This communication was sent 13 April 2022.

Notice 22-EV | 13 April 2022

We’re delighted to let you know that the release of Sage 50 Accounts v28.1 will be available as follows:

• Developer Pre-Release: 19th April
• Partners: 9th May
• Accountants: 9th May
• Customers: starting from 16th May

What's new?

Here’s a quick summary of what you can expect in terms of new features:

• New – enhanced business dashboard, with customisable elements including new widgets
• New – data management tool to analyse data providing guidance on archive and/or cleanse activities
• Improved – we have made a number of improvements to support customers with saving time, providing better business insights and simplifying VAT, and much more!

Developer Pre-Release

All developers will receive a separate email with instructions on how to access the pre-release, with a view they can test it in advance of customers receiving notification from 16th May.

Customers with planned migrations to Sage 200

Sage 50 and Sage 200 have different release cycles, this can create challenges if a customer installs the latest Sage 50 release before the migration tool is updated in the Sage 200 release cycle. We’re therefore introducing the following to support these migration scenarios:

• Guidance on how to de-activate the upgrade notification
• Submit a request to exclude a customer from the auto update notification

Customers with CIM 50

Customers using the CIM 50 ISV solution must not upgrade their Sage 50 version until they receive confirmation that it's supported. Depending on who supports them this could be via their partner or CIM directly. If your customer uses this solution and should be excluded from the auto update notification you can request to exclude them from this process.

Essential Information

In the case of both the Sage 200 migrations and CIM 50 considerations, the ability to be excluded from the auto update notification applies as follows:

• All requests to exclude serial numbers must be submitted by 1pm on 29th April using this form.
• Customers registered on Sage 50 Accounts v26.2 or earlier, may only be excluded from the notification process up to 31st August. This is due to them using an earlier version of the Sage Licence Service which is being retired at the end of September. They must upgrade to continue to receive software use and they will need time to complete the update.
• Customers registered on Sage 50 Accounts v27 or above may be excluded from the notification process until 31st October which gives sufficient time for upgrades to Sage 200 to be completed and/or the necessary actions to be taken in respect to CIM 50.

Partner Accreditation

We're developing a partner new features course which we'll share more information on shortly. This will also include an exam allowing partners to attain accreditation for Sage 50 Accounts v28.1.

Integration with Sage 50 Job costing

Sage 50 Job costing has been retired from our product portfolio, with all support being withdrawn from 01 October 2021. In all of our messages to date, we outlined that with effect from October 2020 we would no longer upgrade the product or make improvements – which includes the integration with Sage 50 Accounts.

We have identified that the changes made to v28.1 of Sage 50 Accounts results in the Job costing solution being unable to open. Unfortunately, we have been unable to identify a suitable workaround. As Sage 50 Job costing is now retired from our product range, we are not able to resolve this issue.

Whilst we always recommend updating to the latest version of Sage 50 Accounts, at this time we strongly urge customers not to upgrade to any version higher than 28.0 if they are also still using Job costing.