That's the dilemma.

Here's a cheat sheet Sage published recently that summarizes a lot of the pricing and info that you mentioned.

www.90minds.com/.../everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sage-erp-intelligence-reporting-faq-pricing-licensing

Renovo is more comparable to FRX -- as it's not Excel based and in some cases (for a fee) Renovo can migrate your existing FRX data. So if you have a lot of FRX reports that you love, that you want to migrate exactly and in the past (and future) you do not expect to be creating new reports - Renovi may be less expensive overall.

The big three we see are:

Sage Intelligence

BizNet

Renovo

In some cases users look at F9 but I view that option as less of a financial reporting tool than the three above.

We generally discount the "free" license of SI because as you point out there are additional costs and if push comes to shove my guess is you can negotiate with BizNet or Renovo because they all know they are competing against free.

Great information Wayne.  Thanks.  I did not know there is a subscription option.  We have 5 companies to consolidate that translates to 129 a month.  This might give us enough time to figure out if we can work with the product.  I wonder if there is a minimum amount of months.  

If you are only doing financials,   you do not need the connector.  However you might want to purchase a designer license.

The connector license is if you need to establish links to data in Sage 100 that are not part of the default connections.  

ok, i think I see.  We only need Sage G/L Data.  We need consolidated financials and "tree" analysis and custom financials.  Therefore, we need the Designer License.  And that is it.  So, $1,060 and if we need additional licenses, it would be more.

We have just gone through a very painful upgrade from MAS200 4.5/FRx to Sage 100 ERP 2014/Sage MAS Intelligence.  If we had to do it again, we would have looked into Renova and NOT gone with SMI.  

Another thing to consider....we've needed some support from Alchemex (who developed the program), which is located in South Africa and it's been difficult getting on their schedule.  From our perspective the support has been needed a great deal more than with FRx and it's been more difficult to get.  

Good luck with your choice!

Thanks...Renova is the direction I think we are going.  I thought Sage supplies support for SMI?

They do support SMI, but it's limited and many times the support comes from the users on this forum.  Calling in for support has been extremely cumbersome and time consuming.  We have Gold Support and we usually have at least a 5-10 min wait before even talking with a rep, so I find most of the help online.  We are dealing with an add-in issue and Sage Support is unable to assist so we have to wait to discuss with Alchemex.  It's just been very frustrating!  

Last time I checked the designer for SMI was only about $700?   The $1,060 sounds like an old price list before they reduced the price.

I don't know. I have asked 4 people and get different answers.  

Hi all, the Designer module is now $1060 as the price was increased at the first of the year.  Another option is going with the subscription price which is based on number of companies but includes all modules, including Report Designer and Connector (used for consolidation) and unlimited licenses for Report Manager and Report Viewer.  

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have additional questions.