Struggling to keep all the parts of your business running smoothly?
Feeling overwhelmed by spreadsheets and scattered systems? You’re not alone.
Many business owners are searching for a better way to manage their finances, customers, and teams.
Could Sage be the answer you’re looking for in 2025?
This review explores Sage’s features and whether it’s the right business management solution for you.
Let’s find out!
87% of businesses saw improved efficiency after using Sage. Ready for better results? Explore our Sage review now!
What is Sage?
Think of Sage as a special computer program for businesses.
It helps them keep track of their money, pay their workers, and manage their customers.
It’s like having a helpful assistant that organizes all the important information in one place.
This makes it easier for business owners to see how their company is doing and make smart choices.
Who Created Sage?
Sage started in 1981 in the UK by David Goldman.
He needed easier ways to handle money for his printing business.
He created software that helped and then decided to share it.
His idea was to make simple computer programs to help small businesses manage things without a lot of trouble.
Top Benefits of Sage
Here are some of the best things about using Sage for your business:
- Saves You Time: Sage can automate many tasks, like sending invoices and tracking payments. This means you spend less time on paperwork and more time running your business.
- Better Money Management: You can easily see how much money is coming in and going out. Sage helps you keep a close eye on your finances, which can help you make smarter decisions.
- Improved Organization: Sage keeps all your important business information, like customer details and sales records, in one place, making it easier to find what you need quickly.
- Helps You Pay Employees: Sage can make payroll easier by calculating wages and taxes. This helps ensure your employees get paid correctly and on time.
- Sage Makes Reporting Simple: With Sage, creating reports on your business’s performance becomes much faster. You can get a clear picture of your performance without a lot of effort.
Best Features of Sage
Sage offers a variety of tools to help small business owners and medium-sized businesses manage their finances effectively.
Whether you use a desktop solution like Sage Pro Accounting or the cloud connectivity of Sage Business Cloud Accounting.
These features can help improve your workflow management and save you time.
1. Smarter financial reports
Sage provides a powerful financial reporting feature that gives you real-time insights into your business’s health.
You can generate reports to see which products generate the most revenue and which cost codes are impacting your profit.
This helps you make smart decisions to guide your business.
2. Multi-currency accounting
This feature is great for businesses that deal with customers or suppliers in different countries.
Sage accounting software lets you manage transactions in multiple currencies.
It takes care of the exchange rates, so you can easily handle international sales invoices and payments.
3. Inventory management
With Sage, you can easily track all your inventory.
The software includes a feature that can sync inventory automatically and even issue low stock alerts.
This helps you avoid running out of products and lets you create product variations and purchase orders without a lot of manual tasks.
4. Digital record-keeping
You can use Sage to keep digital copies of all your important documents and records.
The software has tools for expense management and bill tracking, so you can easily upload and categorize receipts.
This feature helps you maintain unique records and a clear audit trail for your accounting teams and tax purposes.
5. Bank reconciliation
Sage simplifies the often-tedious process of matching your bank account to your records.
It automatically connects to your bank to pull in bank transactions and helps you identify any unreconciled differences.
This saves you a lot of time and helps ensure your books are always accurate.
6. Balance Sheet Report
This Sage feature provides a snapshot of your business’s financial situation at a specific point in time.
It shows what your business owns (like cash and equipment) and what it owes to others.
This report helps you understand your business’s financial health.
7. Sage Copilot
The Sage Copilot is an AI-powered assistant built directly into the software.
It helps you by automating tasks and providing quick insights.
For example, you can ask it to summarize a report, find specific financial data, or create a customer invoice.
This tool saves you time on routine work, allowing you to focus on growing your business.
It’s designed to answer your questions and help you navigate the system more efficiently.
8. Inventory Management
If your business sells products, Sage can help you keep track of what you have in stock.
This feature lets you know when you’re running low on items so you can order more.
It helps you avoid running out of products and keeps your customers happy.
9. Project Management
For businesses that work on projects, Sage has tools to help you plan, track progress, and manage costs.
This feature can help you stay organized, meet deadlines, and make sure your projects are profitable.
Pricing
Here’s a general idea of what you might expect:
| Plan Name | Price |
| Accounting Individual Free | Free |
| Accounting Individual | $7/mo |
| Accounting Start | $18/mo |
Pros and Cons
Understanding the good and bad points helps you decide if Sage fits your business needs.
Here’s a quick look at the main advantages and disadvantages.
Pros
Cons
Alternatives to Sage
- Dext: This software focuses on automating data extraction from receipts and invoices. It saves time on manual data entry by digitizing your paperwork.
- Docyt: This platform is built on AI to automate bookkeeping and back-office tasks. Docyt aims to eliminate manual data entry and provide real-time financial insights, making it a powerful alternative for businesses that want a highly automated solution.
- Xero: This is a popular cloud-based accounting platform. It’s an alternative for Atera’s bookkeeping features, offering tools for invoicing, bank reconciliation, and expense tracking.
- Easy Month End: This specialized software is designed specifically to simplify the financial close process. It integrates with other accounting platforms like QuickBooks and Xero to ensure a smooth and easy month end.
- Puzzle io: This is a modern accounting software built specifically for startups. It helps with financial reporting and automation, offering real-time insights and a focus on streamlining the books for a faster close.
- Sage: A well-known provider of business management software, Sage offers a range of accounting and financial solutions that can serve as an alternative to Atera’s financial management module.
- Zoho Books: Part of the Zoho suite, this is a strong accounting tool for small to medium businesses. It helps with invoicing, expense tracking, and inventory management, and is a good alternative for those who need comprehensive financial tools.
- Synder: This software focuses on syncing your e-commerce and payment platforms with your accounting software. It’s a useful alternative for businesses that need to automate data flow from sales channels into their books.
- Easy Month End: This tool is designed specifically to streamline the month-end closing process. It’s a specialized alternative for businesses that want to improve and automate their financial reporting and reconciliation tasks.
- Docyt: An AI-powered bookkeeping platform, Docyt automates financial workflows. It is a direct competitor for Atera’s AI-driven bookkeeping features, offering real-time data and automated document management.
- RefreshMe: This is a personal financial management platform. While not a direct business alternative, it offers similar features like expense and invoice tracking.
- Wave: This is a popular free financial software. It’s a good choice for freelancers and small businesses for invoicing, accounting, and receipt scanning.
- Quicken: A well-known tool for personal and small business finance. It helps with budgeting, spending tracking, and financial planning.
- Hubdoc: This software is a document management tool. It automatically fetches your financial documents and syncs them to your accounting software.
- Expensify: This platform focuses on expense management. It is great for receipt scanning, business travel, and creating expense reports.
- QuickBooks: One of the most widely used accounting software programs. QuickBooks is a strong alternative that offers a full set of tools for financial management.
- AutoEntry: This tool automates data entry. It is a good alternative for the receipt and invoice capture features within Atera.
- FreshBooks: This program is great for invoicing and accounting. It is popular with freelancers and small businesses that need a simple way to track time and expenses.
- NetSuite: A powerful and complete cloud-based business management suite. NetSuite is an alternative for larger businesses that need more than just financial management.
Sage Compared
It’s helpful to see how Sage stacks up against other popular software.
Here is a brief comparison with some of its competitors.
- Sage vs Puzzle IO: While both handle accounting, Puzzle IO is designed specifically for startups, focusing on real-time cash flow and metrics like burn rate.
- Sage vs Dext: Dext is primarily a tool for automating data capture from receipts and invoices. It often works alongside Sage to make bookkeeping faster.
- Sage vs Xero: Xero is a cloud-based option known for being user-friendly, especially for small businesses. Sage can offer more robust features as a business grows.
- Sage vs Synder: Synder focuses on syncing e-commerce platforms and payment systems with accounting software like Sage.
- Sage vs Easy Month End: This software is a task manager that helps you keep track of all the steps needed to close your books at the end of the month.
- Sage vs Docyt: Docyt uses AI to automate bookkeeping and eliminate manual data entry, providing a highly automated alternative to traditional systems.
- Sage vs RefreshMe: RefreshMe is not a direct accounting competitor. It focuses more on employee recognition and engagement.
- Sage vs Zoho Books: Zoho Books is part of a large suite of business apps. It’s often praised for its clean design and strong connections to other Zoho products.
- Sage vs Wave: Wave is known for its free plan, which offers basic accounting and invoicing, making it a popular choice for freelancers and very small businesses.
- Sage vs Quicken: Quicken is more for personal or very small business finances. Sage offers more robust features for a growing business, like payroll and advanced inventory.
- Sage vs Hubdoc: Hubdoc is a document management tool that automatically collects and organizes financial documents, similar to Dext, and can integrate with accounting platforms.
- Sage vs Expensify: Expensify is an expert at managing expenses. It’s great for receipt scanning and automating expense reports for employees.
- Sage vs QuickBooks: QuickBooks is a major player in the small business accounting world. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and a wide range of features.
- Sage vs AutoEntry: This is another tool that automates data entry from receipts and invoices. It works well as an add-on to accounting software like Sage.
- Sage vs FreshBooks: FreshBooks is especially good for freelancers and service-based businesses, with a focus on simple invoicing and time tracking.
- Sage vs NetSuite: NetSuite is a full-scale ERP system for larger businesses. Sage has a range of products, with some competing at this level, but NetSuite is a bigger, more complex solution.
Personal Experience with Sage
Our team needed a powerful accounting platform to replace our old system and handle complex job costing.
We chose Sage desktop software for a one-user license. After transferring our existing accounting data.
We used Sage University and articles to help us resolve some initial questions.
The software helped us save time and get better insights.
Here’s how we used its features and what we learned:
- Further Assistance: For extra help, we used the community hub to answer questions and explore add-ons from the Sage Marketplace for specific needs. We also looked into Sage Payroll for future use.
- Real-Time Reporting: We could see job statuses and cash flow in real-time. This helped us make quicker, smarter decisions about our projects.
- Job Costing: This feature was key. It helped us track costs for each project, giving us clear insights into profitability.
- Security: The desktop software with cloud-connected online backups gave us a sense of security for our data, which was a top priority.
- Potential Drawbacks: We did experience some limited remote access and found that the dedicated mobile app wasn’t available for our specific version. This was a clear difference from alternatives like QuickBooks Online, but we adapted by using the desktop version with an internet connection.
Final Thoughts
Choosing the best accounting software is a big decision.
Sage offers powerful tools that can transform how you manage your finances, but it’s important to weigh its pros and cons.
While it’s a robust solution, you should consider potential drawbacks like mobile access limitations in some versions or higher prices for advanced features.
Ultimately, if you need a strong, reliable platform for detailed accounting, Sage is a top contender.
We recommend exploring their options and seeing how its features can fit your business needs.
Before you decide, be sure to use the contact fields on their website to ask any final questions!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Sage used for?
Sage is mainly used by businesses to manage their finances, such as tracking income & expenses, sending invoices, and paying employees. It helps keep all your money-related information organized in one place.
Is Sage easy to learn?
Like any new software, Sage might take some time to get used to. However, it’s designed to be user-friendly, and Sage often provides support and resources to help users learn how to use it effectively.
How much does Sage cost?
The cost of Sage depends on the specific plan and features you need, as well as the number of users. They offer different subscription options, so it’s best to check their website for the current pricing details.
What kind of businesses use Sage?
Sage is used by many different types of businesses, from small startups to larger companies. They offer solutions tailored to multiple industries and business sizes, helping with their unique management needs.
Does Sage offer customer support?
Yes, Sage typically offers customer support to help users with any questions or issues they might encounter. The type of support available can vary depending on your subscription plan.
