Sage Accounting vs. Toast Payroll & Team Management

My experience comes from the integration and development level, and Sage Accounting has been overall great to work with. The tools provided and support offered have been extremely useful for our implementations, and they continue to update and improve at a quick pace. Any issues we've encountered with integrations have either been resolved by Sage Accounting through updates, or different methods brought to us from support to handle those issues from a different angle.

Incentivized

Toast Payroll and Team Management is great for people in the restaurant business that have trouble keeping record of tips and splitting tips among several employees. Restaurant business can also print reports by category to see earnings by type of employee. The software is niched to mainly restaurants, so any other industry would typically not use Toast Payroll.

Incentivized

• Bank integration - being able to extract banking transaction into Sage Accounting.
• Allocation rules - transactions are auto-allocated once allocation rules have been set up. This is a great time-saver.
• Flexibility - the ability to view transactions, click on them to the allocation point and rectifying if required saves having to create journals, and therefore time. General ledgers therefore stay cleaner and more user-friendly.

Incentivized

• HR Services. StratEx provides you a dedicated HR Services Account Manager. This person not only knows the intricacies of the HR software, but also supports all HR functions within the organization. Our StratEx HR Services Manager stays up-to-date on all laws and governmental guidance and provides support across our multi-location workforce.
• Sales Experience. We sat through several proposals and demos from lots of companies (including the big players, like ADP, Ultimate, and Ceridian) and all of them were just completely useless. We often left with more questions than we had and we could get no answers--just the same corporate jargon. StratEx offered a different experience. A quick introductory call before we even started looking, and a low-pressure, friendly conversation where they really discovered who we are as a company and then proposed how they could meet our needs.
• Software support. From the very beginning, the software support was out of this world. During implementation, I could pick up the phone and call one of two people who I had started building a relationship with. They knew me, our account, our practices --- everything. They waited until I told them I was ready to move to General Support. General Support isn't a bad thing! Our dedicated team of two specialized in implementation and they were released to go work on the next client. General Support is a dedicated group of three or four people who also know me and our practices. They are available when I need them to support any issues or changes that come up. StratEx's support is fantastic.

Incentivized

• I find it difficult to record journals in cloud accounting. Maybe I just don’t have the knowledge.
• It’s important to export all unrecorded sync bank transactions to Excel to send to clients to explain the payment receipts before being posted. This function is not available on the cloud and makes life harder, having to call out the transactions to clients over the phone.

Incentivized

• Fees
• Accounting integration and syncing

Incentivized

I could not live without Sage Accounting, it has become an integral part of my everyday. The more I have used Sage Accounting the more I have fallen in love with it. I am excited to be part of this ever-evolving accounting system that has grown from strength to strength, making life easier is something Sage does so well.

I was new to accounts and am constantly doing more through Sage than we have ever done in the company. Our accounts software has taken the stress out of many aspects of accounting. Highlights would be statement runs, purchase automation, and quick and professional remittance advice.

Incentivized

Sage has been always available when I want it. If there is any maintenance work to be done by the Sage team, you are told well in advance. Maintenance is generally carried out late at night or before the day begins for most of us. It continues to be the most reliable software I use.

Performance is top notch, if it is not, it is probably your wi-fi connection. It has happened that pages load slowly because of an error on Sage side but almost never. Overall reports load fine, the site is fast, navigation is fine. I have a client that has so many invoices, it is slow or gets stuck when you try to load a report for a whole year but it is just too many invoices, it makes sense. Just take 2 report for 6 months and combine them, its not an issue for me. I am happy with Sage Accounting's performance.

Incentivized

Sage Accounting are easy to contact and have knowledgeable and helpful staff. Whenever I've encountered a problem I've always been able to get assistance and guidance and it feels like the person at the end of the phone/screen knows the product well.

Staff are always friendly, and patient, always work at a speed that suits you. You are never rushed, and In only a short time they seem to be able to help you make great strides. It has been a pleasure not a chore, learning how SAGE Accounting works and benefits me and the company.

I find the online training was very informative and they answered all my questions. I am also certified in Sage One and provided online training in the program which I have set up several people on and they love how it keeps them organized.

The clients' business owner worked with Sage on implementation before I began working for them. After consultation with them it is clear the process was quickly performed and without complication. The key takeaway was that Sage is seen as a partner to the business. That said, it was always necessary to engage with an accountant such as myself to extract the best out of the software.

We’ve also used and evaluated QuickBooks Online, Xero, and FreshBooks. Each has its strengths, QuickBooks is feature-rich for North American tax workflows, Xero has strong multi-currency and reporting options, and FreshBooks is very simple and user-friendly for invoicing, but we found Sage Accounting strikes the best balance between ease of use, cloud collaboration, and reporting for our client-focused workflows

Incentivized

Without a doubt, StratEx wins. Against all the major players in the HRS/HRIS industry, StratEx's biggest win is cost, both implementation and ongoing costs. The other's we evaluated offered tons of flashy things that most companies don't really need. When it was all said it done, we looked at what we needed and what we will need and determined that there is no reason to pay for a "big" brand name and be a small fish in their large ponds. I cannot imagine there is a company that would need anything StratEx doesn't offer. And, when it came down to it, all the major players came down from their original proposals by $100,000 or more to be more competitive with StratEx and we still went with StratEx. They've kept every promise, they've always been available, and they know where they are going as a company.

Incentivized

You can use Sage in your company for various aspects/positions such as bookkeepers, invoicing clerks, accountant, purchasing etc. Everyone can have their own user login and permissions can be set that specific people can do specific jobs without being able to access other peoples progress or accounts of the company.

Incentivized

• It accommodates enormous amounts of data, and it is compatible with almost any laptop or desktop machine.
• It works for almost any accounting issue, from normal daily receipting to month-end reconciliations, balance sheets, and payroll to maintaining and keeping a safe soft record of transactions and audit checks.

Incentivized

• It has streamlined our expense reporting & reimbursement process and has saved us time & money by saving us time.
• It has streamlined our health care benefits administration and renewals.
• It has streamlined our PTO process - calculations are much easier and faster to do now.

Incentivized