It looks like this is a merge of:

• Amend Customer Account reference
• Amend Supplier Account reference
• Amend Product code
• Amend Nominal code

The First two are desirable from a change in name (or just to fix a bad account name) without losing history

The last two are desirable when rationalising product codes and the COA  to avoid losing history.

Can I guess from the merge that Sage are possibly working on converting their database to use a hidden internal unique number which never changes to be the primary linking key and thus allowing the current key to be a changeable field which the user can still search?  (Or am I living in fantasy land.)

We've "inherited" the accounts from previous managers each with their own ideas on how to create an account code from a name resulting in making it hard to find some customers.  We've done a major tidy up to make the contact field have a consistent format but that's not used when it comes to entering invoices and payments.

We've come up with a method to convert a name into an account code which is more consistent than the previous methods (which seem at times rather random); being able to rename the existing accounts to use our method would make life much easier (and quicker) for us (rather than having to wait for the accounts to become defunct, as most do after about 5 years, when they are marked as inactive) particularly when customer names change (eg through marriage).

With no disrespect to you, it's great that there is a third party tool - but, you don't support the latest version (as of writing this), and, when I last looked, you are required to stop Sage Drive whilst changing. This is a timely operation that usually requires getting support involved with Sage Drive. Changing account codes is an everyday business occurrence and it is shockingly bad that Sage do not natively support this years after so many people have commented here.

This is needed URGENTLY. It's a disgrace that you don't support this... Sage 50 America does as does nearly every other financial system out there and the one of the biggest restrictions and shortcomings of Sage 50 UK for an almost every day business operation.

This is because Sage uses the ID as a key, so, all records use this field. They should be using a hidden ID or something generic then allow a user to change this field... Third party tools exist that can do this and are annoyingly expensive. There is no reason why Sage couldn't release an update and a migration script that moved to a more modern format - or, simply a mass update tool like the third party ones that changes the reference everywhere.