy to slate our competitors products but part of the honourable thing between businesses is to avoid such games.

Perhaps it is because Sage are such a significant player that you have chosen to do this (and to cross post this blog to websites which carry the release (V3.co.uk) but it isn’t a very honourable approach. It is rather like watching politicians throwing their toys during election campaigning. “Yes, of course such and such has merit, but…”

Congratulations, I now know about KashFlow, but I am not sure that I would be comfortable doing business with such a company.

Bob

Thanks for taking the time to post a comment.

I’m curious as to what parts of the above are wild allegations, barging about, upsetting people, rude and sanctimonious?

I keep hoping for Sage 200 to be SaaS and then the world will be alright again.

Sage are measured in their reply. A proper corporation. Why are you professionals not demanding polite debate. Are you not intimidated by a company that makes wild allegation. IT may be marketing and business but its not fair play. Sage only dont fight back because they think people like you put a value on courtesey – why not show them they are right by agreeing here.

Duane is just barging himself abut and upsetting people and being santimonius about it being just competition when asked.

Unfortunately in todays society, the brash and rude get attention.

Assuming this gets published, at least Duane gets a mark for allowing free speech

John

I wonder if this is like the Currys Extended Warranty cooling off period. Documentation says “call, email or write to us at…” so when I email / call I am invited (in the way you might be invited to jump into a shallow grave) to write a letter with my own fair hand to head office. “But it says here I can cancel by phone…”, “No Sir, you can phone us and we tell you that you are required to write”.

As @[Dan Ladds] says… very last decade!

Micro-startups often don’t think they can afford these videos and don’t do them. Sage, can and it should have been a priority.

Thanks for your comments about Sage One. I just wanted to re-assure you that we’re certainly not going to be invoicing customers who sign up for our free trial. When you sign up for the free trial it really is risk free and you won’t be invoiced. The invoicing process only begins when you provide us with your Direct Debit details.

Clearly we need to work on the wording to reassure people. Thanks for pointing it out.

Chris

Without spending much time with it I can’t be too critical but it looks like a bit of a hatchet job to me.

The version that is currently live has no discernable differences to the beta version we were given to test 11 months ago.

It’ll do reasonably well because of the brand name alone, however unless they have some major tricks up their sleeves it’s not one for the long-haul.

I’ve just edited a transaction I’d previously entered and all I had to do was select Save, no are you really,really sure messages at all – clicked on Save and got a message that the change had been made successfully…

John

I can guarantee their support folks will be sick of those calls in about 30 days time.

Looks ok though.

Too many software on bookkeeping/accounting make you jump through security hoops (password here, another password there – double pop-up windows: ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CHANGE THIS?? REALLY SURE??) to change anything at all after the initial booking is made.
We’re bookkeepers, business owners – not juveniles!

Glad KashFlow simple comes with a “changes made” notice 😉

Karin H

Ugh, sooo last decade. People can’t like what they haven’t tried and personally, I don’t like to try if it’ll be a pain to leave. Without this I might have been tempted to check it out …if I liked it I might have been tempted… but this way it’s not even getting a look.

No API also kills it for me. Plus I value reporting.