Sage 500 ERP 2013 was released on December 3, 2012. The release is packed with new capabilities that deliver value to businesses across numerous industries. The new features span many areas, so most users within a typical ERP organization will experience the benefits of increased usability and efficiency. In this blog post, we have provided a brief description of the new capabilities for accounting and financing and the long awaited enhancement to the Credit Card Process module.
Sage 500 ERP 2013 Enhancements
Sage 500 ERP 2013 includes many user-requested enhancements that benefit accounting and finance users. Enhancements include expanded capabilities for ACH remittances, new and more efficient ways to manage cash receipts, easier bank reconciliation, and better control over posting at period end.
- ACH Remittances – The ACH Remittance capability in Sage 500 ERP allows you to send payments to vendors electronically, saving the cost of paper checks and mailing. But for confirmation and audit purposes, many organizations want to print a hard copy advice listing the items paid. With Sage 500 ERP 2013, the new Print ACH Remittance task provides the required documentation in a familiar and easy to use format.
- Enhanced Cash Management Sage 500 ERP 2013 adds top customer-requested enhancements including the ability to easily import pending cash receipts; the ability to track miscellaneous cash receipts in Accounts Receivable; and an easy to use Bank Reconciliation screen. Increased use of electronic funds transfers, lock boxes, third party Web pages, and alternative collection methods can make the manual entry and application of customer payments cumbersome. To address this change in business processes, a new cash receipts import entity has been added to the Maintain Import Job task in Data Import Manager for Sage 500 ERP 2013.
- Period End Closing – At period end, there often is at least one transaction that someone attempts to post after the period end closing is complete. This of course cannot be allowed once financial reports have been submitted to external entities. Now you can manage period-end closing more smoothly by locking down posting from individual sub-ledgers when preparing for period-end closing. This new feature will be found in the Set Up Fiscal Calendar task. Note: With the proper permissions, the locks can be overridden if necessary.
- Credit Card Processing – The technology supporting the credit card processing capabilities of Sage 500 ERP is being updated with the 2013 release. The new technology, Sage Exchange, will offer customers additional payment entry options, reduced exposure to fraud, and an easy-to-use portal for managing and analyzing your payments information. Sage Exchange is the cloud-based technology that will provide the integration between Sage 500 ERP and the Sage Payments Gateway. It consists of two elements: the Sage Exchange Vault. and the Sage Exchange Portal.
- Additional Payment Entry Options – The adoption of Sage Exchange in the Sage 500 ERP 2013 release introduces more flexibility and power in payment entry options, including card swipe capabilities, mobile payments, and ACH Receivables. If your customer’s credit card is in your hand, you can process the payment with a lower transaction fee. Sage Payments offers a recognized USB card-swipe device attached to the desktop terminal for this purpose. The new card-swipe capabilities have been integrated so that payment processing is built into the normal Sage 500 ERP workflow — this can replace any disconnected card-swipe capabilities that already may be in use. .
- Reduced Fraud Exposure – Earlier versions of Sage 500 ERP gave customers the option to store sensitive credit card information locally in an encrypted state. With the release of 2013, customers can reduce fraud exposure by only storing sensitive cardholder data in the secure, cloud-based Sage Exchange Vault. For added security, Sage 500 ERP 2013 also will support one-time use transactions without saving credit card information. You easily will be able to move your customers’ credit card information from its current location into the secure Sage Exchange Vault.
- Sage Exchange Portal – The Sage Exchange Portal provides a user-configurable dashboard and the flexibility to view payments information on the Web in the manner each customer prefers. There are predefined tabs you can use to assign access to the Sage Exchange Portal for your employees, and easily make connections using alternative devices such as tablet PCs or mobile phones.
Contact Our Sage 500 ERP Team
Are you interested in learning more about the enhanced features in 2013 Sage 500 ERP? Contact SWK’s Sage 500 ERP professionals to learn how these enhancements can benefit for you. For additional information please contact us at 877-979-5462, or click here to contact us.