Hi,

Anyone have experience with printing dual language at all?

Thanks.

Hi Joe,

Just replicated and get the same issue as your self. I have looked at other forums/software which have fixes to change the font within the software:

The answer below is from a different software which won't be the same fix as sage business cloud. 

When I export my invoices as PDF, my items are not shown.

If you’re using foreign characters (such as Chinese, for example) on your invoice, you need to make sure the template you’re using for this transaction supports these characters. This will ensure that these characters are supported when the invoice is printed or exported as a PDF.

• Click the Gear icon on the top right and select More Settings.
• Select the Templates sub-tab. Hover over the template you’re using and click Edit.
• Under Template Properties, select the font of your choice from the drop down under PDF font.
• As you flip through the font styles, a pop up at the bottom announces the language that particular style supports (Chinese, Japanese etc.). This will assist you in selecting the right font style. Save your changes before proceeding.

Eg : The font style ‘Ar PL New Sung’ will support Chinese characters on your print/PDF.

Sage business cloud only has arial and helvtica as an option therefore looks like it won't be an option, however if you have found an answer and got it working please let me know. 

Hi Fadi,

Thank you for your reply.  I've also seen that there are only 2 fonts available on SBC.  Although I have seen that the Sage Template Designer does offer some more advanced features for customising the layouts etc, but I am unable to access the template designer, so not sure whether it's a paid feature or whether it's not compatible.  It's a shame that we aren't able to upload our own fonts.  In the meantime, the only workaround is to select the text on the screen using the mouse and then selecting to "Print Selection" in the print dialog.  It's very tedious and extremely ungrateful, but it's the only way it can work.

Would be great to see how much demand there is from other users to push this along to the development team to add as a feature.  I would assume it's straightforward since it's just a simple mod to allow more fonts.  Thanks anyway!

Just a nudge to see if there has been any advancement in this feature.  Has anyone found a way to get dual language to print on invoices/delivery notes?

Hi Joe,

Thanks for using Sage City.

At present there is no support for non-english character sets in Sage Accounting, but it's certainly something that could be suggested for future development, you can add it to the wishlist here >

Regards

Andy

Sage UKI

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply.  But I've already submitted a request on the wishlist page a year ago, but it seems that the feature still hasn't been available.  Possibly due to lack of demand.  But strangely, this seems to just be a limitation in the font set used.  If the Arial Unicode MS font can be used on the platform, then the printing would be all done through the hardware rather than needing extra functionality provided since the non-English fonts display perfectly on the screen.  This feature is also available on the standalone desktop version.  Please advise.  Thanks again.

Hi, just a thought.  How many products do you have? Could you upload the chinese description as an image into the product record, and amend the invoice layout so that the image will print out under the english description.

Hi Marky,

That's a great suggestion, but we have over around 600 items on our product list so it would be a big operation.  But, if we were to do it this way, how much space would the image take up on the invoice beside each item?  Some of our invoices contain up to 30 items or more, if it would require lots more pages, it would also cause a lot of headaches.  Great idea though!

EDIT: I don't see an option to add images to products on Sageone.

Ah, my bad.  I'm using Sage 50 and that's what I based my query on. It would have taken me about a week for 600 products. In terms of space, if the chinese text is the same size as other text, then it's image would be the same size as it would be if you had the ability to display the text in the first place.  Apologies for leading you up the garden path.

Hi Marky,

No worries, but I do appreciate that suggestion.  I have in fact managed to find a YouTube video which does show how to add images to Sageone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3tszT-hN8

But for some reason, the screen for me looks different.  I don't have those tabs on mine, there's no way to add images in any of the tabs via my dashboard.  

Hi, I checked with the product developers to see if there was any news on alternative character sets and they confirmed that whilst the suggestion has been logged, I'm afraid it's not yet on the product road map. 

With regard to that video, that's the South African variant of the software which is different to the UK and Ireland version so a number of the options shown will not appear in your software.

Andy

Sage UKI

Hi Andy,

Much appreciated for checking.  Are there any SAGE systems which does allow for alternative character sets which are cloud-based?  Surely something is available for Asia-specific companies which would require foreign characters.  Thanks!

Hi, I'm not aware of any products that allow multiple character sets at the same time, I believe the character set is normally reliant on the region the software is being used in.

There are variants of the software for use in Asia and the Pacifc region, for example Chinese (PRC) here: https://www.sage.com/zh-cn/

To check for cloud accounting products by region, you can scroll to the foot of this site and click to choose your region and language: https://www.sage.com/en-gb/sage-business-cloud/accounting/

Thanks Andy,

Looking at the various products, it seems that for regions which have foreign character sets (i.e. China and Hong Kong), they offer Sage X3 or Sage 300.  How do these differ from Sage One cloud?  The different variations are quite confusing.  Even more confusing is why Sage One allows the screen to display foreign characters, but the printouts do not.

Hi, i don't work directly with those particular products but found some more information about them as follows:

• Sage X3: https://www.sage.com/en-gb/sage-business-cloud/sage-x3/request-product-tour/
• Sage 300: https://www.sage.com/en-us/products/sage-300/

Hi Joe.  How are you actually entering your chinese text?  Is the english and chinese text within the same field?  Could you paste an example in your reply?

Hi Marky,

It is on the same line:

The Chinese text shows fine on all the screens across Sage on the browser, but once it is printed, all the Chinese text is missing.

I see, so there's no font selection at this point, you are simply entering a string of valid text.  What happens if you cut and paste the text into a reply on here?

It shows correctly.

YEOS Chilli Garlic Sauce 蒜蓉辣椒酱

What happens if you put some english text at the end of the chinese.  If that prints with the chinese text missing, then that points to the output being parsed, but not the inputs, i.e. the way Sage is handling the text is not being consistent throughout the program, aka it's a bug.

The Chinese text is missed out.

Here's the on screen:

But on the invoice printed out and PDF: