Sage 100 in Canada

3 minute read time.

Good news is always welcome, and for all my fellow Canadians out there I have some GREAT news, especially if you are looking for accounting software to work with your small / medium businesses!  Sage 100 can work within Canada, with the help of your friendly neighbourhood Sage Partner / Consultant. 

(Note: by “Sage 100” I am referring to the software formerly known as MAS90 / MAS200 / Sage 100 ERP). 

Sage 100 is a scalable, mature and feature rich software package which has many merits and I won’t delve into the full details here, but some may notice a few features which are designed specifically for our U.S. neighbours to the South.  I’m here to say that none of those features are a problem for our Canadian Sage 100 users! 

As many of us are now working from outside a conventional office setting, it quickly becomes apparent that EFT payments are a lot easier to deal with, compared with printing / mailing canada & us flagsphysical cheques.  The Sage 100 features for sending electronic payments (ACH) are for use with payments within the U.S. banking system.  Each Canadian bank has their own EFT file format, and Sage 100’s ACH features simply won’t work up here.  This doesn’t mean Canadian’s have to type accounts / amounts into a banking website while working with EFT though.  We’ve come up with a process (using the Sage 100 Custom Office module, a script, and some inexpensive 3rd party software) that allows for extracting payment data, formatted properly for your favourite Canadian bank’s own EFT file format.  Once configured, preparing a Canadian EFT file is only a few clicks away! 

What about currency you ask?  If you only do business in CAD, regular Sage 100 will work for you perfectly.  If you want to work with foreign currency transactions without a lot of manual calculations (eg. converting a USD vendor invoice into CAD for entry into the system, or invoicing customers in USD who then pay in USD), that’s not a problem! There is a full-featured suite of enhancements which add multi-currency functionality to Sage 100 and is seamlessly integrated into every applicable data entry screen and report! 

Obviously, the personal / payroll income tax rules in Canada are very different than for the U.S., and the integrated Sage 100 Payroll module is built for American tax laws.  That just means you can use your favourite Canadian payroll software / service, and import your payroll numbers into Sage 100 as GL journal entries (using the Visual Integrator module, assuming a spreadsheet of the data can be obtained from the external source). 

Sales tax in the U.S. is overly complicated (from our perspective) often requiring a 3rd party service (Avalara) to keep on top of all the tax rules.  North of the border things are so much easier, and the Sage 100 sales tax features work wonderfully with Canadian sales tax laws without any customization or extra services to manage the settings!  (This includes tracking input tax credits, and configurable settings for GST / HST / PST / QST). 

There are more examples of special country-specific circumstances, but every time we’ve had some “fun” while helping our Canadian clients work with Sage 100, we’ve risen to the challenge.  The software is highly flexible and adaptable with scripting, custom fields, a significant library of existing enhancements, as well as a number of trusted service providers to help tune everything for your unique business needs.  Sage may not actively promote this specific software within Canada anymore, yet as an experienced Canadian Sage Partner consulting firm we can truly say: we’ve been supporting Sage 100 successfully here for decades!   

So, to all Canadian businesses out there, you really should consider Sage 100 as a potential tool to help your company (or companies!) run more efficiently and grow, because Sage 100 works perfectly well in Canada too! 

 

Kevin Moyes 

Munjal-White Consulting Corp. 
Based in Toronto, we are a certified Sage Partner consulting firm with decades of experience helping our many clients (in Canada and across the U.S.) get the most out of their Sage 100 systems.  Our hands-on services (delivered primarily through remote connections) include business process consulting, data migration, support, upgrades, customization, scripting, report automation, systems configuration and training; our team having detailed experience working with a variety of businesses including distribution and light manufacturing.  By becoming familiar with your business operations, we seek status as a trusted advisor whose expertise reaches beyond systems support, helping you solve your business problems with tools we know very well. 
www.munjalwhite.com 
[email protected]