About the retail vs Sage 50cloud subscription

4 minute read time.

One of the best things about Sage 50 is that there's no limit to the amount of company databases that you can create and work with. You can also work offline with it in the event of internet outage. A great and handy feature! Curious about Sage 50 license options and what's included in the retail subscription vs Sage 50cloud subscription? Lots is covered below to answer your questions about working online / offline with the software and add-ons.

What is Sage 50cloud?

Sage 50cloud includes easy to use features for optimizing your time and money:

  • Remote Data Access enables you to work more efficiently by sharing your Sage 50 company file and have multiple users working simultaneously.
  • Improve the time and experience of reconciling your books by importing your bank feeds.
  • Get paid faster by accepting digital payments through popular providers such as PayPal, Stripe, and Microsoft Pay (additional costs may apply*).
  • Ensure your company data is always backed up in the cloud leveraging Microsoft OneDrive (additional costs may apply*).
  • Save time entering data by integrating with AutoEntry which easily allows you to capture your receipts and invoices (additional costs may apply*).

Certain features (such as access to Remote Data Access, creating credit or debit notes) are only available to subscribers of Sage 50cloud. For those on versions of the software older than 2021, in order to access these additional Sage 50cloud features of the software you'd need to be connected online and have an active service plan. Rights to access a certain feature is known as entitlement.

Find out more about the different editions of Sage 50 (Pro, Premium and Quantum) here.

Note: Are you a Sage Accountants Network (SAN) member using the Sage 50 Accountants Edition?  If so, then you have access to the same features (including Payroll) as included in a Sage 50cloud subscription. You also have access to all editions (Pro, Premium and Quantum).


Configuration File

Your entitlement details are saved in Sage 50's configuration file. This file is initialized when Sage 50 is installed and is then updated after Sage 50 starts and successfully connects (over the internet) with the entitlement service. The entitlement service returns  information based on your product version and service plan etc.

Online/Offline users

Some folks use Sage 50 on a device that is never connected online. For these installations, some features (such as payroll) come with an internal timer, and these features will not be entitled to the user once the timer times out (typically in one year's time).

If a user connects online even once, the entitlement could be changed because Sage 50 will remember the new entitlement information; even if the user stay offline ever after, the new entitlement will remain in place.

With/Without Service Plan

When you buy a Sage 50 box from retail and install it on a machine, it is a subscription license. The software will go into read-only mode until the service plan is renewed.

A retail license of Sage 50, is a non-cloud subscription which means that Sage 50cloud features like Remote Data Access are not included but are available as an add-on in addition to phone based support.

Subscription and Non-Subscription Service Plan

With a Sage 50cloud subscription, Sage 50 will work like a SAAS (Software As A Service) payable either monthly or yearly in order for full access to the product to continue. If you stop paying or cancel your subscription, Sage 50 will go into read-only mode. This means that you will no longer be able to add new data to the database.

Sage 50 licenses previous to 2021 could either be subscription or perpetual.

Add-on Plan

Sage 50 add-ons are available to provide you with access to extra features to those provided by the regular service plan. For example, if your service plan does not include entitlement for Remote Data Access, Payment Processing or Payroll, you can either switch to a different plan that includes entitlement to those features, or you can keep your current plan, and buy an add-on plan that has entitlement to the feature wanted.

Add-on plans can be paid monthly or yearly. They can expire on a date different from that of the regular service plan; though in most cases, the expiry is setup to be at the same time as the regular plan.

 

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