Business Software Consulting – May 2020 Newsletter

• Expires May 31 www.sageu.com

2. Sage COVID-19: Business Support Finder

• The US government has announced various programs to help businesses access financial support to tackle the challenges they’re facing due to COVID-19.
• Sage has put together this simple tool to help you understand which of these programs your business could be eligible for and clear guidance on how you access them.

3. Avalara Sales Tax Compliance

Assess your tax compliance risk and get 3 months free automation

As companies look for ways to make better use of their precious resources, managing tax compliance is one of those time-consuming processes that are high on the list to automate. Here are two actions you can take to get started:

• Take Avalara’s free economic nexus assessment – Staying compliant in multiple states is hard, especially since sales tax rates and rules change frequently, and lots of businesses are changing how they go to market. Most states now require you to register, collect, and remit sales tax if your sales into that state exceed certain economic nexus thresholds. Take this free Sales Tax Risk Assessment to help determine where your sales have created a need to register to collect and remit sales tax.
• Automate your sales tax compliance – If you are confident in your nexus footprint, then take the next step and remove your tax compliance burden altogether. Avalara is offering three months of tax automation at no cost when you add our premier cloud-based tax compliance suite to your finance and commerce systems.

For a limited time: Enjoy the power of automating sales tax calculations and filing returns for free for three months and make no payments for 90 days when you sign up for 12-months of AvaTax or AvaTax and Avalara Returns with annual billing via automatic payment. Offer valid for new Avalara customers only and expires on June 30th, 2020.

Questions? Reach out to us. We’re here to help.

4. DocLink – Document Management Remotely

We realize that these are challenging times, and we see many companies struggling to figure out how to continue operations with a remote workforce.

If you and your staff are not able to access the documents and data you need to remotely conduct business as usual, this is a good time to re-evaluate how you handle your business documents and data. DocLink is the Sage-endorsed document management and workflow automation solution. They help companies go paperless and automate any business processes so you can do your work from anywhere.

Check out these short videos and then contact Chortek if you want to learn more about DocLink:

• Make a Digital Transformation with DocLink
• Customers share the power of DocLink and Going Paperless

5. Sage Payroll Will Stop Working With TLS 1.0 On June 15, 2020

Sage recently sent another notice that as of June 15, 2020 Payroll users must be on version 2018.3 or higher and using the most current TLS protocol in order to communicate with the Sage Payroll Tax Calculation Engine.

6. Sage 100cloud Version 2020 – Release date March 18, 2020

New features in the Sage 100 version 2020 release are listed below.  Since most of these features will only be available in Sage 100cloud, consider making plans to migrate to subscription to take advantage of these new features.

• Support for International Addresses(see example below) – Customer and Contact files
  • Expanded address fields from 30 to 40 characters
  • City from 20 to 30 characters
  • Telephone from 17 to 20 characters and Extension from 5 to 6 characters
• Customer name from 30 to 50 characters
• Multiple POs on a single receipt/invoice/return
  • Multiple Sales orders on once invoice in a prior release
• Accounts Payable reverse check run utility (verses one at a time previously)
• Inventory Lot/Serial expiration dates
• eInvoicing (powered by Paya) – email customer invoices with ability to pay via ACH, Credit Card, etc.
  • Imports back to Cash Receipt entry for posting
• Vendor and Customer Personal Information Encryption (CCPA)
• Custom Office – defer/schedule update of UDF’s/UDT’s additions/changes, etc
• and much more….

What’s New in Sage 100 2020

Sage Guide to Version 2020 
The following guides can help you better understand the changes to Version 2020:

Sage 100 Product Documents
Sage 100cloud Release Highlights

7. Sage CRM 2020

• Mailchimp Integration Enhancements
• Automatic detection of duplicate email addresses in Sage CRM
• Removed ActiveX dependency
• Nested Mail Merge Support
• Support for AWS installation
• New Help and User Assistance Content
• See other “What’s New in CRM” releases on our Document Library under the Sage Customer Relationship Management section
• What’s New in Sage CRM 2020 R1

8. Sage 50cloud 2020

Sage 50cloud 2020 was released last year and since then, service pack one and two have also been released. In case you didn’t have time to go over all the new stuff in these updates, we’re listing them out for you here. Perhaps you can take advantage of some of them to make your life easier!

New Features in version 2020.0

• New and expanded data entry fields
  • Billing addresses from 30 to 50 characters
    • Customer
    • Sales Order
    • Vendor
    • Employee
  • Receive Money window – deposit ticket ID = 20 characters
  • Item type = 20 characters
  • Vendors – new notes field that will give you up to 255 characters
• Additional payroll withholding fields
  • Special withholding fields – 3 additional fields added
• Email sales forms to additional customer contacts
  • Email defaulted to primary contact
    • Now, you can click the “email’ button, select “to” field and choose the additional contact to send the emailed form. Does not pertain to “batch printing”
    • Pertains to all customer forms
      • Quotes
      • Sales orders
      • Proposals
      • Invoices
      • Receipts
      • Credit memos
    • Upgraded database engine (Actian Zen PSQL 13)
    • New Notification button at top of Sage 50 window.
      • No more pop ups for updates, etc.
      • Notification button will show when a message exists.

New Features in version 2020.1

• Payroll tax law compliance and improvements
  • W4 new form – withholding info tab
    • Filing status dropdown
    • Hired before or after 1/1/2020 new fields
  • 1099 eFiling is easier in the “preparer” grid
  • Aatrix has new HR forms and reports
• Cloud / Mobile apps and services menu includes mobile invoicing

New Features in version 2020.2

• New drag and drop attachments feature – system wide
  • Drag and drop files into attachments window after clicking the “attach” button on appropriate windows
• Additional HR forms and reports available in Aatrix
  • Employee manual
  • Employee hire packets
  • Employee termination packets
  • Customize all forms and reports with your logo and information.
  • Create alerts

Remember that Microsoft has ended support for Windows version 7, therefore so has Sage. A warning message will appear to let you know this if you have Sage 50 version 2020.2 installed onto a Windows 7 workstation.

If you have any questions on these new features, please call Debby Hanson at 920-968-0980 or email dhanson@chortek.com

9. Sage 100cloud Version 2017 support ends 9/30/2020. Product Updates for 2018 already ended

• Sage 100 Version 2017 customers are now on the clock to get upgraded before support ends on 9/30/2020. Please see our website for What’s New in each edition and contact your account manager to conduct a planning meeting for your upgrade.
• Product Updates for Version 2018 have also ended although the product is supported through 9/30/21

11. Chortek Updates

• Steve will be attending the ITA Spring Conference July 26-28 in Savannah, GA (originally scheduled for April)
• Mark will be attending Sage Summit in December – originally scheduled for May
• Steve is also serving on the Avalara Partner Advisory Board – last meeting was May 12 – see Avalara promotion above.

13. Resources for Sage 100/100c Users

• Sage Webinars: Sage 100 Cloud Learning Series
• Please visit our document library to view the What’s New documents for Sage 100 versions 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (these are the currently supported versions). Past versions are also listed.
• Supported Versions: Support for Version 2017 will end 9/30/20.
• Supported Platform Matrix by version and level: i.e. Windows 10 supported in Version 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 only and support for Windows Server 2016 started with Version 2016. Windows Server 2019 is supported as of Version 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
• Files to exclude from Anti-Virus programs – most slowness issues in Sage 100 are anti-virus scanning or hardware related. Be sure to check anti-virus software first.
• YouTube: Sage 100 and Sage Software NA videos
• YouTube: Sage CRM

14. What software does Chortek Support?

• Sage Intacct
• QuickBooks
• Sage 50cloud (formerly Peachtree)
• Sage BusinessWorks
• Sage 100 and 100cloud
• Sage 100cloud Manufacturing (ie JobOps)
• Sage CRM
• Sage Fixed Assets
• Sage Alerts & Workflow
• Sage Inventory Advisor
• Sage AP Automation
• Sage 100 integrated products:
• ScanForce and Scanco for warehouse automation and bar code
• Starship for shipping integration with USPS, UPS, Fedex and others
• EDI Solutions from TrueCommerce, SPS Commerce and Mapadoc
• Avalara for Sales Tax Automation
• Altec for Document Management
• Credit Card Processing – Paya, APS and Century Business
• Web Store interfaces – link web orders to Sage Order Entry (CIMCloud and WebServices)
• MS Access, MS SQL and Crystal Reports