Dear clients,

As most of you may know for the past two weeks, we have experienced severe issues with Sage Business Cloud Accounting experiencing intermitted unavailability, and certain functions not working etc. We have been in constant communication with Sage who kept telling us that they are working around the clock to rectify the problem but they were never able to tell us exactly what was wrong and how long it will be before these issues will sorted. Although some functions are now working, we still experience issues and certain functions are still unavailable. During this time, understandably we were inundated with calls from our valued clients and we received very little information from Sage which left us in the middle, not being able to give much feedback to our clients.

Although we believe in the Sage product and have been using it for the last 8 years without issues, until around November last year when the bank feeds issues started, our recent experience with them caused us to have to re-think our commitment to Sage.

We have therefore decided that we should investigate alternative options and perhaps move some clients over to alternative platforms, as down time not only caused havoc in our office but also to our clients working on the system directly. As a result, we will be training extensively in the next week on Xero, which is one of the biggest competitors with Sage. This way we feel we will not only be able to spread our own risk but also be able to provide a wider service range to our current and prospective clients.

For us this was not an easy decision as we know that changing a system is no easy path, but we must consider the continuity of the products we are using. At this stage we don’t think it is necessary to abandon Sage in totality but necessary to have alternatives and spread the risk.

We will keep you updated with all the products we are offering and should you wish to also move to an alternative product please be in contact as we are here to help.

Please contact Michelle Gouws at the office 044-382-6746 or on her cell phone at 083 233 4967 should you have any other questions and or concerns.

Best regards,
Pierre Gouws CA(SA)
Managing Director