Wireless Social Group Case Study – Moving from Sage 50 to QuickBooks Online

The need:
Wireless Social Group had used Sage 50 for over 10 years and were importing everything (such as payroll journals, accruals and prepayments and credit card purchases) via separate csv files on a monthly basis. There was a huge amount of manual work as the csv files were produced weekly, data had to be requested from the IT Director and re-uploads of Sage files over VPN often took hours.

• We had to ensure that no one else was using the Sage file while we were using it
• We provided the client with the final transaction number used for checking against the re-uploaded Sage file
• The current version of Sage 50 2014 was no longer going to be supported
• Wireless Social Group wanted to be able to comply with Making Tax Digital, plus reduce their costs

The solution:
Wireless Social Group’s Finance Director had only ever used Sage and spreadsheets so was understandably unsure about using new software and whether it would handle the complexities as well. With the existing software no longer being supported, we rang Sage and spoke with them about the client’s needs and how they needed to be able to track things. We were informed that none of the new versions of Sage would be able to do the accounts the way the 2014 version did so we contacted QBO and assessed its capabilities for Wireless Social Group.

We discussed the findings and decided to complete the current financial year on Sage and use the closing balances to set up QBO for the new financial year.

Our Support:

• Management and guidance from the first discussions with Sage and QBO from late September 2017 through accounts completion in January 2018 and new QBO set up in February 2018
• A vast amount of prep work and education was required for the whole client team
• Liaison with Wireless Social Group’s IT department on internal systems reporting changes
• Changeover plan and set up of QBO together
• Handling a bump in the road with sales recording and using a trial version to smooth things out before a data transfer to the live system took place

Results:

• Wireless Social Group now has a better idea of the financial position of the business as the accounts are updated weekly
• Multiple people can work on the accounts at the same time
• Financial savings for the client due to cancelling their Sage subscription and support package
• Faster bookkeeping as no VPN connection required
• Bank feeds are in place so all accounting entries are reconciled and applied properly
• Excel Transactions by Saasant is used for importing all of the spreadsheets

The client is happy that they made the decision to move across to QBO and that they are ready for MTD. They like being able to log on from anywhere to see how the accounts look. The most surprising thing for Wireless Social Group has been the ability for very flexible P&L Reports, making it easy to set up totals, sub-totals, sub-sub-totals etc and run for any time period.

As the client’s needs change, we will adapt what needs doing – in the future we would like to have them set up with AutoEntry to manage the purchase side of things. QBO is always adding new functionality so we may be able to start importing directly through QBO instead of needing a third party app.