Ultimate Guide to Sage 100

What Is Sage Accounting Software?

Executives, business owners, and other decision-makers looking for time-tested, reliable platforms for managing business processes often turn to Sage 100 ERP.

Sage 100 is designed for small and medium-sized organizations (SMBs), and provides an impressive array of cloud-connected apps that can streamline your operations, increase productivity, and ultimately accelerate growth.

History of Sage 100

The Sage 100 software has accounting software at its core. Sage 100, originally called MAS 90, was a software designed for accountants to use. Accountants began recommending and reselling Sage MAS 90 and its more robust sister product Sage MAS 200 to their clients.

As more capabilities were added to meet the demand of the clients of accountants, and as laws regulating accounting became more strict, Sage rebranded MAS 90 and MAS 200 as Sage 100 Standard and Sage 100 Advanced respectively. Now Sage products are sold primarily by software consulting companies like Kissinger Associates.

Sage 100 Accounting Capabilities

Generally, included in this platform are four Sage 100 accounting software modules:

• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Bank Reconciliation

On top of these features, the platform supports an on-premise or a private cloud-hosted ecosystem that enables accessibility and enterprise-grade security, making Sage accounting software cost-effective for most industries.

Because of its customizability and integration potential, Sage 100 has emerged as a leading ERP for small businesses, manufacturing, and many other industries.

Sage Data & Analytics

Sage Data & Analytics is a modern business intelligence (BI) solution with Sage X3 and Sage 100, among others. It offers unprecedented visibility over relevant information, helping you and your team create data-driven decisions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning let it generate dashboards and visualize data, making large volumes of data easier to digest.

Sage 100 Features

Whether you’re looking to set up Sage for construction or develop the best manufacturing ERP or distribution ERP for your organization, it’s important to familiarize yourself with some of the modules available within the Sage environment.

Choosing from the modules listed below helps you build a custom ERP system for manufacturing plants, an ERP for distributors, or a full ERP in construction-related businesses. More importantly, finding the modules that add value to your company lets you design a system with Sage 100 cost-effectiveness optimized.

Accounting and Finance:

Accounts Payable

A long-time part of the Sage 100 ERP system in manufacturing and other industries is the Accounts Payable module, offering a comprehensive solution for managing organizational expenses. It comes in a dual-grid entry screen that leads to an intuitive reporting platform.

Accounts Receivable

To keep the business running, keep track of the money you are owed and ensure you get paid on time. With tracking of payments received and due dates, Sage Accounts Receivable helps you stay on top of the payments you can expect from your customers.

Bank Reconciliation

The Bank Reconciliation module makes detecting and addressing discrepancies between cash records easier. The Bank Reconciliation is a small yet necessary addition to ERP for process manufacturing, construction, and other industries to keep your ledgers and bank statements aligned and accurate.

Sage Payroll

Address gaps in your compensation and benefits processes with Sage Payroll services. This module allows you to automatically pay your employees’ wages, make deductions, and withhold taxes. Its payment platforms accommodate business checks and direct payments.

Aside from the basic payroll tracking services, this module offers additional features to help you with your tax filing and accounting and finances.

General Ledger

Do away with the manual ledgers of the past and keep all your accounts, financial reports, and journals all in one place with the Sage General Ledger. The ledger is automatically updated with entries and changes made from other associated modules.

Paperless Office

The Sage Paperless Office helps you transition into a modern, paperless organization with an easier way to convert office documents into a digitized PDF format. Additionally, it comes with consolidation and delivery options to facilitate quicker delivery of invoices to customers in order to speed up collections.

Credits: Olya Kobruseva

Business Intelligence and Custom Reporting:

Business Insights Dashboard

Designed to give you the data you need to make business decisions, the Business Insights Dashboard is a customizable feature that lets you identify the data you need and quickly access them.

Flexible and intuitive, the Business Insights Dashboard offers critical information in a simplified data visualization format. It lets administrators and managers see the information they need without digging into volumes of raw data.

Business Insights Explorer

For a more detailed examination of data relating to your company processes, the Business Insights Explorer is in charge of helping you navigate deeper and deeper without getting lost in the massive amount of raw data available.

Popularly divided into the Navigation, the Data View, and the Preview panes, the Insights Explorer is a tool that is customizable and adapts to your commonly used data ranges.

Crystal Reports

For most employees, crafting a report that is timely and accurate is often a challenge in itself. With Sage Crystal Reports, however, reporting is made easier thanks to its integration with the full Sage ERP environment and its library of report templates.

Custom Office

As a far-reaching Sage 100 feature, Custom Office connects with most tools under the Sage environment, allowing users to customize the Sage 100 interface with user-defined fields and other customizations.

It serves as a kick-off solution for companies exploring additional integrations and further customizing the Sage experience to suit their unique needs and address their challenges.

Sage Intelligence

At its core, Sage Intelligence is a reporting platform that helps you create documents and share updates based on meaningful and reliable information drawn from other parts of your ERP environment. Save time and navigate across different parts of the business with ease and confidence with Sage Intelligence.

Credit Card Processing:

Sage 100 Credit Card Processing

For secure and compliant processing of credit card payments, the built-in solution offered by Sage 100 Credit Card is one of the most preferred, especially in the retail and eCommerce sectors. It accepts all major credit cards and offers the flexibility to add features such as one-time or recurring automated deposits, mobile payments, and more.

Import / Export:

Visual Integrator

With visual-based programming design, Visual Integrator allows easy export or import of data from a separate software into the Sage 100. It ensures all transmitted data is integrated using Sage business rules and remains aligned with the rest of your ERP requirements, making it vital for your company’s Sage software construction process or important processes for other industries.

Inventory Management:

Barcode

Streamline your inventory and warehouse management processes with barcoding capabilities. Print barcodes for assets directly from depreciation modules or use pre-printed barcodes and upload them to your system. It also works with the standard barcode scanner or Android mobile device.

Inventory Management

Reliable asset tracking and inventory control with this Sage module let you constantly provide for your customer’s needs. It helps streamline your finances by minimizing instances of over or understocking and managing multiple currencies to handle multiple suppliers and customers.

Multi-Bin

Particularly designed as a distribution and manufacturing ERP software tool, the Multi-Bin module lets you track a single item across multiple bin locations. It integrates fully into Sage Work Order, Production Management, and Operations Management platforms.

Purchase Order

With the Purchase Order management module, you can cut down on precious invoice-to-payment time and hours of laborious data entry. Its features aim to help businesses achieve a robust transaction and purchase approval process that reduces the lead time needed to get what you need.

Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)

Product returns and repairs are an inevitable part of the business. To ensure that you keep customers satisfied without overextending your resources. The Return Merchandise Authorization module lets you handle customer returns through credit, refund, repair, replacement, or substitution.

Sales Order

Track all your sales items with the Sales Order management module and make sure each one of them reaches its intended destination. It lets you track stock items throughout the order process, from the product allocation to a customer order until dispatch.

Manufacturing:

Bill of Materials

This module makes it easier to generate a BoM report, making it an essential part of your ERP software. This Sage manufacturing software lets you draw and reserve materials from your inventory, with all relevant records updated in real-time.

Inventory Requirements Planning

The Inventory Requirements Planning add-on to Sage 100 and Sage 100 cloud accelerates the relevant work processes of purchasing, inventory management, and production management. It leaves your team members to focus on decision-making.

Material Requirements Planning

The MRP module for Sage helps your purchasing and inventory teams assess your demands based on current sales projections and your supply from open POs and existing stock levels. This Sage 100 manufacturing module also provides an estimated timeline for each inventory item by considering several factors.

Sage 100 Operations Management

With the Sage 100 Operations Management module, you can quickly generate job cost estimates and create a project proposal from the native environment. It offers your teams an accurate overview of the costs and helps them make the right pricing decisions for every project.

Sage 100 Production Management

Replacing the legacy Sage 100 Work Order module, Sage 100 Production Management offers production and inventory order tracking tools. Aside from the seamless transition of assets and files from its precedent module, this Sage 100 manufacturing favorite also features defined fields and tablets, batch data entry, and more.

Work Order

The Sage Work Order Module was formerly included in the ERP MAS 90 and MAS 200 platforms, serving as an integral part of the Sage 100 Manufacturing suite. This ERP manufacturing software module helps assign work orders, generate schedules, and monitor the costs involved in your manufacturing processes.

Payroll:

Direct Deposit

A payments solution integrated with the Sage 100 platform, Direct Deposit is a secure channel to ensure you get through every payday without the hassle. Remove costly charges, time-consuming trips to the bank, and repeated data encoding into your general ledger.

Electronic Reporting

Draw information immediately from the rest of your Sage 100 platform and generate the necessary forms for the electronic filing of tax and income forms, such as the 1099-INT and 1099-MISC, among others. It also includes data for W-2 or 1099 formats requiring the MMREF-1 or the TIB-4 formats.

Federal and State eFiling and Reporting

With the Federal and State eFiling and Reporting module, be ready to print signature-ready federal and tax forms anytime. This Sage business cloud accounting module also stores all your generated forms, creating a history of accomplished forms for your reference.

Payroll

Manage payroll for your employees—compensations, benefits, payslips, W2 forms—with reduced lead time and paperwork required. Perfect for small businesses, you can complete your payroll without errors and fully comply with wage and hour laws.

TimeCard

Streamline your employee time information monitoring with the TimeCard module, an important addition to the Payroll software and Job Cost modules. Aside from automating your time card system, it allows you to send reports to government agencies based on separate job numbers and labor codes.

Project Management:

Job Cost

Make accurate estimates of every job order you handle, thanks to its versatile project management and detailed accounting capabilities. Particularly designed to boost your Sage construction and real estate toolset, it offers unprecedented insights into the profitability of your projects.

Add-Ons

Expand your horizons with additional, specialized solutions for Sage 100. On top of the essential features that come with your Sage subscription, these add-ons can help meet unique needs and further accelerate your digital transformation.

Sage AP Automation (by Beanworks)

Accounts payable innovator Beanworks has developed Sage AP Automation for increased control over your AP processes.

Powered by Beanworks’ SmartCoding technology, it further speeds up your process by “learning” your frequent general ledger (GL) coding for recurring payments, making it a practical part of the full Sage accounting software solution.

Sage Sales Tax (by Avalara)

Avalara helps your finance team meet their complete tax compliance requirements without having to leave your Sage 100 ERP or Sage Intacct environment. With Sage Sales Tax, you can calculate tax accurately, prepare returns, and manage your exemption certificates.

It also works for multi-site businesses by helping you track your economic nexus liabilities in different states.

Paya Payments Processing

For eCommerce and retail businesses, a one-point solution that accepts multiple payment channels helps. It makes your business accessible to customers and easier to track your cash flow. Paya Payments Processing helps you do just that.

Formerly Sage Payment Solutions, Paya Payments Processing allows you to complete sales with a variety of methods. From credit and debit cards, checks, ACH transfers, and even gift cards, Paya offers a quick and secure way of receiving payment.

Sage Intelligence

To help you communicate relevant business information across different teams, Sage Intelligence offers a massive library of ready-to-use report and dashboard formats. Generate reports and presentations without leaving your native Sage environment, making it an integral part of a robust ERP for manufacturing and other industries.

In using Sage Intelligence, you only need to choose the report format and the data you need. The platform supports Microsoft Excel on top of other ODBC-compliant data sources. Work online or offline, this tool helps you stay on top of critical business processes.

Sage Inventory Advisor

For industries with demanding inventory management challenges, the Sage Inventory Advisory is a definite must-have. Users can always stay on top of your inventory across multiple products and store locations.

It also helps you improve your inventory in the long run with its regular inventory health check. This ERP tool supports optimal planning, ultimately reducing your stockouts and expired inventories.

Sage CRM

Sage CRM has become one of the best CRM software examples businesses use worldwide. Strengthen sales campaigns by tracking customers across touchpoints to most fully serve their needs.

Sage Fixed Assets

Ensure the productive management of your fixed assets across their lifespans with Sage Fixed Assets. It lets you create a separate tax and accounting book that automatically tracks the depreciation for each item.

Sage Alerts and Workflow

To keep your entire team on top of any business event, Sage Alerts and Workflow gives you the help you need. With this ERP software, manufacturing teams can create events such as invoices due, payables and receivables, or relevant critical support issues.

It also helps automate workflow within your ERP in eCommerce, construction, distribution, or similar industries. This Sage manufacturing add-on lets your employees focus on more critical tasks.

Kissinger Add-Ons

What makes Sage 100 so useful for businesses is the degree to which you can add enhancements and integrations to suit your business’s unique needs. The Sage-built products only scratch the surface of Sage 100’s full capabilities. To give you an idea, here are some software solutions designed by Kissinger Associates.

EDI Advantage – integrated EDI for Sage 100

EDI Advantage automatically processes EDI documents using trading partner requirements. It creates invoices and helps you ensure correct EDI payments, meaning you don’t have to lose precious man-hours manually entering and processing EDI transactions.

Web-Stor – eCommerce integration for Sage 100

This ERP integrated eCommerce solution connects with B2C and B2B platforms. Having this Sage eCommerce module eliminates costly errors from manual data entry and the productivity losses from having to manually process orders from your online store.

With the Web-Stor solution activated, accelerate eCommerce integration with ERP as you sit back and watch your sales grow. Benefit from superior customer experience and streamlined processing of orders.

AIA Job Cost Billing

The AIA billing system provides integrated AIA billing within Sage 100. This enables contractors, architects, and engineers to work seamlessly in accordance with AIA standards.

With the AIA-complaint forms, this popular Sage Construction enhancement makes it easier to create your AIA G702 Application and Certificate of Payment and the G703 Continuation forms.

Certified Payroll

Take your certified job payroll process to the next level with the Certified Payroll add-on. It comes with a worksheet that completes the forms for certified payments required in your local area.

Usually integrated with the Job Cost billing module, it lets you choose which positions to include in the worksheet. Include or exclude specific positions requiring only the labor codes.

Union Payroll

Sage 100 Union Payroll reduces your reporting worries by automating union labor payroll processing requirements: wages, deductions, benefits, and more. Union Payroll for Sage 100 helps automate complicated fringe benefit calculations and produces the reports you need.

Industries Sage 100 Serves

Wholesale distribution

Control your entire supply chain and optimize profitability with an end-to-end solution for your wholesale payments and procurement needs. Automate inventory, invoices, and sales and purchase order monitoring.

Manufacturing

For business leaders who need a smarter way to boost their manufacturing software ERP capability, Sage offers a full platform to handle your needs. With the Sage ERP system, streamline manufacturing management for increased productivity and reduced interruptions.

From project and production management to payroll and accounting, you and your business leaders can stay on top of all aspects of running your production line by creating the best ERP systems for manufacturing, guided by your unique needs.

Discrete manufacturing

For a discrete manufacturing process, ERP solutions help you gain insights into your costs, inventory, and product quality, which are all important for ensuring your company’s survival and growth. With the Sage ERP software for manufacturing industries, you’ll manage operations more efficiently.

Whether a full manufacturing ERP system or a specialized MRP for your market, you can take the Sage modules and add-ons to create a Sage manufacturing solution that meets your needs.

Process manufacturing

Achieve real-time visibility into your costs and quality with a reliable process manufacturing ERP, ensuring product quality and maintaining compliance even with the most stringent standards. You can create your custom ERP for process manufacturing with the Sage solutions available.

eCommerce

The Sage 100 eCommerce solution helps small business owners address the challenge of integrating with their online store. Accelerate ERP integration with eCommerce platforms through real-time bi-directional integration solutions.

Use eCommerce integration to bring orders received in WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and other storefronts into Sage 100 automatically.