Sage 50/Sage50cloud Accounting 2020 (formerly Peachtree Accounting) doesn’t bring any groundbreaking new features but it definitely brings some welcome changes. These are the kind of small changes that long time users often wonder why they can’t get, but software publishers are hesitant to invest time into because they don’t give them new features to advertise. So here’s what’s new in version 2020.
- Select a Customer Contact When Emailing – When emailing an invoice or other customer form, there will now be a drop-down list that let’s you choose from the list of contacts for that customer. Previously it would only send to the primary email for each customer. You are still limited to one contact per email. This only works when sending individual emails, not when batch emailing forms. This new drop-down menu is available in Quotes, Sales Orders, Proposals, Sales/Invoicing, Receive Money, and Credit Memos.
- Longer Deposit Ticket ID – The Deposit Ticket ID field has been expanded from 8 characters to 20 characters. This will be a big benefit to anyone who likes to use the date as part of their deposit ticket ID.
- Longer Address Fields – The address fields for customers, vendors, and employees have been expanded from 30 characters to 50.
- Longer Item Type Field – The Item Type field for inventory items has been expanded from 8 characters to 20.
- Vendor Notes Field – In the Maintain Vendors screen a Notes field has been added that can hold up to 255 characters. The note field does not print on any forms.
- Additional Fields on the Withholding Info Tab – Several states have passed legislation that requires new payroll deductions and formulas. To accommodate these new formulas and the variables that they require, Sage has added “Special 3”, “Special 4″, and Special 5” fields to the Withholding Info tab of the Maintain Employees window.
- Inbox Bell Icon – In the upper right corner of the main Sage 50 window, a bell icon has been added to notify you of unread messages from Sage.
- Database Upgrade from Pervasive v11 to Actian Zen v13 – The database engine that Sage 50 uses to manage your data (Pervasive) has been renamed “Actian Zen” and Sage has switched from using version 11 to version 13. This is a behind-the-scenes change that won’t directly affect how most people use Sage 50. But according to Sage, it will improve performance in some database operations, it includes the latest security countermeasures to protect your data, and it helps ensure compatibility with the latest Windows updates. There is one aspect of this change that will affect some users. Because of the database change, Sage 50 versions older than 2019 will not work on the same computer as Sage 50 2020. But this will affect very few people other than accountants who need to support clients on multiple versions of Sage 50.
The first time you open your company in version 2020, the data will need to be converted. This is an automated process, but it can take a little while for a large database. So don’t install the upgrade at a time when you’ll be rushed to get back into Sage 50. After installing the upgrade I strongly recommend first opening your company at the server or the computer that holds your Sage 50 data.
NOTE: Version 2020 of Sage 50 can only convert data from versions 2014 and later. I can provide conversion services for data from older versions.
I didn’t take time to create my own new features video, but this video from Sage does a good job of showing what’s new in version 2020.
